Simian Design

Generally, anybody following current standards-based XHTML/CSS design/development should be following these rules by default, without really realising it.

For example, we use image replacement techniques on accessible and semantically-correct text links (such as "Home Page" rather than "Click here"), we ensure that the page is readable from top to bottom, etc... This ensures that Google and older browsers (lynx, links, IE/NS4, etc) see a plain HTML page, and modern browsers with CSS enabled see a really pretty graphical web page.

This is one of the reasons I follow standards. I remember spending two years generating specific Search-Engine Marketing pages *as well as* standard html pages using dreamweaver because my employer requested I do, which all seems a little silly now. Especially when I'm getting much better results now with half the work!

I disagree. Standards does not equal Search Engine Optimization. (and I really don't like that term. But there it is.)

Standards-based coding doesn't tell us to make the Title tag meaningful, nor does it tell us that meta description is good while meta keywords isn't. Nor does it tell us that using "Click Here" is bad.

Standards-based coding is great. So is CSS. But those are different than content optimization, different than accessibility, and so forth.