I’ve always wondered where the hatred lies between those who “design” for the web and those who “optimise”. One could say that the problem lies with the designers who should build for optimisation from the very start, but then again wouldn’t that just leave all those SEO’s without a job?

I’ve been a professional web designer for over 4 years now and in that time I’ve felt the rift between the two, although not often, I’ve definitely felt it.

We web designers are often found guilty of applying “bells and whistles” to everything, I think we get this attitude from our sense of wanting to make a difference in the world/wide web.

And then you have the SEO’s who always come across as though you’re a restaurant owner and they’ve just found the smallest hair imaginable in one of your soups and neither one of you are quite sure who it belongs too.

No-one likes getting told that they’re wrong and it’s this attitude that leads the battle between creation and modification. Those in the web design industry will know exactly what I’m talking about. The times where some SEO will ring up and ask for FTP access so they can tear apart your wonderful creation and the designer himself delaying for as along as possible the prevention of such a disaster.

But is it all doom and gloom?

I guess I can finally let you in on a little secret.. After 4 years of working for a web design company I decided I wanted a career change and I asked myself that age old question, “If you can’t beat them.. join them”.

I must admit, being on the receiving end from my once fellow “designers” is not always a joy, however, there is a common goal that we both share and that is to be noticed.

Gone are the days where I would happily graze the web following every other designer sheep with the gung-ho motto “design is a priority over function”. These days both design and the function need to be the priority.

It’s like this, you can have the most delicious eye-catching website around however if it’s not designed with SEO in mind not many are going to find it, start thinking that every click counts, because it does.

With the revision of web 2.0 and clients pushing towards standards more and more each day there is one fact that will always remain.. content is king and design is just one role that help’s portray that.

With both Web Development experience and Search Engine Optimisation integration in mind both parties can work together to produce some outstanding results.

Take a watch for example, a simple delicate time piece designed to do only 1 thing, then think of all the parts a watch makes up, the face, hands and cogs none of which can really function with out the other to be most effective.

Yet when all of these things are working in unison it’s then that we see the bigger picture.

Only when we start to simplify things like a watch can we really come to appreciate just how close and how well we can work together and it’s only then can we truly find peace.

And if I’m being honest… it’s about time!

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