If your website builds are SEO friendly, but they're still not ranking well
or making the sales your clients were hoping. For, Being SEO friendly and being
SEO optimized are two different things. This episode explains why,
and it probably isn't your fault. I think web designers and
developers need to remember that when someone is asked whether their
website is working for them, it's the web designer that gets blamed if
the answer is no.
Most clients don't actually ask for SEO friendly, but they
do ask, will people find me? And that question
carries a lot more weight than it sounds. Because what we
as web designers are usually offering, clean structure, good
hierarchy, fast loading pages, isn't the SEO
the clients are thinking of. Today I'm joined by Nicky
Pilkington, the hands down queen of SEO.
With more than 30 years experience in the industry, Nikki is not
just the go to SEO person, she also teaches
other SEO pros, web designers and copywriters in how
to get websites ranking consistently.
In this episode, Nikki puts words to a distinction that has caused
years of confusion, frustration, and misplaced blame.
I think the first thing to say is it's not a web designer's job
to know SEO in the same way as it's not an SEO's job to know
web design. But it's good for both of us to know a little bit about
each other's work and how things go. What most web
designers are doing is producing a website that hopefully is
SEO friendly. So as you say, the
images are optimized, the H1, H2, H3
hierarchy's in the right place. No one's using H
headers for style. They're using it in a hierarchical
basis like it should be. There was, there's a space for a meta title, there's
a space for a meta description. You can put alt tags in and things like
that. And all of those things make a site SEO friendly. And that's great because
there are some web designers that develop sites that don't have those things and
they're not SEO friendly. But what that doesn't mean is that
a site is SEO optimized. And that's where things fall down.
Because being SEO friendly and being SEO optimized are two different things.
This is where expectations quietly harden into disappointment.
The site launches, it looks great, everyone's happy,
and then nothing happens. No inquiries, no
traction. And when clients go looking for answers, the
website, not the assumptions behind it, becomes the thing they
blame. When they say to you, is my site SEO
friendly? And you say yes, they presume that means they're going to be number
one for recruitment company in Glasgow as soon as you press
go on that website. And we all know that's not going to happen. So what
most web designers then do is they say, give me 10 keywords,
and your client goes, okay, I am a recruitment company. I
advertise jobs. I'm looking for job seekers. And they give you 10
keywords and you put them in the meta titles and you put them in the
meta descriptions. If you've got a bit of common sense about you, they're
okay. They do all right. And then you hand this over to your client
and they have their SEO optimized website. But what
you forget is that SEO is a huge field.
It's huge. We don't start with the keywords the client gives
us and we put them in a website. There's a lot of research that goes
into it. We need to know the intent of the search. I need to know
who is looking for that type of website. Is that website giving
that searcher the information that they need? Can I
optimize that page for a certain search phrase or not? Are there
other search phrases around it? And none of those things are a
web designer's job. So you're, as a web designer, you're just giving
your client the ability to optimize a site. You
can't. And I, or I, I won't say can't. You shouldn't
be claiming to optimize a site unless you're
doing all the other things that come along with SEO as well, which
in the main, most web developers and designers aren't doing.
Some do a lot don't. And it's not a
denigration of web designers because it's not their job.
Yeah. And it's interesting what some people think a web
designer's job is. And, you know, other people will
think, oh, well, if it's web design, they should be able to do this
and that. And I think that it's about holding really good boundaries
as well. I've had a client recently who's submitted all the website
copy for their website and they said, oh, and we've submitted
the document of keywords that we had done for SEO
purposes seven years ago. You know, we thought you'd find that
useful. I'm like, where? How? I. I'm not writing the copy.
I'm. This is nothing really to do with me. My job as a web
designer is to take the copy and the images and
the brand kit that you've given me and create a website out of it.
Like we say that is SEO friendly. I think where the
market is so competitive, I often hear website
designers and developers saying, oh well, when I do a
client's website, I will hook it up to Google Search Console and
I'll do some keyword research and I'll do this, that and the other and it's
like. But then that's not website design.
Website design, website development is taking the brief and making the
website out of them. And I think that sometimes when people.
