How Important is 'clean code' for SEO?

I thought I'd ask about SEO. I recently did a business site for someone who couldn't afford a professional company at £2k or higher for his up-coming removals company.

The business he went to originally came back and looked at his site and really rinsed it saying he was "..gonna get absolutely nuked in terms of SEO. The code quality is so poor. Inline styles on the whole site."

Now I know his site turns up on search engines exactly where he wants it and I know he gets queries and enquiries that come directly through the site. I did get him placing links to it all over the relevant removal company listing and I got him to get a Facebook and Twitter account up and running.

I've told him if he wants to get it fully completed professionally replacement that's fine but I have always taken most of my SEO advice and tips on here and if Xara sites are so, so, bad how do they ever get good listings?

I'm sure everyone on here knows more than me but I would love to see some experienced and wise opinions.

Cheers
David

"The business he went to originally came back and looked at his site and really rinsed it"

So, the guys he couldn't afford don't like your site? How surprising!

They aren't motivated in any way to be happy about losing the business and if they were professionals they would just have said nothing.

For coders and such, the HTML generated by just about any automated code generator (like Xara), is just awful. Strangely enough the browser doesn't care much. I'm not sure that google cares too much either.

If the placement of the site in listings is good enough (bringing in business), your friend shouldn't care either.

Thanks Paul,

Without meaning to be patronising I'm impressed with such an enlightened view from a professional.

Plus I am happy that my views and opinion seem to reflect exactly what yours are. I know Xara is 'bloatware' and I did think the slagging was very unprofessional. I am a very honest fellow so I let my friend know and he replied saying he and his customers were very happy with the site, it works on phones and computers [he checks it regularly] and he couldn't give a monkey's about inline and html coding nor does his customers.

I only do this 'business' site as a favour [he's a really nice chap] and so I did take it seriously and try to make it as good as I could and I researched a lot. A few online articles I found said that Google, in particular, doesn't really care about poor coding because there a loads and loads of poorly coded websites out there. Excluding them would affect their business - which does make sense.

But to be fair to me I have said once he gets some disposable cash he should go to a business/professional and take it up a grade.

Once again Paul thanks for the honest and prompt reply - I'd hate to think I'd adversely affected his business.

David, there are plenty of people here far more enlightened than me - and that's not modesty.

Whenever I come across SEO specialists my mind flicks to a wild west scene with a quack selling his cure-all elixir. I liken SEO practitioners to snake-oil vendors.

My view on SEO is this.

Have good content that describes the business/product well.
Try and have genuine online references to the business.

Have good customer service, and a good product.

For me that's what's important.

People that make promises about ranking, etc. are on a par with dodgy used car salesmen and snake-oil purveyors.

Paul

SEO = SnakE Oil!

Brilliant,
Acorn

Unfortunately the SEO fraternity are working hard to ruin the web. They fill the internet with sites only designed to ensnare the searcher, packing inane articles with bland advice that looks good to Google's spiders, but has no value to the visitor, nor any humanity. They exist only to support advertising links in one form or another.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pauland

David, there are plenty of people here far more enlightened than me - and that's not modesty.

Whenever I come across SEO specialists my mind flicks to a wild west scene with a quack selling his cure-all elixir. I liken SEO practitioners to snake-oil vendors.

My view on SEO is this.

Have good content that describes the business/product well.
Try and have genuine online references to the business.

Have good customer service, and a good product.

For me that's what's important.

People that make promises about ranking, etc. are on a par with dodgy used car salesmen and snake-oil purveyors.

Paul

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Paul,

Exactly what I said to my friend.

First things first, have a good business and do your job well - the rest will follow (he does and he does).

Couldn't add further to Pauls suggestions & I share his opinions of SEO cowboys. If you do wish to take ranking the site one step further you could register the site using Google Webmaster Tools. But if your client is happy with his current ranking and as you're doing this as a freebee that's up to you ;)

Not all SEO specialists are 'cowboys' I for one only charged £250 per year for SEO work per customer, irrespective of the number of websites, that is until Google altered their rankings based on what keyword search you had bought or not bought.

Google is now just driven by money so using their Webmaster Tools will have little effect on your search engine position on google. Other search engines differ - try doing doing a search with popular search phrases across a number of search engines and you'll see what I mean.

I stopped doing SEO stuff about 5 years ago because the only way to get top positions on google was to fork out big chunks of money. I managed to get some of my customers sites to the top without spending any money buying keywords off google and these sites are still sitting at the top all these years later - quite a few of them also haven't had any changes made to then at all!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by penmore

Not all SEO specialists are 'cowboys' I for one only charged £250 per year for SEO work per customer, irrespective of the number of websites, that is until Google altered their rankings based on what keyword search you had bought or not bought.

Google is now just driven by money so using their Webmaster Tools will have little effect on your search engine position on google. Other search engines differ - try doing doing a search with popular search phrases across a number of search engines and you'll see what I mean.

I stopped doing SEO stuff about 5 years ago because the only way to get top positions on google was to fork out big chunks of money. I managed to get some of my customers sites to the top without spending any money buying keywords off google and these sites are still sitting at the top all these years later - quite a few of them also haven't had any changes made to then at all!

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Funnily enough in my searches to do the best I can I also found that out about Google too, their top hits are always paid ads end of.

This chap, who by the way I pointed my friend too, seems utterly obsessed with 'clean code' too - he even posted a snapshot of Xara code on his company outlets/blogs/Twitter and said how rubbish it was, getting comments like 'I feel a little sick' etc from other coders.

I'm firmly in the court than no one in any walk of life is completely correct or utterly wrong - most opinions and points of view have some validity but hey-ho he should really move on and look for other business and if the offending website goes wrong and loses my friend business [he has almost more than he can cope with] he will be proved right.

Cheers everyone, so far everything has been even-handed and very interesting.