Website Build Vs Keywords…
Was just reading an interesting post on SEOmoz regarding how different Search Engine Professionals approach website reviews, and what information/proposals is passed onto the client. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/information-architecture-a-site-review-is-nothing-without-it
The post is humerous and raises some valid points, some of which I have encountered myself in the past. Without doubt Keywords are an important ingredient required for the search engine mix, and as it is “words” people are searching for, it makes sense to implement those words into your website.
However there are ways with which to really give your website a major shot in the arm as far as keyword implementation is concerned, and this often falls on the side of way in which your site is built. Ensuring your website is built well, using standards compliant code, using keywords in meta titles, h1 & h2 tags, scattered throughout general content, ALT tags, pagenames (i.e. keyword.html), site structure (naming sub-folders with relevant keywords etc) and then considering your internal linking structure (making sure that your link to performance engines actually says “performance engines” and not page 2).
I remember trying to sell SEO to a customer a few years ago, he laughed at me and said all that was needed was simply to add the word sex into the site a few times and it would be ready to go. Needless to say his site was using frames, which presented 1 problem, also heavily relied on the use of flash, presenting another problem, was built with poor code, problem cubed, and had no real keywords/keyphrases used across the site (you can see a theme developing here).
Getting back to the blog post on SEOmoz, you can see how that problem relates. Not only did I need to supply a proposal based on keyword research, I would also need to supply a proposal which would completely rebuild the site from scratch. This would all be in addition to educating the client on the basic benefits of good search engine marketing. Needless to say, I never followed up my communication, the reason being in that it was no-one other than myself who built the original site for the client, well before I had ever learnt the basics of Search Engine Optimisation. 
At the end of the day how could a client justify spending out on one website, only to have to have the same site rebuilt 2 years later, the wonders of hindsight. Going back to the title of this post, Website Build Vs Keywords, no doubt one cannot survive without the other, yet on their own both can slightly improve the performance of the site. To be truly effective SEO is a combination of good keyword research coupled with improved technical implementation of website design which incorporates good keyphrases.
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