When designing a new site: Google vs. Visitors

[hamncheese]

Hello,

I wanted to get a quick vote on what your primary focus is when designing a new site.

What is more important to you: Google/SEs or Visitor & Conversions

I am interested to hear your opinions and specific examples and stories on what has, and what hasn't worked in the past.

Thanks,

Hendrik

[Linda Buquet]

Both!

I'd say make sure your framework and foundation are solid and optimized for Google. By framework and foundation I mean site design (no flash or java, etc), navigation, meta tags, link structure - all the functional stuff search engines look at. Be sure you are doing everything in a way that's kosher with Google's Webmaster guidelines.

When it comes to adding content I'd do that for visitors & conversions, with a keen eye on keywords in titles for search engines. But if you are writing a page about Green Widgets for visitors, very naturally Green Widgets would be in the meta title, page title and throughout the document a few times.

Make sense?

Then don't forget the other element AFTER site is built is getting some high quality targeted inbound links.