Search-engine friendly design is designing for people who use search engines. Ignore the “peopleâ€? aspect? Well then, IMHO, then you and a lot of people just do not understand search-engine friendly design.

You appear to insist on having an argument based solely on a semantic difference between your definition of “Search Engine Friendly” and mine. Fine.

Being that “Search Engine Friendly” doesn’t have any established dictionary definition, this is a purely specious argument.

You are assuming that, because I don’t include searcher behaviors and user behaviors in my definition of search engine friendly that this is an area I ignore. That is patently ridiculous. I don’t engage in certain aspects of development for the very simple reason that there are many people out there who not only do these tasks better than I do, they actually enjoy them.

Why should I take on keyword research for a client if I find it mind-numbingly boring? There’s a reason that web site development is usually a team effort.

I stand by my argument. You stand by yours. The arguments are absurd, on both sides, because they’re entirely based on a difference of definition, not a difference of opinion.

I agree absolutely that designing for users of search engines is important.

I do not, however, agree that this fact necessarily must be part of the definition of the phrase “Search Engine Friendly.”

Get over it.

I understand that many “search-engine friendly” designers/developers only develop sites that accommodate Web search engines in terms of crawlability and indexation. And for many years, that is what these self-labeled experts have been trying to promote as search-engine friendly design. And honestly, Joe? It seems like you fell for it.

I have been saying it since 1995. And I am still saying it now. Search-engine friendly design is not designing for search engines only. It is designing for people who use commercial Web search engines and site search engines.

And that means accommodating more than crawlability and indexation. It means accommodating searchers.

If you (and others) continue to only see search-engine friendly design from the “technical aspect”? Well, I think that is just plain sad. It is doing the industry a disservice.

Maybe you just don’t have the frame of reference (context) and history in the industry that I have.

Search-engine friendly design is designing for people who use search engines. Ignore the “people” aspect? Well then, IMHO, then you and a lot of people just do not understand search-engine friendly design.

An important part of this “debate” is probably wrapped up in what it means to be friendly to a search engine. I view it from a technical perspective: “friendly” means that the search engine is capable of identifying, separating, and indexing all elements of a web site. Everything which should be unique is unique. To go beyond that, in my mind, is performing optimization.