Understanding the Link between UX Design and SEO
TechsPlace | User experience (UX) has always been an important factor in the online world and not just for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Nowadays, SEO has become very important and it’s one of the most effective marketing strategies. Therefore, if you want to rank well on search engines, such as Google, you’ll have to have users’ best interests in mind. What exactly is the Link between UX Design and SEO? Simply put, search engines like Google want to provide consumers with the best possible search results.
That includes results that are the most relevant and as user-friendly as possible. Websites that provide the best UX will rank better than websites that are falling behind when it comes to UX; it’s as simple as that. UX is an important ranking factor and every feature that contributes to the overall UX is also a ranking factor on its own. With that in mind, here are a few things you should know that will help you better understand the relationship between UX design and SEO.
Website speed matters
Arguably the most important factor that influences UX is website speed. Consumers tend to get really aggravated when pages take too long to load. Once their patience has run out, they’ll leave a website for good and they also won’t hesitate to vocally express their bad experience on that particular website.
If you’re wondering how long does it take for consumers to lose patience, it’s just a second longer than what they’d expected. Therefore, website speed is a vital UX factor and it should be a priority when developing your UX design. Moreover, website speed is also a ranking factor for SEO. Here are a few things you should do to improve website speed:
- Choose a good hosting provider
- Optimize images and videos on your website
- Enable file compression
- Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML elements
- Leverage a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Reduce redirects
Content and its structure
Content is on the top of the list of ranking factors and it’s vital for UX as well. Content should be designed to educate, inform and entertain your customers while providing them with relevant information regarding various topics.
Furthermore, your content should have top-quality and also be highly relevant to your audience. However, for your content to become visible and accessible to your audience, it must be well-optimized for SEO.
This is especially true for the content on your web pages. You can always opt for a reliable white label SEO service to manage your content optimization and other efforts while you focus on customer relations. Here are a few on-page optimization activities for optimizing the content on your website in a way that will boost UX:
- Optimize title tags and image tags
- Optimize meta descriptions
- Create SEO-friendly URLs
- Ensure that your web pages can be crawled and indexed properly
- Get rid of errors and redirects
When content is well-optimized for SEO, search engines can better match it with user intent and make your content more visible online. Moreover, users will easily find and enjoy your content, which boosts the overall UX.
Mobile-friendliness
It’s been a while since mobile traffic became dominant in the online world. Ever since then, Google changed its algorithm to mobile-first indexing. In other words, Google now values the experience of mobile users and gives an advantage to websites that are mobile-friendly.
The best way to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly is to implement a responsive design. However, that’s not the only thing that will impact the UX of mobile users. To ensure a good mobile UX, you must focus on a few more factors:
- Improve page loading speed for mobile devices – Mobile users expect pages to load in three seconds or less, whereas the average page loading time for mobile landing pages is 15 seconds.
- Optimize for voice search – Aside from screenless assistants that consumers are using, mobile users also use voice search mainly because it’s more convenient than typing. For good mobile UX, search engines prefer websites that optimized content for voice search.
- Local SEO – The majority of mobile searches include a keyword “near me”. By leveraging local SEO and by ranking for relevant keywords, you can make your content and your business, in general, more visible to mobile users. Local SEO also contributes to UX as it can provide relevant information about your business to consumers.
- Configure pop-ups for mobile devices – The purpose of responsive design is to make your website adapt to any device and any screen size. However, pop-up windows, ads, and offers need to be configured separately. Otherwise, a pop-up blocking the entire screen of a mobile device will agitate users and encourage them to leave.
- Leverage Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – Google wants to ensure a seamless experience for mobile users. The AMP project they started back in 2015 is now vital for both mobile UX and SEO. In simple terms, AMP means mobile-friendly versions of your web pages designed specifically for mobile devices and the best experience possible.
The Link between UX Design and SEO go hand in hand nowadays. Companies that want good rankings must focus on serving their customers the best way possible. By aligning your SEO efforts with developing a UX design, you can benefit in more ways than one.
This article is contributed by guest author on techsplace.com.
