[Wylug-discuss] Webtraffiker

[James Holden]

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On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 17:19, Dave Fisher wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> It does look like you've got the wrong end of the stick on two counts:
>
>   1. Lots of OSS supporters are greedy capitalist swine who like OSS
>   precisely because it frees markets from some of their social
>   contraints (like the cultural interia which underlies Microsoft's
>   monopoly power).

Hooray! I'm not the only person who earns a crust out of offering people
the better alternative that (often) exists in OSS.

>   2. It doesn't make much sense to bother writing a website that no one
>   sees.  One of the side-effects of elegant standards compliant web
>   design is a higher search engine rank.  Does that mean that search
>   engine optimisation is OK, if you don't do it on purpose?

I prefer to think of it as site optimisation rather than search engine
optimisation; I leave that to Google's PhDs. Good standards compliant
code gives lots of benefits, including:

Simpler debugging of layout problems.

Simpler dynamic content generation, especially if you use CSS beyond
it's simple text formatting capabilities.

Compliance to accessibility guidelines. Many companies see this as a bit
of a chore, but it's a mostly freebie side effect of coding the site
properly. I was talking to somebody from the Leeds Deaf and Blind
Association today about this very subject.

Better visibility to search engines, of course.

Less (no?) reliance on specific web browsers. Grr... IE... CSS... Grr!

Smaller page sizes and less reliance on images (like 1 pixel gifs, empty
spacer gifs) for better site response times.

The list goes on.... these are all sellable, money making things as far
as I'm concerned. Sod flash animations and junk like that.


James

> Dave
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 05:02:51PM +0000, Mark Ruddell wrote:
> > Dear listees,
> >
> > I've been lurking here trying to understand what it's all about. I'm
> > sorry to display my ignorance so. I had thought that Free Software was
> > (amongst other things) about freeing the consumer from the systematic
> > deceptions upon which all marketing relies. How can you guys even engage
> > with this SEO crap?
> >
> > All these techniques to interfere with the sequence of results people
> > find when they do a search are a way of distorting reality. It's lying.
> > It's wrong.
> >
> > I'm sorry to be ranting, I really must have got the wrong end of the
> > stick somewhere. Can anyone explain?
>
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