SEO and web design

Combining SEO requirements with high-quality design has never been more difficult.
Why do I say that?
Well, for starters, if you want your web to be search engine friendly, you better forget about the Flash. There are number of workarounds on how to make flash pages search engine friendly, but none of them can provide you with anything comparable to good old-fashioned html pages.
Secondly, the words that appear closer to the beginnig of the page have the most "weight" for keyword ranking. OK, you can always add some good alt tag but the "weight" that this one will be given by search engine is not close to the weight that only straight text in anchor can provide.
So, you better start designing web pages that start with text in anchors.
I know, this blog is supposed to be on images and design related stuff. But, web designers today are facing all kind of requirements and this one is, in many cases, one of them.
However, again, if you are after some really cool tutorials on Photoshop and Illustrator - this is the place.