Interesting Thread
The Crea8asite Forums and Kim’s blog, Usability, SEO and Web Design, are two of my favorite resources for getting a broader view of website design, blending as they do SEO and usability. The blog post Search Engine Optimization Wins Over User Centered Design and the thread It’s the SEO that counts, not user centered design address this particular mixture head-on. Both reference the somewhat puzzling article from C|Net entitled Is search ruining the web?
The author of the article doesn’t really answer her own question and has the typical outsider view of what SEO really is (hidden text? Spammy keyword tags? A Jedi uses not these things.) and she confuses breadcrumb navigation with properly written title tags but it’s a good discussion starter as you’ll see when you read the thread.