Start and end with customer experience

Martina says: “Customer experience will be the alpha and omega of SEO in 2025.”

What does that mean in practice?

“There are two perspectives that you can look at customer experience from, and one is a technical SEO perspective. Organisations will have to deep dive into data and start thinking about all users. Currently, the major focus is solely on users with high-end devices, but users with low or mid-end devices are struggling with user experience on most websites.

When it comes to people with accessibility needs, the vast majority of websites don’t have inclusive user interfaces. With the Accessibility Act that will come into force in 2025 in the European Union, companies have to start acting and not just talking about it being important to them.

Then, there’s the content optimization perspective. Content efforts will need to include other organisation units outside of marketing. Where possible, SEO has to communicate and cooperate with the sales teams because it’s the sales team that helps to attract organic traffic. They understand customer pain points and they can provide insights into what customers are asking for.

This information can guide relevant content creation that addresses all of the concerns that potential prospects or potential customers might have.”

Do all industries need to be concerned about all device types, even though a lot of SaaS or B2B businesses will have the vast majority of their audience on desktops?

“It doesn’t matter whether the majority of your traffic comes from desktop because of the mobile-first approach that Google has had for years. Google assesses your website like a visitor from a mobile device would.

Even if the vast majority of your audience is on desktop, Google often views things from a mobile-first perspective. Therefore, you have to ensure that you’re optimized for mobile first. If you don’t do that, you’re less likely to be found – even for a desktop user.

How it works, in reality, is that websites are typically well-optimized for desktop. That’s not the issue. However, when it comes to mobile, there’s a significant difference between how users can interact with the site on the latest iPhone compared to an iPhone that is 5 years old.

There are still users that have older devices, and these users can still spend money and do business with you.”

What data can you look at to find out what your users are doing so that you can create a wonderful experience and optimize for them?

“When it comes to data, SEO has to ally with UX and customer experience teams – or the teams that are responsible for conducting A/B and multivariate tests – because those are the departments that have most of the data.

The UX department can even speak with people. They conduct tests where they invite several people and give them a task to find certain types of content on the website and, if they get lost after 1 or 2 steps, then something is wrong. Within these tests, they might see that the website is not functioning properly on older devices, and they will know that this is actually happening for your users.

When dev teams are testing, they usually test on high-end devices, but that doesn’t reflect real users. If you do not take real users into consideration during development, then you’re missing out on potential.

The metrics that you have to look at are heat maps and where people are bouncing – especially if that is happening on pages that are intended to convert, no matter what that conversion is.

You can also look at the maps for clicks, mouseovers, etc. That is where you will see these problems. When you have identified an issue with a particular element, you can focus on it, and you can fix it. You can improve it and make it better for everyone.”

If the dev team is only testing for certain devices because that’s where the majority of your users are, how do you explain the value of this to them?

“Of course, you can’t optimize for everything. That’s not the goal because that would be too expensive and it’s probably impossible.

Core Web Vitals metrics are key to look at because they are related to interactivity, etc. on mobile devices. You can always find areas for improvement that the dev team can factor in. The goal is not to be in the top 1%, because sometimes it’s too expensive, but you need to find ways to improve so that it has an impact and can generate more business.

That is what I usually tell them. It’s not that you need to have everything up to 100%. You have to find a way to make it work, and it’s specific to every organisation because it depends on the resources and the budget.”

What are the most common issues that can have the biggest initial impact?

“It really depends, and it’s very different on every website.

I do a lot of B2B and, when it comes to B2B businesses, they have a lot of different issues. They often don’t even have anyone who is responsible for technical SEO and would fix technical SEO issues, so I am usually the primary contact.

Since they don’t have dedicated development teams and they usually need to outsource, which can cost a lot more money, I have to think about what these fixes are going to mean in terms of business and how much it will cost.

When it comes to e-commerce, they usually have their dedicated development teams, so they work on SEO continually – even on technical SEO. Therefore, there aren’t as many issues.

It’s difficult to say what the typical fixes would be because it’s very different on every website and in every industry.”

Is this something that should be done on an ad hoc basis or should you be checking every month?

“When it comes to Core Web Vitals, interactivity metrics, and accessibility, that is something that should be set up and then tracked.

You can say that you’ve done everything for Core Web Vitals because you’re in the green or you’re at 100%, but the job is never done because a website is not something that stays static.

Since websites are evolving and products are evolving, marketing needs to add new content elements, product needs to add something, advertising as well, etc. The website keeps changing and adding anything new can have an impact on those metrics.

Set it up and get it to where you want it to be, but you still need to measure it in case you change something and any of those metrics change. Then, you can spot which page it was, what exactly it was that you did wrong, and how you can improve it. Also, you can keep track of what you need to do in the future to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Do you need to assist other channels with understanding what you’re trying to achieve?

“Yes, that is important. For me, SEO is not about playing in your own sandbox; it’s about mutual cooperation.

I usually cooperate with sales teams, social media teams, advertising teams, and customer service teams. All of these people have something to say, and they all have different experiences with the client.

In SEO, you only have the experience that is provided by some tools, but you don’t really face the clients or the users, you don’t know their interactions or their questions, and you don’t know what they’re talking about, positively or negatively.

These other departments can help you tweak the content and meet user search intents in all possible ways.”

How do you know that your efforts have had a positive impact?

“You have to measure it. There are different metrics you can use, depending on which team this is coming from.

If you’re cooperating with the social media team, you can look for an increase in branded traffic. You might see a boost in interactions on social media, which usually leads to organic traffic. Also, if there’s more organic traffic and you tweak the content around that, you will often see a spike in rankings for certain search terms because you’re identifying trends, and you can spot insights and sentiments thanks to that. You can get a lot more organic clicks, even directly from social media.

When it comes to customer service and sales teams, you may see some spikes associated with your local SEO initiatives. You could see that more people are searching for you. That applies particularly for businesses that have offices or locations where users can go in person, and not so much for businesses that are only online.”

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?

“That’s a difficult question because it depends on what you are working on. Something that is a burden for one SEO may be a benefit for another.

If you feel overwhelmed or insecure about what is right and what is wrong, and you don’t know what to stop doing and cannot make a decision, then try to find a mentor. Four eyes see more than two eyes, and it can be much easier to get advice from someone who is not directly impacted by the project that you’re working on.

Especially when you’re not that senior, it can be very difficult to reset your priorities and know what makes more sense from a long-term perspective and what’s generating better business. If you cannot decide what to stop doing, ask someone else for help.”

Martina Zrzavá Libřická is an International SEO Consultant and Strategist, and you can find her over at MartiSEO.cz.