We’re already there.
We have a new client who is a friend of a friend. We’ve been going through the Requirement Gathering phase of their site, and have discussed with them our commitment to Web Standards, and our belief that it’s best to start with content and build from there. We’ve basically focussed on the best practices that we’ve learned from reading the advice of everyone from Zeldman to Cederholm to Clarke, to mention but a few.
This client recently sent us a document that they had received from an SEO firm. It was basically a checklist of points about building a site that was Search Engine Friendly, a sort of compendium of advice about on-site SEO. I shuddered while I waited for my mac’s Preview app to open the doc–I’ve seen more than a few SEO’s that used a lot of mumbo jumbo to scare clients into working with them–but I was pleasantly surprised:
Not only was the list pretty much on-the-money, but we do virtually everything it listed as part of a standard build of any static site. No wonder our clients see a Search Engine bump after we redesign for them.