Good web designers deliver well-designed and functional websites. Ideally, they know their stuff and they deliver you a site that provides a good user experience and a search engine-friendly architecture.
But what happens when you realize that you need the site to attract traffic? Sometimes there is a conflict because some web designers are completely focused on design and don’t take into consideration the needs of the search engines. The The most blatant example are the sites that are based completely on flash. They may look absolutely wonderful. But guess what? The search engines are not capable of seeing what is actually inside the flash component. In short, if your site is completely based on flash, not matter how wonderful it is, it is unlikely that it will be able to attract relevant organic traffic – because the searh engines have no idea what’s inside the site.
The major difference between web designers and SEO experts is what motivates them: creativity versus strategic thinking. A web designer is motivated by making a well designed, interesting website for his client. A good designer, does what he thinks will make his client happy, visually. A good SEO professional is motivated to achieve top search engine rankings for relevant keywords, thus gaining visibility and traffic for the website. More business owners are now waking up to the fact that web designers are more artists than online marketers. So it is vital to have a strategic consultant involved in the process – whether that be an SEO expert, an online marketing consultant or whatever.