Needless to say, I don’t spend my free time helpingthwm, but I do point them in the direction of resources to learn the basics.
I’m sure lots of people get away with doing that, taking the money and not going a thought to a lot of the simple things that could help them rank and drive traffic- I often find with small businesses in a specific niche that only tidy on page optimisation is sufficient in a lot of cases.

Rant over anyways, good blog… Web designers doing bad work are the bane of lots of seos like us

I think that’s a great way to look at it really, and it is how all web designers should view search engine optimisation. If you are going to build a website in today’s world, SEO is a huge part of that process. It should be given the attention needed, even if it means just applying the basic SEO foundations that somebody else can extend upon.

These are the same people that a couple years back were screaming “we’re usability experts”. That now, at least in the states, are denigrating usability.

Our own mantra is that SEO isn’t a tack on service, that to be done correctly the site is built with SEO at it’s foundation.

You’re adressing a pretty serious problem here. People dong bad SEO are ruining the industry’s reputation.

Yeah I can appreciate people need to learn, but that shouldn’t be done on client websites where it could potentially cause them problems.

You raise a couple of good points, and I hope more web designers are willing to understand SEO in more detail before offering “SEO services” or trying their hand at it on client websites.

But don’t get me started on people coming out of their bubbles and doing things wrong – it happens way too often for my liking. You could argue that this is how we learn, but unfortunately all too many wannabe’s aren’t willing to learn and subsequently have a list of disasterous client experiences. This muddies the perception of us, as an industry, and I think SEO in particular has a fight on it’s hands because of this.