I run a team of 40 dedicated, trained, native English speaking article writers whom offer marketeers and webmasters a low cost article writing and linking service. Web design companies are just not going to do that. It isn’t much fun.

The articles produced are not simply run of the mill, hacks, written only to gain as many links as possible, regardless of content or quality. Rather, these are thoughtfully researched and carefully written, interesting articles, with provocative titles, all written by talented professionals. So much so that many of our clients use them for content in their own web sites.

I think this service is essential for any internet marketeer, webmaster or person responsible for the competitive ranking of their company’s website on Google, Yahoo or MSN. Have a look at the http://www.seymour-james.com/linkpopularity/ for details. It really is worth spending a few minutes getting to grips with what the competition is most likely doing.

Hope this helps….

p.s. love the “sum” question

If I did a search today for companies who I could meet with about being hired to do SEO work, I’d find a ton willing to come in and tell me what they can do. When you meet with them you realize you’re talking to a design firm who is trying to get into the SEO space. On the other hand, well-establishe SEO companies who have a solid name and have more customers than they know what to do with can charge a premium.

Unfortunately, unless the small company marketer is well-read on the topic, many will buy into one of the design firms who won’t get the job done.

Drew, you make a good point. The people I see coming out of school now are more savvy, but the needs of SEO are often far outside the boundaries of what is reasonable to expect from a web designer no matter how good they are at code SEO. It’s good that more people on the interactive side are gaining more SEO knowledge though. It helps A LOT when we don’t have to battle with the web team on the on-site and code related SEO recommendations.

I think it’s a toss up between new school and old school. When I received my BA in Fine Arts and Media in ‘01, they were still teaching us layouts with tables. Since then through my 9-5 job I have been fortunate enough to work for a company that is a leader in Internet Marketing for the medical, dental, and legal fields. As anyone knows, for ex: optimizing sites for “Dallas LASIK” is not an easy task. Since I came in as a designer, I have learned everything from tabless layouts to every benefit of semantic markup for SEO. During this time, I have also had the benefit of having an entire company teach me about marketing and SEO.

I still keep in touch with all of my old professors and the kids that are coming out of school now know almost as much as I do about code for SEO benefits. Now all you have to do is teach them how to implement effective marketing and SEO.

While I do agree with you about the extremely large shoes an SEO marketing person has to fill with all the analytics and data crunching that goes along with a quality SEO campaign, at least the new school designers are more in tune with that sort of information. You won’t have to fight with them to get rid of the large image just to put in a few H tags and decent amount of content. They seem to understand the big picture. Now whether or not they have the time to wear all those shoes is a different story.

You bring up some good points though Lee. I

I don’t think the question is really “Can a web designer do SEO” it’s more of a question of putting the right people together to excell at both.