There was a time when Google’s ranking system was all about keyword stuffing. But today it’s not the case. Google’s algorithm has drastically changed over time, from matching questions to keywords, Google has updated its user experience by directing users from questions to answers directly.
That’s how specific Google’s user experience for SEO is. This is Google’s passage algorithm that directly takes the user to answers in a long page of content. The world’s most used search engine is striving and looking for opportunities to enhance user experience. So should your website.
The above passage would have given you a heads up about the importance of User experience for SEOs. The following article will speak about UX affecting SEO strategy, the benefits of UX, and how SEO and UX help in search rankings.
What is UX?
User experience, UX is the overall experience of a user after landing on your website or application. You can conclude that your website has good UX if the bounce rate is low and customers return for further services.
Let’s say you are researching a topic and selecting a website link on the SERP page, after you enter the website, if the navigation of the website is self-explanatory and easy to find for users, then it’s a good UX.
If it’s the other way around, you find it difficult to navigate through the website or the page’s load speed is high, this is a clear example of poor user experience. For UX improvements you can always approach UX designers to optimize your website that satisfies the searcher’s intent and help Google understand your effort in making it easy for the user experience.
Here’s an example to understand what a web design should look like:
As you can see in the picture, our web page of ours is self-explanatory for users to understand. To enhance the user engagement metrics we have categorized the verticals into “About, Pricing, Case studies, Blog, and Book a call.” This helps users interact easily.
The details of adding the relationships built, keywords on page 1, and satisfied customers instantly urge our website visitors to know more about our services. This is a perfect example of good web design.
To sum up, a good web design, you need to ensure the website is mobile-friendly as well. All these constitute an important part of the user experience for SEO.
Showcasing a mobile-friendly website
Users can select the hamburger option on the top right corner to easily navigate through the website. The web page is not too loaded with information that confuses users.
Mobile friendly website
When your website ensures mobile-friendliness, the probability of getting visitors to your page is high. Why because half the traffic for websites is achieved from mobile sites compared to any other devices.
Why Does UX Matter in SEO?
From websites being search engines centric to user-centric there are a lot of updates happening. As we discussed at the very beginning of the article, there was a time it was all about adding relevant content with keywords stuffed to your website for search rankings.
However, the ranking factors of search engines have drastically changed, demanding every website to enhance its user engagement metrics.
The intent of UX and SEO is to provide a better user experience for its users. In SEO, and search engine optimization you follow SEO best practices to ensure your website is built in a way that satisfies the search engines ranking algorithm.
UX and SEO need to go hand in hand to enhance the user experience that makes users spend more time on your website. By optimizing your site user experience for SEO, you ensure that your users get first-class user experience in the best way favored by Google and other search engines. The following are the activities you can identify when your website has an effective UX and SEO strategy:
- Less page load speed.
- Mobile-friendliness of your website.
- Good site structure.
- Users spend more time on your website than bouncing back.
- Your site’s navigation makes human visitors find their particular search query.
How Does User Experience Affect SEO?
User experience starts when a user lands on your website. Everything your website is about is going to keep them on your website or drive them away by increasing the bounce rate. However, if the user experience is bad for your website then you might hit pogo-sticking.
Bounce rate is when a user lands on your website and does not find the answer they are looking for and switches to a different website without navigating. However, in this process, there is a small dwell time involved.
But in pogo-sticking the dwell time is negligible and the user keeps jumping from one website to another until they land on a website that provides them with the accurate answer they are looking for.
Pogo sticking clearly reminds search engines like Google that the website does not provide valuable information the users seek. Pogo sticking goes hand in hand with a high bounce rate. Poor user experience will affect your ranking on search engine results pages because search engines find your website is not worth ranking.
Tips to Improve User Experience for SEO
Improving user experience for SEO requires a little effort to ensure that leaves a good impact on the users:
- Try writing your content in smaller paragraphs than longer ones. This is to ensure readability.
- Use headings that best match your content.
- Try adding bulletins or numbered lists.
- Invest enough time creating infographics for your content.
- Do not overload your images with minute details (like leaves, bands, extra lines).
- Optimize your images to reduce page speed. You can always use Google’s page load speed tester to check your page load speed.
- Use graphs to show statistical data.
- Write high-quality content that answers your user’s questions and try not to limit your content to a certain word count.
- Test your website performance on different devices. Most the users prefer mobile devices, ensuring to check mobile responsiveness with Google’s mobile-friendly test.
- Prefer fonts that are simple and easily readable to enhance the site’s SEO performance.
- Minimize or remove the CSS and Javascript, if there is no use for them on your website. CSS and Javascript are responsible for the sliders and contact forms on your website.
Conclusion
Your website is an important factor for your brand building and awareness. Instead of building a website just for the sake of owning a website, giving a little more importance to your Ux and SEO will leave a good experience for human visitors. Also, search engine crawlers will find it ultimately helpful in ranking your website on search engines.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I build a mobile-friendly website?
To build a website that ensures mobile-friendliness you can try the few tips mentioned below:
- Enhance readability by using the right font family and text size.
- Your page load speed should be checked based on different sizes of the screen like on desktop, mobile, and tablets.
- Do not make your mobile site look congested. Instead, use menus or hamburgers to hold the options where users find the site’s navigation easy.
What is the Site structure?
Site structure is about the flow of web pages on your website. When your site’s structure is good, Google will easily crawl and index your website. In simple terms, the links on your website should navigate Google from high to low authority pages.
Should I optimize my website’s UX design based on my target audience?
Yes, of course. The ultimate goal of having your website is for your target audience. You need to ensure that your UX design is completely built based on your target audience’s mindset. For example, you cannot build an extremely professional and tech jargon website when your target audience is teens.
