Approach your SEO from a customer-first point of view

Navin says: “You need to have a customer-first point of view.

SEO in 2025 is a well-matured function; it’s well done, and it’s cooked to sophistication. SEO success relies heavily on getting the entire team – product, engineering, and marketing – to see its value and contribute to it. Without it, even the best strategy falls flat.

The real challenge for SEOs isn’t algorithm updates or keyword research, it’s getting different teams to cooperate. However, these team-dependent tasks often get pushed down the priority list because those teams are focused on their own priorities, which will further strengthen those silos instead of breaking them down.

Then there are AI overviews. As if ads and Google encroaching on website functionality weren’t enough, now we have to contend with AI too. That is why it is important for SEOs to have a customer-focused point of view.

Even though the SEO function has become all the more complicated, certain SEOs are able to work through these divides, break down these silos, and deliver revolutionary success. If SEO is the wheels of marketing, these SEOs are the race car drivers.”

Should SEOs be leading other teams?

“I would say they are able to fashion communication structures that make their job easier, and make the interface with the rest of other teams easier.

SEOs can communicate the priorities and communicate how that helps the other teams function.

The role of SEO is definitely evolving. It’s not just about what you know, it’s about how you communicate that to others. Communication is a very good soft skill in every role. It’s high time SEOs stop working out of their silos and embrace these skills so that they can differentiate their careers as well.”

What are the core skills that SEOs need to embrace to improve their ability to operate in more collaborative environments?

“I’m talking about one skill, and that is having a customer-first perspective – or a customer-focused perspective.

I know nothing about the business of healthcare. However, if I were to get a job as a healthcare marketer, my job would be to understand what the healthcare market is all about.

If it’s a healthcare device company, who are the players in the market? How does the business operate? When are these devices bought? How are they maintained? Are there any contracts for the maintenance of these devices? I have to consider all of these things as a marketer – even though, as an SEO, these things are not technically my first priority.

Your first priority is delivering the actual SEO task, but you can deliver those tasks better if you understand the customer better. Therefore, you have to evolve into a marketer rather than just being an SEO. The way you can do that is by having a customer-focused perspective, and there are lots of advantages to doing that – including lots of internal advantages as well as lots of career advantages.

The first advantage is that it allows you to reduce tool dependence. When I first started in 2016-2017, I was an SEO content writer. To improve my performance, I learned a lot of on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and keyword research. At that time, I learned a keyword-specific and tool-dependent SEO approach.

If you look up any keyword research guides, most of them will be populated by tools. We have to find a way to reduce this dependence because, for Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, or any other search engines, we have to focus more on customers.

These tools are not directly connected to Google’s actual search data. Google knows their data most accurately, so I trust their own SERPs for doing my keyword research. I do use other tools like Semrush or Ahrefs as keyword research tools – there’s still a very good use case for those – but I would not spend a lot of time optimizing my entire strategy according to the numbers that a tool suggests, because the numbers are not accurate.

At my last agency, we suggested a keyword to a client that didn’t have a lot of volume, and it’s very difficult to communicate success when you don’t have these numbers backing you. However, we were able to communicate and convince them that this is what their audience cares about.

I showed them proof from within the Google SERP. That exact topic had a lot of subtopic searches in People Also Asked, related searches, related suggestions at the end of the SERP, and autocomplete as well. I was able to gather all that evidence and show them that there was enough demand and if they wrote about it, it would work. Sure enough, it shot up to number 1 within a month.

In another case, I saw that the tool data showed about 50 monthly searches but, when I looked at the search console data a few months after the page was published, there were 7,000-8,000 search impressions. How can you account for that mismatch? The only explanation is that these tools don’t have 100% accurate data. They can be used as a reference, but being entirely dependent on tools is a mistake.”

If you use Google SERPs to do your keyword research, how do you know that you’re not missing out on key opportunities?

“It is a lot more dependent on using Google the right way.

If you type a keyword and then press space, Google gives you autocomplete suggestions. They are a good idea of what the user is searching for. That is one way to see what demand exists. If you search for adjacent or semantic keywords, you can go down the page and see a pattern that emerges within the search results. That could be another takeaway.

If you look at searches related to debt financing, a lot of the results are focused on ‘buy now, pay later’ – specifically for SaaS. I worked with one such client, so that was a pattern that I saw emerging. If you see searches that are focused on BNPL in the related suggestions section at the bottom of the SERP, that is a pattern that you can use as you expand your search further.

That is why I would depend more on Google and less on tools. I’m not saying not to use the tools at all, but they should be your secondary priority because tool searches are often extremely focused on the bottom of the funnel.

It’s very hard to find high-quality audience-first terms that have good volume from these tools, that are actually relevant to your product or service. They might give 50 terms but only 1 or 2 of those keywords may be relevant. A lot of those will also be very common, and they can be aggregated into a single topic as well.”

If you’re focusing less on keyword volume and more on customer experience, how do you justify your activities to your clients?

“I’ve found that a lot of high-level businesses don’t really care about impressions, clicks, and rankings, because they have a lot of other things to worry about. They mainly care about revenue, leads, and conversions. In particular, they care about the regularity of those conversions and the regularity of sales.

Middle management does care about the low-level metrics that matter to them, so the low-level metrics also have to evolve. Instead of impressions and clicks, you can look at how many keywords a piece ranking is for. That gives you the expanse of the footprint.

If you’re talking about a topic and that piece is ranking in the top 10 for 50 keywords compared to another topic that is ranking for 10 keywords, you can say that you were able to capture a much bigger search share for the brand.

Another metric to look at could be how many high-level competitors you managed to beat. Did you beat the best piece that you’ve ever found about that particular topic? These are just two options that come to mind, but there are many other ways to report success.”

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?

“Tool dependence has to be reduced. If you’re going into a new niche, focus on selecting and building up that specific niche.

Of course, all customers are different, and you can’t be an expert in every industry as well as your own SEO field. That would burn you out very quickly. Instead, you need to niche down, just like writers do. I’m not giving you advice on how to select a niche, that’s totally dependent on whether money matters to you, whether a passion matters to you, or anything else that you consider important.

Niching down means reducing the noise of other industries. As soon as you start an SEO job, in the very first month – when you’re building out your task list, planning, and learning the project management software – also include studying that particular industry. Read the (probably very boring) books about the industry that get you very close to your customers.

Understanding how the product works is important. Understanding how the industry works is important. Your initial 2-4 weeks have to be focused on that. Other than the SEO, give yourself an hour or two every week to study the business part. Start doing that.

Stop obsessing so much about the tools that you are relying on. Of course, they have their place – I’m not saying they don’t – but make sure you are equally focused on the customer. SEO in 2025 is largely dependent on who can master their niche best.”

Navin Israni is an Independent B2B Copywriter, Editor, and SEO Specialist, and you can find him over at VocabArtist.com.