How User Experience Can Affect SEO
It is easy to think keywords when the topic of SEO is brought to the table. Perhaps this is why an age-long but self-destructive black hat SEO technique is keyword stuffing. As established in our post Basic Things You Should Know About SEO, SEO isn’t all about keywords and content. These two however are members of a larger group of elements making SEO work.
As important as it is to create quality content and use keywords within your copy, optimizing your site for the best user experience is just as important. In this article, you will see how UX relates to SEO and how exactly it affects your ranking. We will explore the importance of user experience in SEO.
Elements of UX and SEO
At this point, you should know exactly what SEO is. You should also know that UX, short for user experience is how a user interacts with and perceives a product such as your website. It connotes their overall experience which can either be good or bad. Now, how exactly is SEO linked to UX?
Thanks to the evolution of the internet, gone are the days when you need just keywords to rank on search engines. Search bots now take into account elements of UX. This gives UX a direct connection with SEO.
With Google’s mobile friendly update of 2015, mobile friendliness, an important element of UX earns a direct link with search optimization. As a result, if your site isn’t mobile friendly, you will slowly be kicked down Google’s SERPs. Site speed is another element of UX also rooted in SEO. Web users expect a site to load in two seconds and in less than six seconds, they are looking for a new site if yours fails to meet their expectation. A phenomenon known as Pogo sticking lets search engines know which site on SERPs actually serves a user. If you have a slow loading site and users have to go back into the search page and try the next site, you are likely to lose your spot as search bots can interpret this action from a user to mean your content wasn’t as relevant to answer their query.
Lastly, navigations are important for UX as well as SEO. A poor navigation makes it difficult for users to travel across your site and it leads to a bounce. A high bounce rate communicates to search engines that users could not find what they needed. To help them find it next time, search engines would simply place well optimized sites higher on the results page. These updates clearly show the importance of user experience in SEO.
Maximizing SEO with Proper UX
There are no shortcuts to success. Annika Sorenstam was right about this. If you want success in SEO, you have to go the long cut and optimize your website for both users and search engines. A site optimized with users in mind will have all elements of UX ticked and will in turn benefit from doing this in search. It is also important to do proper search engine optimization. Never optimize for users and leave search bots or vice versa.
It may come off as tedious to meet the demand of search engines and the expectations of web users. Nevertheless, do not worry. User experience is essential for making your website functional. We at Reveur Marketing are experts at any kind of optimization and we will take care of your worries. Contact us today and join our unending list of satisfied clients.
