How To Improve User Experience With SEO

Once upon a time, a bit of backlink building and keyword research was all it took to reach the front page of Google. But times have changed, and Google is way more selective about what it let’s sit at the top. There are hundreds of SEO ranking factors, and while some have more weight than others, most of them have one purpose: to improve user experience.

As a company, Google is responsible for providing its users (or customers) the best experience possible. For this reason, user experience (among other things) has become the foundation of achieving higher rankings.

If you can use SEO to improve user experience, you will have an edge over competing websites that fall short.

But first…

What Is User Experience?

User experience (or UX) is essentially peoples’ perception of your site when they visit it. For example, a website that loads quickly, is easily navigable, and gives people the information they want offers a positive user experience. On the other hand, slow-loading pages, tricky navigation, and incorrect information mean a negative user experience.

People often use “user experience” and “usability” synonymously, although there are a few key differences.

User experience: How your website's design influences visitors' experience. UX can be subjective based on individual visitors' feelings and opinions.
Usability: How simple it is for visitors to engage with your site and find the information they need. Usability also pertains to technical aspects such as how understandable it is, the number of errors it has, and functionality.

You can see why UX and usability are frequently used interchangeably. However, the primary difference is that usability focuses primarily on straightforward navigation and ease of use. The goal of user experience is to create more positive feelings and opinions in users when they visit.

With that in mind, it’s time to learn why SEO is essential to improve user experience.

How SEO Affects User Experience

SEO and UX are closely entwined — you can’t have high rankings unless you improve user experience, and you can’t get visitors to your site without SEO.

SEO aims to get more traffic by ranking higher, which you achieve by posting high-quality content with relevant keywords, optimizing images, and effectively executing internal linking, site structure optimizations, readability, and many other factors.

Once you get people on your page, UX helps them stay on your page longer, improving your SEO, brand image, and credibility. If a snail moves faster than your page loads or your site requires an Aspirin to get rid of the headache it caused, your rankings will suffer.

And that’s why you should improve user experience.

How To Improve User Experience With SEO

There are several ways you can improve user experience with SEO, such as:

Keep in mind that the first two points require a Google Analytics account. It’s free to make and use — and honestly if you don’t have one already, you need to make one like…yesterday.

Monitor Bounce Rates

The list of reasons why somebody may ditch your website is endless, but in many cases, it’s because your site…

Data from Google Analytics shows an overwhelming improvement in this website’s bounce rate in the last 90 days.

Generally, lower bounce rates indicate a relatively positive user experience. You want to keep this percentage as low as possible.

Here are a few tips to lower your bounce rate and improve user experience:

Make several optimized landing pages that target different keywords and visitors
Create an organized content marketing strategy with optimized images, text, keywords, etc.
Write a relevant (but interesting!) meta description that encourages people to click on your site when it appears in search results
Improve load times
Install a responsive theme and optimize your site for mobile users

Keep in mind that the bounce rate is just one of hundreds of ranking factors. So track and measure the data, but don’t neglect other things that can improve user experience, either.

Track Average Session Duration

Exciting and helpful content encourages longer visits and more time spent engaging with your site to find more information, learn more about you, make purchases, and more. And the best way to figure out what kind of content visitors want is by tracking the average session duration.

According to a 2017 SEMrush ranking factors study, the top three aspects that impact rankings include:

Source: SEMrush

To check your website’s average session duration, log into your Google Analytics account, then click Audience —> Overview:

Data from Google Analytics shows that this website’s session duration had a surge on April 1 but declined, on average, over the next 90 days.

After that, you can check different pages’ performance by clicking Behavior —> Site Content —> All Pages:

These figures can help you identify your website’s strengths and weaknesses, so you can improve user experience and provide more of what your visitors are looking for.

For example, if you find that your visitors spend most of their time watching videos on your site, modify your marketing strategy to create more video content.

Alternatively, if you find that visitors spend minimal time on a landing page, experiment to learn why. It may be because the page…

For this reason, it’s always a good idea to A/B test your website’s pages and content individually. This allows you to collect data that you can then use to improve user experience.

Use Headings Correctly

Headings, headlines — whatever you want to call them, they’re important not only for people but for the search engine bots that crawl your site, too.

