I totally agree that the whole SEO thing gets overrated, esp when it comes to converting those visits into actual sales. While it's something that can have some effect on sales- for example, i'm working on one site for a Chiropractor in LA- well people look for LA Chiropractor white a bit in various forms so having terms that are conducive to that is helpful. However, I agree it can get ugly. It was something that he started throwing stuff at me and then I showed him some other sites taht had figured out how to group their content so that it was still conducive to SEO but was elegant and/or relevant to the actual topics at hand.

At the same time, for my own personal sites (for my artwork for example), I work a lot more on simply creating an elegant and easy to use and navigate site (it's pretty big so ease of use is important) and that way it creates a feeling of ease (people return to that which feels easy) and if it always has congruous links to the main store then it is more likely to funnel visitors in that direction and they are also more likely to return. There are other useful things to add for marketing as well like tell a friend forms, adding the website link to all relevant pictures, that kind of thing. I have found places to enter keyword relevant wording but with the internet as bloated with nonsense as it is, it's sometimes hard to imagine that these oh so valuable "keywords" are actually that helpful.


So ultimately, Corin is right: the first decision that the visitor makes is: do i like this site? (and therefor will i stick around and look around?) If you use Google analytics you can see how much time people spend on your site. Usually it's pretty minimal. But then, I'm the same way- we skim. So ease of use, info presented an easy to get at manner, these things can be done using SEO techniques while at the same time still allowing for elegant design. In my opinion tho, design and layout comes first as it is the most important thing when it comes to converting visits to sales.