Come to us for websites and it. Can be hard because you hear about all
the DIY website builders and stuff like that,
when people come for websites, they don't realize the intricacies that
goes into the building of a website. They just think it's like a
one and done situation. I think they do. And I think the thing that
is the site swings and roundabouts really. You've got the DIY website
systems like WIX and Squarespace and things like that, and to a certain
extent WordPress. But the problem with those
is that they give people a lot of leeway and
a lot of leeway to get things wrong. So
those types of sites aren't going to tell you. If you put a H1
heading halfway down a page as the third H1 you'd use
because you like the size of the text, they're not going to tell you that's
wrong. As a web designer, you guys know that. You know those things are wrong.
You know about hierarchy, you know about structure, you know much
more about how to make a site look good than the person using WIX
or whatever. And in the same way as the person using WIX or Squarespace
has the ability to optimize a site,
those sites are SEO friendly. Your websites that you design are SEO
friendly. Again, I think it's an education process. I think that
a client that comes to you and says, will it be SEO optimized? And if
you say it will be SEO friendly, then that
to them, you have said to them, you are going to be number one for
your chosen key phrases. Yes. And the only thing that you can do with those
clients is I don't know your whole process. But lots of web designers will
say give me 10 keywords or give me the keywords for this page.
And they'll put them into the meta titles and they'll put, they'll write a little
meta description, they'll put the content that the client's given them into the page
and they've done everything they should do. As a web designer, that is your job.
You've done what you've been told to do. The client will then come back, I
think at times and say, but I'm not number one for recruitment in Glasgow,
or I'm not number one for, I don't know, widgets in
Brighton or whatever. And the reason that they're not is because they're not SEO
experts either. You've basically said, what keywords do you want putting in?
They've given you those. They're not experts. You're not an SEO expert.
No. SEO experts looked at this, there might have been a bit of keyword research
done somewhere down the line. And what they've got is a website that has all
the SEO fundamentals in it, but not
in the right way. And then someone like me comes along
and says to them, oh, I see, you haven't optimized your website.
And that's where it all falls down. Because they think they've optimized the website.
One of the hardest ideas for clients to accept is always also one of the
simplest. Visibility isn't something you install once
it's ongoing and it's maintenance. And selling
SEO or even websites as a one and done
solution sets everyone up for the same disappointment
just later. If I optimize a website today and it's
number one for all of its search phrases, let's say it's not going to be
number one for all of its search phrases. If I do nothing and leave it
for six months because someone else is going to come along and
optimize their site, or a new company will come along, or a competitor
will come along or something will happen, Google will do
an update and suddenly they won't be number one anymore. And
SEO is always going to be an ongoing thing. And I
think that the mistake that web designers and web developers
make is selling it as a one off thing. They sell it as a
your site is optimized. Here you go.
When budgets get tight, corners get cut, usually where the
impact is hardest to see up front. The copywriting,
the strategy, the intents and what feels like
saving money early on often just ends up as more
costs further down the line. I think SEO,
web design in general for SEO has been an educational
process for the whole 30 years I've been doing it. I don't know how
many times I have said it's an education process in
calls, articles, podcasts, whatever. Over 30
years. It's been a lot and I'm still saying it. And you think people would
be bloody well educated by now, let's be honest, but they're Not.
And this is the thing that, like you say, they've spent a big chunk of
money on a website and you know, they've probably had to think about it
and save up. And if they've paid for branding as well, that's a big chunk
of money. And everything is sold towards this
end goal. And the end goal is when your website launches, it's going to look
amazing and it's going to do really well for your business.
And then someone comes along and goes, oh, have you thought about SEO? And they
haven't thought about it because why would they, why would the managing director of
a coaching company think about SEO? That's, that's not his job. Why
would the owner of a boutique gallery think
about SEO? As far as they're concerned, that's their web designer's job. That's
like all locked in there with web design. A big part of the problem is
the web designers that don't understand that
SEO is a different thing. They are all, they willfully
misunderstand that it's a separate thing. And
so they will say to their clients, yes, we'll SEO the website.
