In an ever-changing digital landscape, user experience (UX) and search engine optimisation (SEO) are increasingly intertwined. While keywords and backlinks dominated SEO strategy just ten or so years ago, these days, high-quality content and user experience top the list of the most important ranking factors. Combining SEO and UX best practices gives you the best of both worlds and, often, the results to match.
There’s more to the relationship between UX and SEO than page speed, although that’s certainly a factor. It’s important to consider the full picture of the journey your website visitors embark on, including ease of navigation and core web vitals like visual stability and interactivity.
A search engine results page (SERP) is the results you see after entering a keyword or phrase into a search engine. Of course, most data and SERP strategies focus on Google, but the term also applies to Yahoo, Bing or any other search results page.
What is UX in SEO, and how does it impact your SERP ranking? Anchor, a full-service creative marketing agency, presents this guide to how UX impacts SEO and some SEO/UX best practices.
What Is UX SEO?
SEO and UX are two different marketing practices with their own definitions, but these two forms of digital marketing have a close relationship and mix well together. Search engine optimisation leads people to your website, and user experience makes their interaction satisfying and keeps them looking.
Search engine optimisation is the practice of increasing visits to your websites and conversions through organic search results, as opposed to paid ad campaigns. Organic search drives the majority of SERP results and results in more clicks than paid ads. While core web vitals, links and backlinks are still essential elements of an SEO strategy, unique and valuable content tops important ranking factors for 2024.
User experience is the science of creating an easy and pleasant online experience for the user, and it’s a process that covers the entire user journey. In a practical sense, UX includes a number of elements, including the site navigation, the interface design, the menu functionality and the page interaction.
SXO combines UX and SEO to enhance the user experience and improve search engine rankings. It’s a methodology that considers the customer’s entire journey, from the moment they find your site to the moment they finally make a purchase.
UX SEO is a related concept that focuses on enhancing the user experience in a search engine optimisation context. This involves making your website more functional and appealing, in order to please users and achieve higher rankings in search engines. Some key elements in this process are site structure and navigation, page speed, mobile-friendliness and content quality. Succeeding with this approach requires utilising SEO and UX best practices to achieve rankings.
How UX Impacts Your Ranking in SERPs
As Google’s top ranking factors have changed, the significance of user experience has increased. Factors like artificial intelligence and machine learning have changed the way that search engines operate. Google’s 2024 update cracked down on spammy, low-quality content. Being relevant, helpful and informative is the way to reach the top spot for a query.
The right kind of user experience can become the deciding factor between reaching the top search results and getting lost in the noise. There are a few different factors involved in how UX impacts SEO. UX is great for engagement, as users are more likely to spend time on a user-friendly, visually appealing website and share it with others. UX also reduces bounce rates by addressing your visitor’s needs (search engines often interpret high bounce rates as a lack of relevance). While SEO addresses the queries of web users and answers their questions, UX prevents navigational challenges and ensures a smooth browsing process. SEO and UX best practices are essential for getting where you want to be on Google.
The Best UX Practices to Boost Rankings
Here are some of the best SEO/UX practices to take onboard to see your rankings improve in search results:
Create a clear information architecture
A website’s information architecture is a structure that organises a website into separate categories and subcategories, ensuring all related content is grouped. It creates a solid foundation for a website that human users and search engines can find easy to navigate for the information they need.
Optimise for page speed
Using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix, aim to get your loading speed under three seconds. Most web users will abandon a page if it takes more than a few seconds to load.
Make content easy to scan and read
Google rewards helpful content and punishes spammy content. Content with informative headlines, subheadings, short paragraphs, and bulleted lists is easy on the eye and also allows Google’s crawlers to scan the page efficiently.
Focus on simple, engaging design
Interactive features like quizzes and polls engage users and make their interaction with the site more enjoyable. But staying simple remains the golden rule. Minimal layouts with plenty of white space and no visual clutter give the SEO content room to shine.
Improve accessibility
Adding alt-text to images provides a text description for visually impaired users and some context when the screen doesn’t properly load. Alt-text also makes it easier for bots to scan for the right image topics. Other accessibility features you can draw on include high-contrast text/background colours for readability and keyboard navigation for interactive elements.
Improve site search
Being able to quickly search a site is an important part of good navigation, and you can make it easier by including contextual filter options and auto-complete/search suggestions.
Optimise for local SEO
Make sure your company is listed on platforms like Google My Business and include local content to reach users in each area.
Create the Perfect Harmony of UX and SEO with Anchor
SEO and UX can be integrated harmoniously to drive the right kind of users to your website and ensure a pleasant experience navigating it. Anchor Digital, a leading Brisbane-based provider of digital solutions, is the right agency to combine these two strategies.
Anchor’s SEO strategy is to take an integrated approach rather than a silo one. Rather than optimising everything in sight, we take a deep dive into your website to find out what is and isn’t working and take an integrated approach to fixing it. Our content is written for human eyes rather than for bots, and our level of keyword research is unmatched by most agencies.
Our website design and development focuses on useability and aesthetics (UX and UI) with state-of-the-art programs and techniques. Our website design focuses on user experience while achieving aesthetic appeal and deep technical knowledge, including coding languages that lie behind web development. As a full-service web development company, Anchor won’t make you shuffle from one office to another in order to achieve the results you want. Our creatives conceive the content that will win you the desired results, and our developers bring it to life.
If you’d like to learn more about SEO UX best practices and how Anchor can create the perfect mix of both, contact the Anchor team.
