If you’ve ever delivered a well built, SEO friendly website and then found yourself being blamed when it doesn’t rank or generate leads, this episode will feel very familiar.

Welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie.

Check out my new offer:

https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/sparks-group-mentoring/

It’s a supportive group mentoring session for website designers and developers to bring real questions, tricky client situations, fuzzy boundaries, and those moments where you’re thinking, “This isn’t actually my job, is it?”

In this episode, I’m joined by SEO specialist Nikki Pilkington to talk about the difference between SEO friendly and SEO optimised, and why that distinction matters so much for web designers.

We dig into how good websites end up being labelled “not working”, how easily expectations drift, and why web designers often carry responsibility for outcomes that sit firmly outside their role.

We get into:

• What SEO friendly actually means from a web design and build perspective

• Why SEO friendly is a baseline, not a ranking strategy

• How “just add the keywords” quietly sets you up for problems later

• Where your responsibility as a designer genuinely starts and ends

• Why selling SEO as a one off is a trap, even when clients ask for it

• How blurred roles damage trust between designers, SEOs, and clients

• The conversations that protect you before a project even begins

• How to stop your work being judged on results you were never hired to deliver

If you want clearer boundaries, more confident explanations, and fewer projects where everyone looks bad six months later, this episode will help you put language around things you probably already feel.

Come and find out more at https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk

or email me at [email protected]

Skip to the good bits:

00:00 Why designers get blamed for SEO results

01:21 SEO friendly vs SEO optimised (what you are actually delivering)

02:40 How client expectations quietly drift

03:49 What is and isn’t a web designer’s job

08:10 Why SEO can never be “done”

11:00 Where projects start going wrong

15:24 The danger of saying yes to everything

17:13 What good SEO collaboration looks like

20:40 Protecting trust in your work

Mentioned in this episode:

Remember to sign up for our blogging masterclass!

Go to https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/masterclass

Blogging masterclass

Join my Sparks Group Mentoring Programme

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.