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Search-engine friendly web site design

On the surface, it might seem that the definition of "search-engine friendly web site" is:

A web site designed, written, and formatted to rank well in the search engines.

When I look at that definition, I can see how misleading it is. When companies create web sites, they do not create sites for the search engines. They design and write sites (hopefully) for end users. Because, ultimately, end users are the people who are going to purchase thousands or millions of dollars worth of products and services, not the search engines.

For that reason, I believe the definition of a search-engine friendly web site is:

A user-friendly web site that can be easily found in the search engines.

In other words, a search-engine friendly web site is first and foremost user-friendly, designed and written for your human visitors first (primary audience). Then the site can be tweaked so that is can be easily indexed by the search engines (secondary audience).

I believe that the phrase "search-engine friendly" means that the designer and copywriter are following the rules set forth by the search engines. Search engines do not want a bunch of pages created purely to rank. Pages created purely for ranking purposes are called doorway pages, which are often software generated and/or cloaked.

Search engines and directories (also called human-based search engines) want to deliver their users to the most relevant sites as quickly as possible. That is the value of a search engine -- delivering users to quality web sites with relevant information.

A search-engine friendly web site design satisfies multiple groups: end users, directory editors, and search engine spiders.

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