Andrew Heenan wrote:
> "Els" wrote ...
> > Yes, but my question remains: how does my adhering to strict standards
> > hurt the SEO?
>
> It will not hurt you in SEO terms; it is safer; some of the keyword stuffing
> and ALT abuse that has been suggested could severely damage your SEO
> (Especially if reported by a rival!).
>
> Adhering to strict standards is usually quite SEO-friendly, and will
> invariably give you better, risk-free results in the medium or long term.
>
> Spam techniques unarguably have a short term advantage, which you must weigh
> against the risks and your personal standards.

This sounds like very good advice Andrew except that it limits Els'
ability to challenge other keyphrase competitors in the SERPs, at this
stage of her game. She needs to get her pages to qualify for the top
positions in a bigger arena. Sure, she could spend years regimentally
standardizing code to her highest calibers and eventually have
accumulated a substantial enough amount of incredible standardized code
to sustain good SERP positions, The again, maybe not, maybe it'll be
SERP oblivion for her web pages. She wants more keyphrases at the top
than what she has already established and I would suspect she wants
them this century.

I totally agree with you Andrew on the need to remain ethical, but SEO
is often about pushing the limits of acceptibility. At this stage of
her SERP performance, I think she should take the risk and make some
sacrifices.

She has come to us wanting to know how to achieve more keyphrase
dynamicability. The web site needs to become dynamic, evolving too from
being more search engine friendly during this initial period of time to
being more visitor friendly during another period of time. Ultimately,
a balance needs to be met whereas both are very satisfied with the
content of the web pages. This balance we hope Els can discover soon.
If today Els decides to empower her web site with acceptable techniques
that the search engines request us SEO to use properly, then only they
can truly determine if its ethical nature.

To our eyes it may appear spammy or it may not appear to be spammy.
That really doesn't matter now does it? It all boils down to how the
SEO techniques are applied and how the search engines respond to them.
Els will need to find her own balance, in time.

I say get innovative and push it Els. Live on the edge until you haver
established the web site's credibility, then adjust over time by
carefully observing the search engines' ( not just Google )responses.

This is a discussion about SEO and it's relationship with design
standards and the response of Els' SEO from the search engines. SEO
stands for search engine optimization which originally meant
optimization of code for the search engines.

Els, do you want to design, optimize or both?

--
all the best Fred
http://canadian-web-site-promotion.blogspot.com/