[IxDA Discuss] SEO and Usability

[Mark Schraad]

I'm running into an interesting conversation with more regularity  
every week. That conversation surrounds the usability compromise that  
sometimes occurs when optimizing pages, functionality, content  
organization and linking strategies for search engines. There is  
theory being preached within my company that if you optimize for  
search engines, then you are optimizing for the user as well. I  
disagree. I think they are two separate sets of logic, that may in  
fact overlap, but are absolutely not in harmony. Until search engines  
accurately emulate human thought (I have my doubts this will happen  
very soon) then there will be compromises to the user while  
optimizing for search. Any thoughts?

Mark