Most web designers have received emails at one point or another with optimization suggestions from SEO consultants hired by our clients. Usually, there are metadata updates (great!), keyword recommendations (helpful!), and then, several paragraphs of dense, keyword-loaded text that need to be added to your homepage. No formatting. No guidance on placement. No consideration for how it might affect your carefully crafted user experience.
Just: “Add this to the site.”
The result? Business owners end up paying twice—once for the SEO recommendations, and again for the design hours needed to figure out how to implement them without breaking the site. It’s frustrating for everyone involved, and it creates a false choice: rank well in search engines or maintain a website that users actually want to browse.
The truth is, you shouldn’t have to choose between rankability and usability. Good SEO enhances your site. It doesn’t force you to break it.
The Problem with SEO-Only Thinking
Here’s what happens when SEO firms operate in a vacuum: They optimize for algorithms without considering the humans (and designers) on the other side. You end up with technically sound recommendations that are practically impossible to implement without disrupting the user experience, visual hierarchy, or both.
Your conversion rates could suffer if your site feels cluttered, confusing, and keyword-packed. And if your web team has to essentially redesign sections of your site to make the content work, you’ll be saddled with double invoices and a worse website.
Luckily, there are ways to ensure your SEO company and your web designer are blending their work to improve the functionality and ranking of your website.
What Good SEO Content Delivery Actually Looks Like
The best SEO companies we’ve worked with understand that their recommendations don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re thinking about search rankings and user experience from the start. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Content Hierarchy Guidance
Instead of dumping paragraphs, they provide structure:
- Clear H1, H2, and H3 recommendations that make it easy for search engines and humans to find the information they need
- Distinction between priority content (what needs to be prominent) and supplementary content (what can live further down the page or in expandable sections)
- Suggested placement within your existing page structure, not just “add this somewhere”
Visual Integration Specifications
They think like designers, even if they’re not designers:
- Ideal content breaks for images, calls-to-action, or white space to keep the content scannable
- Length considerations for above-the-fold content (because cramming 500 words into your hero section isn’t the answer)
- Different needs for mobile versus desktop presentation
Design-Friendly Formatting
The copy arrives ready to implement:
- Pre-structured with subheadings that break up long sections
- Bullet points or scannable elements where appropriate (like this!)
- Clear distinction between hero content, body content, and supporting information
Plus, your SEO team’s content recommendations should always be relevant to your business. Keep in mind that SEO teams spend their days studying what keywords are most used, but you know your products and services better than anyone. If you run a sports store that only sells basketballs, it won’t help you to rank highly in searches for footballs—even if footballs are more popular.
Questions to Ask Your SEO Provider
Before your SEO company sends over their next round of recommendations, arm yourself with these questions. Your web designer will thank you—and more importantly, your conversion rates will improve.
About Visual Priority:
- “How should this content be prioritized visually on the page?”
- “What’s more important for SEO: top-tier placement, or simply the presence of this content?”
- “Can this content live in tabs or accordions, or does it need to be immediately visible?”
About Implementation:
- “What’s the minimum viable implementation if we need to preserve the current design?”
- “Are there design patterns that would harm these SEO improvements?”
- “How will adding this content affect our page load time and Core Web Vitals scores?”
About User Experience:
- “If users typically bounce after reading the main content, where should this SEO copy live to avoid disrupting their journey?”
- “Do any of these keywords need visual emphasis?”
- “What’s the ideal reading level and paragraph length for both SEO and user engagement?”
Red Flags & Green Flags
Red flags that suggest you’re about to have problems:
- Unmarked text dumps with no formatting or structure
- No consideration for your existing page layouts or design system
- Phrases like “just add it wherever” or “put this somewhere on the homepage”
- No discussion of how the content should be prioritized visually
Green flags that suggest your SEO company gets it:
- Content arrives with clear H1/H2/H3 structure already in place
- They study your current designs before making recommendations
- They provide options: “This could work in the hero, as a callout box, or in an expandable section”
- They talk about user experience, not just search engine algorithms
- They’re willing to collaborate with your design team before finalizing recommendations
How We Handle SEO at Pixelstrike
Effective SEO is built into our design approach from the beginning, rather than an afterthought or a competing priority. Our process includes working with your SEO team (whether that’s us, an outside firm, or your in-house specialist) to ensure content recommendations work seamlessly with the design to enhance the performance of your site.
We ask the tough questions early: Where will this live? How will it affect user flow? What’s the visual hierarchy? Can we achieve the same SEO benefit with a more elegant solution?
At every point, we think about your website as a complete ecosystem, not just a collection of optimizable elements. That way, your site ranks highly and engages users.
The Bottom Line
You hired an SEO company to improve your search rankings, and you hired a design agency to create a website that converts visitors into customers. These goals shouldn’t be at odds with each other.
If you’re regularly finding yourself caught in the middle—paying both teams to figure out how to make things work after the fact—it’s time to set new expectations. Your SEO provider should be delivering recommendations that your design team can implement efficiently, without having to restructure entire pages or sacrifice user experience.
Good SEO doesn’t force you to choose between ranking and usability. It enhances both.
