If you represent a small business, chances are that you have outsourced both web development and search engine optimization (SEO) to other firms. While there are firms that provide development and SEO both, others specialize in either of the two.
In any case, it is important that the UX designer (from the web design and development team) works closely with the SEO campaign manager.
Who Is Your Website’s UX Designer?
Not all companies have dedicated UX designers. If that is the case, you need to identify the professional (in the web design & development team) who is most responsible for overall architecture and user experience of your small business website.
This person creates wireframes (upon which the final designs are created), prepares the sitemap, decides on the navigation, performs testing and lays down the overall strategy for a fine user experience.
Put Your UX Designer in Touch with the SEO Campaign Manager
Ask your SEO campaign manager to prepare a keyword map. This keyword map should indicate the comparative importance of different pages on your website.
Technically, the UX designer should know which pages or sections in particular are important (and how much) in terms of SEO.
Such pages can be made readily available via the navigation panels or displayed intelligently in different portions of the page.
SEO campaign manager should also make it a point to study the wireframes during the production stage. There are some design elements such as drop-down menus involving heavy use of java-script and others that aren’t considered healthy for search engine optimization. The campaign manager can ask the UX designer to come up with more SEO-friendly design elements before wireframes are moved to design production stage.
Doing so will not only save on the development costs in the long run but also help ensure that the SEO campaign moves forward at the required pace. Moving back and forth in design or development area while an SEO campaign is ON, is not a good idea at all.
User Experience (UX) can be a great friend to SEO. You just have to make sure that the two get along easily.