The UX and SEO concepts aren’t easily interchanged, as explained more in “SEO is often confused with UX.”
But UX really can make a difference in SEO processes and delivery, for both users and search engines.
To explain, let’s go over both sets of needs, starting with users.
If you work for a company, your customers are the people you cater to. They are the ones who will be using the product or service.
So, it’s significant that your product is easy to use and fulfills their needs. If customers are happy, they’ll likely share positive feedback with their peers.
This, in turn, increases the likelihood that other people will buy your products or services.
This is what you want for SEO.
Of course, these days, the chatter tends to focus on the newest search engine algorithm or buzzword.
Let’s cut through the tech talk and take a look at what UX (user experience) and SEO ( search engine optimization) are really about.
What is UX & How To Relate it to SEO?
For some, UX and SEO may seem completely opposite and unrelated to one another, but they’re not.
UX and SEO are, in fact, closely related.
UX is the practice of enhancing someone’s online experience.
It’s a combination of user research, web technologies, and content strategy.
It’s also about finding solutions to usability problems.
Research shows that when a site has a good UX, it can lead to higher conversion rates.
It’s also important to remember that good user experiences lead to satisfied users – and that’s a good SEO strategy, too.
Making Design Decisions with UX Principles in Mind
By incorporating UX principles into your website, you can improve the user experience (UX) and optimize search engines and user engagement.
By considering the human side of design, you can create a website that meets people’s desires and needs.
The website should be easy to navigate so that users don’t have to go back in and forward from page to page.
The layout of the website should be easy on the eyes.
The pages should load quickly so that users will not bounce off because of the long loading time which is very uncommon nowadays.
Most importantly, the content on the website should be easy to read and to the point.
If a user has no idea what’s being said on the page, they’re likely to leave quickly.
But how related is SEO to UX design?
SEO and UX design are intrinsically related.
Search engines want to deliver relevant results to their users.
So if a user searches “smashing Pumpkins,” Google should be able to bring the user results related to “smashing Pumpkins,” including webpages, images, and videos.
When a user comes to a website, it’s their job to spend as much time as possible on that website.
If the user can’t find what they came for, they’ll leave.
But by following our UX principle, we can make a website more user-friendly so that users spend less time searching and more time engaging with your content.
Advantages of a Good User Experience
Few websites understand that their visitors’ experience is an important aspect of their website’s success.
That is why Google is enforcing the Core Web Vitals as one of the signals to rank pages or websites that deliver those to their searchers.
And below we have listed some of the advantages of good UX for a website:
- Faster Loading Pages – A good user experience will help a page take less time to load. So if a user comes to your website and waits around 3 seconds for it to load, they’ll most likely abandon it.
- Consistent Navigation – A good user experience consists of consistency. It would be a benefit if a visitor can navigate your site with ease.
- Clear Calls to Action – User land on your page, engage with your content and it would be sensible for them to take the next step. If you cannot provide that, then you are on the losing side.
All in all, user experience is important because it influences the way people perceive your website.
And this will indirectly influence how Google or search engine perceives your website as well.
And Google rewards websites that they perceive value with higher ranking for the keyword terms that they think are most relevant to the searcher.
The Importance of Effective User Testing
How do we know that our website is serving the user well?
Too often companies have their sites designed first and then test them with users.
Usability testing lets us understand a site’s strengths and, more importantly, weaknesses.
We can gather feedback from real people to better understand the site’s functionality and even stumbling blocks.
One of our favorite tools is Google Analytics and Google Optimize.
This tool allows us to watch real users interact with our pages and collect data about how users interact with each page.
Data such as how much time the user is spending on certain page elements, where they’re coming from, and where they’re going.
Being able to replicate the user experiences of real users allows us to create the perfect website for them.
We can also learn from the user behavior flow within the website itself.
For example, we may find out that users aren’t receiving the information that they’re looking for, so we can improve it to make it more clear.
And here are 5 quick actionable insights from Google Analytics that we can make use of.
Conclusion
There are a lot of different disciplines that go into ensuring that a website is functional, and UX is one of them.
Things are getting complex as we advance such as entity SEO, persona SEO, and here we are talking about UX SEO.
Understanding the UX and usability of your website is very important if you want to avoid making costly mistakes.
UX SEO is an important factor in user-centered design while optimizing for the search engine.
User experience and search engine optimization (SEO), or UX SEO are in a hot debate.
Even though Google is constantly changing its algorithm to better reflect user experience, SEO is still part of the overall user experience.
Your website is most likely built with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind, and UX (user experience) also plays a major role in it.
UX SEO happens when both UX and SEO are taken into consideration.
For us at JustRank, they are both equally important.
Need a second opinion on your technical SEO?
Resources:
- https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-design
- https://searchengineland.com/seo-ux-success-286638
