SEO and an ASP developer

I had a CONSTRUCTIVE debate with one of my ASP developer friend; who was planning to design an SEO friendly website. This post did not mean to be offensive but this is to show how short sighted the developers could be when it comes to SEO.

…so the conversation started somehow like this: “I am developing a website for one of my clients, who need you to do the SEO for it; I will create fields in the admin from where you can include title, description and keywords… what else you would need?”

I am kind of a person who have spent sleepless nights learning best SEO practices that works for long term (bullet proof SEO), this title and Meta tag SEO sounds like an insult to me, so I went this way, ‘Thank you very much for this, but this is not the only thing I need. I need the developer to sit with me in the initial phase (before development) so together we can discuss my concerns and requirements for the website. This way I will be able to tell him in detail what I need from him in the website’.

He quickly replied in an arrogant tone, ‘What do you need in the development?’

I controlled myself, ‘I will need the URL Re-writing, Website architecture, content areas, automatic sitemap generation and few more.’

‘URL re-writing? What the hec is that?’

I was calm and easy as this question was not new to me, ‘it’s like at the back system to get a different URL and user can see the friendly version of it.’

‘WTF! You mean to say this is the duty of an ASP developer to understand SEO?’ he asked.

‘I never said that, did I?’ I paused. ‘I just wanted to let you know that SEO is not just about Meta tags, it’s the procedure to smooth the system by following the standards set by Google and other search engines.’

‘I believe W3C School standards! All you people do by these long debates is to ask for more money and that’s it!’ he replied.

I lost my temper, ‘Then all I would advise you to go and ask for W3C people to rank you high and give you more money.’

---End of talk---

Most ASP developers I have worked with mostly like to cut corners and do not appreciate going a step further in order to fix the system. They mostly like to follow their own set of shortcuts created by them, which undoubtedly works for a short term but when you enhance the applications these areas require an urgent modification, if not they can create a big mess in the system.

I believe developers need to understand that Google is seriously allowing businesses to make more money so all they have to do is to shut the FUCK up and do it the Google way…