Yes, the website will be optimized. Yes, the website will be fully
available to be ranked in Google. And all of those things
mean different things. Yes, the website is SEO friendly. That doesn't mean it's
optimized. And when your client says that
to you, when your client says, is this website going to be optimized? The knee
jerk reaction is to say yes, because it's going to pass the page
speed insight tests, is going to say it's 100% on
accessibility, 100% on SEO, hopefully 100% on
speed and all of that. And as far as you're concerned, it is SEO
friendly. But the education process comes in
telling your clients what SEO friendly means and what
search engine optimized means. And until
web designers can understand that and web developers can understand that
and put that out there, then clients are still gonna
keep misunderstanding it. And again, it's that education
process. It's getting it out on podcasts and things
like this and articles and blogs and in general conversation
of just because you have a website doesn't mean you
automatically are going to be found on Google or AI
search or whatever. Because in the same way as if someone
came to me and said, redesign my website, I couldn't do it. And
you, and I know I designed a page and you pulled its pieces,
rightfully so you pulled its pieces in so many ways that I hadn't even thought
of because that's not my job. That's not what I do.
And it hadn't even occurred to me that I need to leave space
and I need to. This needs to have this color and this needs that. That
doesn't occur to me because that's not my job. And it's the same thing. That
you could produce a website that is perfectly SEO friendly
and it has keywords in the meta title and it has a nice
clickable description and it has the hierarchy of the
H1s, and you may even have done a really,
really good job of an internal linking structure and topic
clusters and things like that. But at the end of the day, I'm going to
look at it and say, but that's not going to work. And this is why.
And what happens with web designers, I think,
is that if they tell their clients that a site's
optimized, they say, yeah, your site's optimized. Give me some
keywords. They put those keywords in, the client goes away. The client comes to me
and says, my site's been optimized. And I go, yeah, it hasn't.
And then we all look bad, all of us. The web designer looks bad
because they've told the client it's optimized and it's
not. And the client looks bad because they feel a bit stupid
because they believe that and they don't know who to trust either. And I look
bad because it looks like I'm going, yeah, web developers are. Which I'm
not saying, by the way, and everybody looks bad in that situation.
Whereas the more that you can educate clients in your
or potential clients in your sales process to say, look, these are
the things you need. And in the same way as you'd say, we'd advise you
to get your copy written professionally, we'd
advise you not to design your own logo in canva. We'd
advise you to whatever other
things you would advise people to do. You might advise people to talk to a
UX specialist or your personal ux,
like consultation or whatever. Should we just stop hearing that same
person? I won an award for my ux, so I wouldn't be
sensitive. As I said, I thought,
no, she is a UX person. It was the first out of the three awards
I won. The first one was for user experience, so I won't be sending them
elsewhere. But there's a moment in almost
every project where someone says, I can do that as well.
And sometimes that's true, but often it's how
clear professional boundaries start to blur and how quality
Drops. There's the branding and the logo and the graphics,
and then there's the web design and then there's the
ux, which we all know you're amazing at, and then there's the
SEO and the copywriting that, and they're
all different parts of something. And, you know, it's really nice to get someone who
can do all of those things, but don't you want an
expert in each of those things? I was going to say, I consider it to
be like a jack of all trades. When someone says, oh, I could do the
whole lot for you. I can do the brand and I can do this and
I can do that. Yeah. I mean, I don't
want the guy who mows my lawn to tell me he can fix my
radiator. This is the moment everything
comes into focus. Because a website that looks great
but doesn't work doesn't just disappoint clients, it damages
trust. And when someone asks, has your website
helped your business? The answer rarely lands where it
should. You don't want your clients. When someone says to them,
oh, how do you feel about your website? Oh, I love it. It's absolutely amazing.
It looks brilliant. It's never brought me any business. Yeah.
And that's what you don't want, because you're selling a website not
just to look good. And I know some people just want a shop front and
I get that. And they just want to be able to send people from their
LinkedIn profile or from DMs or from social media. They don't care about
Google. They should, but they don't, and that's fine. But
when someone says to you, how many have you had inquiries from your website?
And you say no, then that makes your web designer look bad.
Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah. And it's not the web design that's wrong, it's
the SEO or it's the fundamentals in the site from a. From an SEO point
of view that are. Meaning it's not being ranked, it's not being found, or the
wrong traffic's coming in and things like that. And these are all things that your
SEO person is going to look at. Is, is it the right traffic? Is the
person coming to the website seeing what they expect to see? Are you being ranked
for things that really, you're not serving the intent of that
search? You're not. Are you being ranked for things that is just bringing in people
who want freebies? I think that not having an SEO on board or
web designers fighting with SEOs, this happens a lot. Anything
that is where your web design is fighting with your SEO or your web designer
doesn't want to bring an SEO on board. I think web designers and developers need
to remember that when someone is asked whether their website
is working for them, it's the web designer that gets blamed if the
answer is no.
Not all SEO is smoke and mirrors, but good
SEO is rarely fast, tidy or packaged
as a one off. Knowing what questions to ask
and which answers should worry you makes all the difference.
The easiest thing is to add a process. Ask them
how they would do this, how would they work with you? And ask them how
they would work with you on a one off basis and on an ongoing
basis for a client. And any SEO
that bites your hand off at a one off process, I would say
you discard them straight away because they're just
looking for lots of little one off jobs and those aren't
necessarily going to help your clients if they don't discuss that with you,
if they don't discuss how that would work out. But anybody who,
their process is just old school, right? We find some keywords, we
find out how many people search for them, we will put them in various
places, we'll submit you to some backlink directories,
that kind of thing. Old school SEO from 10,
15 years ago. And there's a lot of it around. Those people
haven't progressed since 2015 or something.
What you're looking for is people that talk about their whole process being about search
intent, about being about the kinds of
visitors that a client wants, about the kinds of visits, visitors a
client doesn't want. So you know anybody. One of the first
things I say is, right, these are the people that you don't want to come
to your website. You don't want people who just want free information and are never
gonna do anything with it. You don't want other people who are basically your
competitors looking at how you write things and things like that. Get people to
talk about their processes, ask them for their own results. A lot of people won't
be able to give loads of results because they'll have
NDAs with clients and things like that. So they can't give away search phrases.
And you know, much business has gone through a website and things like that, but
have a look for them. The SEO people that you want to use, what are
they ranking for? When you do your search for SEO stuff, do you come across
their stuff? Yeah. Do you sometimes think there's an article by Nikki?
Yeah. Also just as a caveat
on that and not to cover my own ass at all, because I rank for
what I want to rank for. So I'm very happy. SEO is a massively competitive
industry. I wouldn't necessarily expect the SEO person
that you use to be number one in all the search engines for SEO.
They all have their own very specific search phrases that they want to rank
for. And I would ask them that and let them prove to you that they've
done the work on their own website. Don't let them use the
excuse that SEO is a really competitive industry to the fact that they have no
rankings at all. Ask them what do you rank
for, what do you rank for that you wanted to rank for and does it
bring you any business as an example, I rank for SEO and
my local village. I'm number one for that. Every single time I'm in a bit
of a grudge match with another SEO company, I always
win, let's be honest. And it's never brought me any business whatsoever,
ever. I don't think people in the village near me are actually connected to the
Internet, to be honest. I'm not sure they can really go. But I do
it because it amuses me and I fight with this other
company. But there are other search phrases that I have optimized. My website
that do bring me business and my blog posts that bring me business and
my service pages that bring me business. Ask them what they are ask and
any good SEO will be happy to sell you. The thread
running through all of this isn't SEO. It's honesty
about roles, about limits, and about what actually makes
a website work. And the earlier that conversation
happens, the fewer people end up disappointed later.
I hope this episode has made you feel more confident in which parts of the
SEO puzzle belongs to you and what parts should be handed over to
a specialist. Handling clients expectations with confidence
is always a win and I would love to hear your experience
of dealing with clients website expectations. You can send
me a message through my website websitesmadesimple.co.uk
you can use the contact page there or if you go to the podcast page,
you can drop me a voice note on the form there. And I would love
to hear from you. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Holly
cchristy do get a new touch. I always love to hear from you.
And until next time, happy designing.