Making UX And SEO Work Together To Increase Happy Visitors

Search engines have been growing smarter and evolving with time. Along with that, the process of ranking on sites using SEO has also changed. Earlier when it was only limited to keywords, it has certainly changed now. Over the years search engines have adapted themselves from giving keyword-esque information to giving relevant information.

User Experience the main goal of having a site, which is conversion. Conversion can be in any form:

1. Making a purchase
2. Downloading a freebie.
3. Increasing your subscription

Or any sort of conversion you want from your visitors.

Yes, SEO helps one bring their website on top of the SERPs but UX helps in converting your visitors.

As per Ian Lurie from the Portent Blog:

“learned in the end that SEO & UX must work together in order for a site to be successful:
1. the myths about SEO & UX are false – it’s not impossible
to coexist, and neither hinders the other

2. poor UX will lead to poor SEO. Plain and simple, and the
reverse is also true

3. SEO should live within and be a part of the user
experience.”

What is User Experience Of A Website?
The overall experience when a user interacts with your website is known as user experience.
It’s the job of a UX designer to built a site that is easy to use with easy to understand site elements and simple navigation. Along with this, the SEO expert should keep a check that the webpage content should be such, that upon landing upon the visitor should get a feeling of relevancy.

It includes various aspects such as site structure, content, site usability, and branding.

How are UX and SEO linked to each other?
After the introduction of Rankbrain in 2015, the meaning of SEO completely changed from just link building and keywords to determine the value of content by using metrics like bounce rate, dwell time, and organic CTR.

When a visitor lands on your website again and spends a lot of time on your web pages, it sends a signal to the search engines that you’ve worked on your website to enhance the overall experience for your visitors. It also helps in improving your rank over the SERPs.

Thus, we see how closely UX and SEO are linked with each other and share the common goal of ranking relevant information for information hunters.

What is UX optimization?
UX optimization is a method to enhance the overall experience of a visitor by tracking his/her behavior. In the process, the site owner needs to answer some questions like:

- Does the site give value to the visitor?
- Am I navigating my visitor to the correct place?
- Does my site have a pleasant look and feel?
- Was I successful in engaging the visitor?
- Are visitors willing to return to my site?

If the answer to all the above questions is yes, then you are successful in optimizing your user experience.

UX optimization is all about fabricating your site design keeping your users in mind.

Best Practices For UX Optimization
Here are some best practices for UX optimization that can help you with increasing the number of happy and satisfied users:

1. Work On Your Page Speed
Imagine yourself landing on a page that takes ages to load.

Will you wait or will you bounce off?

Probably the latter.
In the eyes of search engines, making its users wait for information is considered a major crime. It not only destroys the users’ experience but affects your ranking on the SERPs as well.

For improving your page speed:

- Compress the size of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Files
- Reduce the number of redirects.
- Try avoiding JavaScripts that can slow down your page
rendering process.
- Leverage browser caching for preventing your users from
reloading the pages they have already visited.
- Get rid of problems like slow database queries, lack of
adequate memory to improve your server response time.

2. Making Mobile-Friendly Website
After the introduction of the Mobile-First Indexing update by Google, the search engine giant has increased the importance of small screen users. Thus, one needs to pay huge attention to mobile-friendly pages.

Mobile optimization goals can be easily achieved if one follows these simple practices:

- Create separate responsive pages for your mobile
searchers.
- Use HTML 5 for creating any special effects.
- Keep an eye on your page speed score for your mobile
site.

3. SEO Friendly Content
Sharing content on your site is not enough unless it shares some value to the searchers.

Roles for ranking content on the SERPs have completely changed. Earlier your keywords played a major role in ranking but now your content too should be user-friendly.

Implement proper usage of headers, user-friendly URLs, and proper metadata.

Put together shortly, write for your audience instead of keywords.

4. Keep Your Navigations Simple
When it comes to user experience, navigation plays a key factor. The purpose of your page should be to help users interact with your site elements easily. Use proper bread crumbs, categories, and tags grouping your content properly.

In the end, I would say UX and SEO are interconnected to each other. Thus, for getting on top of the SERPs, a webpage should have relevant content, easily accessible page elements, good page speed, and should inculcate SEO friendly meta tags.