Take a more humanistic approach to SEO by collaborating with UX

Laura says: “We should take a more humanistic approach to our trade as SEOs, mainly focusing on the crossroads between UX and SEO.

I’ll tell you a bit about how I intend to keep up with these two disciplines in 2025, by developing a strategy that’s user-first rather than purely for search engines.”

Do SEOs have to be UX designers to deliver a user-friendly website architecture?

“Not at all. You don’t need to know what everyone else is doing, but it’s nice to know a little bit. When you collaborate with your UX department, they often hear about SEO and ask, ‘What do they want from me? I don’t really understand what SEOs are doing.’

I’ve found that it’s easier to take it upon myself to learn a bit more about UX and then explain, in their terms, how I can integrate with their work.”

What do SEOs need to learn?

“Learn the basics, and learn a few tools.

Not all of us are extremely creative. I did start out as a web developer, initially, so I understand a bit more about website architecture and content hierarchy and things that are easier to explain to a UX designer before they start developing a project.

Just learn the basics. You don’t have to go to great lengths and make them feel like you want to steal their jobs.”

What is content hierarchy?

“It can be everywhere around your website; from the way you structure your headlines to any element on your website. It’s just guidelines. A lot of people take things as they are rather than testing on their own website. It’s important to stick to the basics before you create your own bits.

Another way to do it is to talk to your UX designers and ask what they want the navigation to look like. Go through the simple practices and don’t over-complicate things.

An SEO doesn’t have to know everything that a UX specialist does, and that is the issue. In a way, we’re all forced to wear all these hats. We get to a point where we become a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. That’s dangerous, especially if you’re entry-level, because you get overwhelmed by all of this information coming from all of these directions. It ends up in a big mishmash in your head.”

What are the key aspects of SEO that should be shared with a UX designer?

“First of all, when you’re talking to your UX department, emphasise that you’re not there to steal their job. You’re just there to make the website more functional and sexier for search engines.

Whatever their design mood board looks like, you’re not there to have a look around and change it for the sake of changing it. Whatever you’re coming to the table with is simply to make it look nicer and more readable for the search engine. That’s all. They need to know that you’re not a threat.”

Are there rapid changes happening in UX that SEOs need to be on top of?

“Like everything, it’s about continuous learning.

In the SEO community, there are a couple of Slack channels, various newsletters, and top voices on LinkedIn that most of us follow nowadays. Sometimes it’s the easiest way to get your information because these people test, and they get to a point where they can show you something with data. It’s easier to make decisions when you can see the data in front of you, and it’s the same for UX.

That’s why I think UXR is so important. User experience research is not necessarily something that an SEO does. I don’t know many people who voluntarily log into their websites, create accounts, and go around leaving opinions on designs and so on.

I’m a Figma addict. I’ll be in Figma, the collaborative design tool, every day. Even if I don’t have a project ongoing, I’m still going in there to see what’s happening. For example, I’m obsessed with being mobile-friendly. At this point, we know that Google prioritises mobile-first indexing. The first time I went into Figma and saw the process of an actual designer building a wireframe for mobile, it looked amazing, but I felt like it could be a bit improved SEO-wise.

I had it in the back of my head that they hadn’t necessarily consulted that department. I could already see where I would have stepped in and asked, ‘Have you run a Lighthouse report on this before you published it? Why are your images missing alt text?’ They’re simple little things. It’s not overly complicated, and you don’t have to be overly technical to see these gaps.

You don’t have to be an HTML designer to get a lot out of Figma. You can just be an enthusiast. The main attraction is that it’s quite easy to see how the website flows. You just follow how your user would travel around your website. It’s easier to visualise that, and then realise where they could get stuck and how you could facilitate that journey for them.

You could add more buttons, for example, or perhaps a different breadcrumb structure. There are little things that you can do to improve that for them. Figma is a great point of interest for both UX and SEO because it makes it easier to collaborate in that sense. Then, if you want to take it a step further, and you’re a bit more technical and understand a bit of HTML and CSS, you can involve developers in it as well.”

Why do you believe that the Accessibility tab in Google Lighthouse and a screen reader can be your best friends?

“This is such a common story. You look at accessibility, and most people will address it using a screen reader, because screen readers are very good at picking up missing things on the page or when there’s a strange content hierarchy.

What I would add to this is that accessibility isn’t just for people with disabilities. Anyone can benefit from it. We’re not always able to use our hands or you’re on public transport and you want to listen to an article rather than read it.

It’s also nice that it’s flexible for Google, obviously. We know that they prioritise accessibility now, and you’re gaining a lot by taking it seriously and not just treating it as something to be ticked off. It’s not too complicated, you just need to find the time to get it in tip-top shape.”

With so many different screen sizes, how do you ensure that your site looks wonderful on a mobile device?

“I use my colleagues as testers. Obviously, we’ve got so many tools that you can use to simulate how it would look on different devices, from simply using Inspect Element and seeing different screen sizes there to Sigma, where you can create directly on the primary device that you want to be used.

However, what I tend to do is a bit of A/B testing with the people in the company. Even if I’m just launching a little feature like a new subscription box, I will ask people to check it on all the different devices we’ve got in the office. It’s a mini test.”

You say that SEOs should constantly audit competitor websites, so what does this process look like?

“It depends on what stage you’re in. If you’re at the beginning of a project, you’ve got a lot of work to do.

Depending on the type of business you work for, there are various steps you can take. If your business relies on an app, for example, there will be different steps than if you rely on a desktop version of the site.

I tend to start with a bit of a workflow. I use Asana or some sort of agile work frame where I involve a couple of the people from the project – but not everybody in the beginning. We just start with a nice brainstorm. Some of them will have insights that other people involved in the project wouldn’t.

It’s nice to see what everyone knows about what competitors you could have, and it’s very interesting to see the scale at which they’re thinking about these things.

For example, with comparison platforms, you have some giants in the UK that it’s extremely hard to compete with nowadays. Their trust signals are over the moon. They’re there for a reason. If you want to launch something similar, you’ll have people in the office thinking your main competitor would be something like Compare the Market. However, another person might see a smaller, more niche website that you didn’t think about when you started your user research.

It’s a very long process and it should be agile. It’s going to be quite dynamic, and it could change from week to week. That initial brainstorm is great at the beginning of a project. Then, once you go live, getting together to discuss new or overlooked competitors is probably a quarterly thing – and sometimes more often than that, depending on how well it’s going.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“Scale back on tasks that are less impactful in the long run. Stop obsessing over minor tasks such as updating your content every week.

Focus on mastering the fundamentals. Go back to the basics and look at your site architecture, your mobile usability, and accessibility.”

Laura Iancu is Founder at Searchpedia, and you can find her over at Searchpedia.co.uk.