Many marketing professionals are surprised to find that SEO isn’t all link-building and relevant keywords—it’s a little more complicated. Once upon a time, search engines simply required relevant keywords to produce quality rankings...but over time Google (and Bing) got smarter. These days, SEO best practices include consideration for the overall user experience (UX), too. Here’s why you and your team should focus on the UX and SEO of your website simultaneously.
Why Does User Experience Matter for SEO?
UX, or user experience, matters for search because it improves the overall web presence and customer journey. Google wants to recommend relevant websites to searchers, sure, but it also wants to recommend quality sites. Simply stuffing a page full of keywords won’t get your webpage to rank number one anymore. (Secret pro-tip: keyword stuffing likely won’t even get you on the first page in 2019, and it could cost your site a penalty from Google).
3 Tips For Improving UX and SEO
So, how do you improve your UX to impact SEO? Here are three of our top tips for improving the customer journey on your website via quality UX and how that impacts your search visibility.
1. Improve site speed.
Site speed is important for UX because users desire quick page load speeds. For SEO, it’s important because Google uses page load times as a ranking factor. If your site is slow to load, not mobile-friendly and gives searchers bad vibes, that’ll show via bounce rates. If users aren’t sticking around for your website to load, you need to consult your resident tech guru ASAP.
2. Consider searcher intent.
One keyword can mean many things. As you write content for SEO or build out webpages, think about searcher intent as well as popular keywords and phrases. Nailing searcher intent improves overall UX because it gives the user exactly what they are searching for, instead of just bumbling pages of information with the keyword phrase they happened to type into Google. Google is getting smarter with every update and is beginning to rank pages based on user search intent—how does your content stack up?
3. Never stop testing on mobile.
Last, never stop testing the user experience of your website—and don’t forget about the mobile experience, too. Ever since Google released its mobile-friendly update in 2015, webmasters and SEOs have had to take “mobile-friendliness” into account. Test for mobile navigation regularly and any time you make changes. Survey a group of users and ask for feedback—even harsh feedback can help you improve. Truth is, you can never go wrong when testing for anything UX-related. Even a test that turns out poorly is a learning experience and will impact your future optimization efforts for the better.
Beyond Blue Media: Full-Service Marketing Agency Near Denver, CO
Are you exhausted with running your own marketing efforts, designing ad campaigns, researching keyword trends, posting on your numerous social media pages, and optimizing your website? Is trying to stay ahead of the competition just too much? Let us worry about marketing for you…so you can actually run your business. Our team offers digital marketing services near Denver that produce lasting results. Contact us today online or over the phone at 970-691-6149!
Located in Fort Collins, we also provide full-service digital and social media marketing for local businesses and large-scale companies throughout Northern Colorado and specifically in the following areas: Fort Collins, Loveland, Ault, Greeley, Denver, Windsor, Boulder, and Longmont.
