What to do with content-lite sites?

I have a customer who came to me requesting some SEO services for their site. The problem is that have a site that is highly graphical in nature, with little actual content, and they insist on not having to change the visual appearance of the site at all. At first thought it appears they are requesting some 'gray-hat' tactics to gain higher visibility.

What advice would you give to site owners who wish to maintain their web sites appearance and have no additional content (except for metas ... etc.) added to their site?

can you post a url? [or pm one]
...to better understand the situation.

Are we talking about Flash, Java, one big image with a bunch of imagemaps or a bunch of images and no text???

The site's not live quite yet, so I can't show you a url, but it was developed using Fireworks, and the entire layout consists of a sliced up image with multiple rollovers on the menu and on the main page itself. The owners of the site really like the appearance of this graphic driven site, but I am a bit stumped on how to add seo to the site in a beneficial way.

Ask them if they want a cool site or if they hope to make money. lol

Actually, the question really is how competetive is their keyword set? If they hope to be found under a keyword with brutal competition then they might need to compromise on the design. However, if they are hoping to be found under a very easy set of keywords you might be able to squeeze in just a little text, mark up and off-page strategies to do the trick.

dude...
can you give us any more useful info about the nature
and theme
and function
of the site so we can give you better direction
about a seo strategy.
otherwise...
...we will continue making educated guesses
until we grow weary
and tired
and move on
to another topic.

I agree with zooly.

Here's the thing. Point your client to sites like ebay, amazon, orbitz and travelocity. Hell point them to the top sites in their industry and see if they are graphically intense. My educated guess is no. Why??? Because consumers dont look at graphics but prices and a site's ease of use.

I bet the site owner is new to the online world. Most first time site owners always want a site that looks "hollywood" until they realize they dont make money.

The internet is the new medium, #4 and is not going away. A lot of people, and I am reassured of this daily use the web to look up information.

The key topic should be "how" to write for the internet so that people can find your website, properly under the keywords you would like. That is the challenge.
Organic SEO, (Search Engine Optimization) is the gold ticket that most importantly involves content writing in a specific way. Not many writers can include a specific word in a 500 word article 2-8 times and make it sound- like it has not been packed.

I recently had 11 writers creating articles in Detroit, full time using this method for over 4 months to satisfy 2,500 articles about Pets- each article geared at specific keywords.

So yes, creative professional writing on the web is very important- and can be done.

__________________________________________________
Trademark Productions, Inc.

But not many have a budget to hire 11 writers Tmprod. But yes you are correct in both respects that it is important and can be done.