This may sound crazy, but I think Search Engine Optimizaiton should have an additional classification: Search Engine Engineering.

Often when I work with clients to optimize their pages, I have many limitations to what I can change. BUT if a client brings me in from the beginning, prior to one line of code, we can sit down and build a site that is more than optimized, it is Engineered.

I charge two fees, one for optimization and another for engineering.

I'm sure many of you are as well... to me it is a real value add to be involved in how the page is built, how the site is structured and how the code is written so that it is search engine engineered.

Absolutely. I have just spent some time helping someone with a scripted site, and there were so many things put in the way of spiders and bots. Many things in the design did not help the spiders to acess the site at all.

With a little more thought at the design stage, the site would still have looked just as good, but the URLs to access the content would have been a lot more simple, and consistent; and the site would have been much easier to spider and index too.

Agreed - now I need to change my resume again to add SEE...

The important thing is the ability to differentiate with clients. All too often a client will have been 'pitched' SEO services but they end up only editing meta data or other trival seo changes. Now professionals can say, "we're talking more than just seo, we are talking about engineering your pages from ground up to succeed on search engines." It's a totally different conversation.

SEE is a different conversation that says, "ok do you want me to optimize what you've got or do you want to engineer these pages. Engineered pages will significantly outperform optimized pages. The choice is yours.)

The important thing is the ability to differentiate with clients. All too often a client will have been 'pitched' SEO services but they end up only editing meta data or other trival seo changes. Now professionals can say, "we're talking more than just seo, we are talking about engineering your pages from ground up to succeed on search engines." It's a totally different conversation.

SEE is a different conversation that says, "ok do you want me to optimize what you've got or do you want to engineer these pages. Engineered pages will significantly outperform optimized pages. The choice is yours.)

In reality, both are the same thing - the key is in your actual work and the results. Plenty of folks could claim to "engineer" pages, and just offer crap.

IMO, there's little difference other than when you actually KNOW what must be done and HOW you want to present it to a client.

This is semantics, nothing more. Your "engineering" is my "optimization".

On top of that, many clients will simply not be ready to wholesale change their site because you pitch them on "ground up engineering" v. optimizing what they already have - especially when others are willing to work with what they have.

In the end, I think this line of thinking is a nice option to have based on your audience - some folks will respond to the logic, so from that perspective, it's an interesting angle.

From the nuts and bolts end of things, there is, IMO, no difference between them. SEO SHOULD begine before pages are made - that's always been the baseline...just rarely evers happens...

I've never taken on a site yet that I haven't rewritten from the ground up, and reprogrammed in most cases. There's no point in trying to optimize bad code as far as I'm concerned, and I most definitely don't want to work with it in any case, it's just too difficult to run sites like that.

what sportsguy said:
"there is, IMO, no difference between them. SEO SHOULD begine before pages are made"

It's silly to spend any time 'optimizing' bad code, bad architecture, bad programming when you can spend the same time more or less just rewriting the stuff.

Perhaps a better term is "SE reverse engineering."

I script sites based on the prevailing "rule" structure of major SE.

There is a rudimentary structure that should not be circumvented: "good copy, that is meaningful to consumers"...is also meaningful to SE.

The main reason why SE rules change is to prevent SPAMERS or new "short-term methods to boost PR or PI.

Let me know if I can be of assistance.