Headings improve user experience by:

Each page should only feature one H1 heading like The Spruce does for their blogs:

Doing so gives readers a better understanding of the page’s purpose and makes it easier for bots to index your site in the proper categories in search results.

Besides that, H1s need to:

So what about other headings like H2s, H3s, or even H6s? When it comes to those, they help keep your page organized and are essential for scanning purposes. Make sure to add keywords and use them in consecutive order so assistive technology devices can correctly relate your site to everybody.

There’s no rule about the number of headings on a page, except you should only use them for practical purposes, not for decoration or style.

Streamline Navigation

Navigation is important because of its strong influence on your site’s conversion rate. In addition, the better people can move through your site and locate the information they’re looking for, the longer session durations you’ll see, and the better SERPs you’ll achieve.

Not only does poor navigation impact user experience, but it’s also detrimental for SEO.
While navigation seems like a no-brainer, you would be surprised at the number of websites that overlook this critical factor.

To improve user experience by streamlining your website’s navigation menus, follow these tips:

Don’t use complicated, multi-level, or convoluted menu items. Stick to the basics: Home, Services, About, Contact Us, Blog, etc.
Optimize your header and footer menus for mobile users
Create navigation menus for every page on your website. After all, not everyone finds your site because they click a link to your homepage.
Optional: Make sticky desktop site menus, so it moves down the page as people scroll
Be clear and concise, so people know without a doubt where the menu goes.
Include a search function so visitors can find specific information on your site

Last but not least, keep the number of navigation menu items at a minimum because it gives your site’s link authority an extra kick. Generally, sites with too many navigation links make it much harder for other pages on your site to rank.

Here’s a prime example of a good navigation menu from Tybean Art & Coffee Bar:

This website makes it easy to find information visitors frequently search for.

If you create a proper navigation menu, Google will accurately crawl and index it and potentially display it in the search results:

This perk allows people to visit a specific page on your site directly rather than clicking through the homepage to get to it.

Of course, you can’t forget your mobile visitors. So to make sure your navigation menu works on all devices, use a Responsive Checker tool like this one from Media Genesis:

You can see how visitors view your site on tons of different devices with this tool.

Considering that mobile users make up 50% of website traffic, it’s imperative that you improve user experience by optimizing your site for these visitors. Not only that, but Google already places more weight on mobile optimization than desktop versions, so make sure you invest in a mobile-friendly site!

Optimize URL Structure

URL structure is another SEO factor that can improve user experience. Like navigation menus, it helps visitors keep track of where they are on your site.

Take this imaginary URL, for example:

https://randomwebsite.com/shirts/product/43892432798472-item.html?s_campaign=Google+ShirtSearch_organic

If it were real, would you know what webpage the link would take you to if you clicked it? Sure, you know it’s something about shirts, but what kind of shirts?

No one likes it when URLs look this way, including search engine bots. That’s because both people and search engines look for specific keywords in individual URLs to learn the page’s purpose (and then index it). When a URL lacks these critical keywords, this page’s rankings will tank.

So instead of overlooking URL structure, go through your site and create URLs like the one below that make people and search engines happy:

https://tshirtsetcks.com/services/screen-printing/

Isn’t that much clearer than the previous URL?

Improve Site Speed

It’s no secret that faster sites (both desktop and mobile versions) perform better in search results. That’s because when you improve site speed, you improve user experience as a whole.

Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool that analyzes site speed for your site’s mobile and desktop versions. It provides tons of insights to optimize your site and improve user experience, like whether you need to:

Manage HTTP requests
Minify CSS, JS, and CSS files
Compress image to reduce the file size
Upgrade your website host
Find cashing solutions
Use lazy load for images
Fix URL redirects

If you can get your site speed up to par, you’ll enjoy better session durations, more traffic, and maybe even more conversions than a non-optimized site.

Bottom Line

UX and SEO go hand-in-hand, and you can’t have one without the other.

If you want to improve user experience, the first step is learning how visitors experience and engage with your site. You should assess different elements such as:

Of course, things like site speed, accessibility, readability, and mobile friendliness also play a huge role. However, a bit of on-page and technical SEO can go a long way to improve user experience, higher rankings, sales, and more.

Sources

Burley, Leighton. “How User Experience (UX) Design Affects Your SEO.” How User Experience (UX) Design Affects Your SEO | Clutch.co, 14 Jan. 2019, clutch.co/agencies/ui-ux/resources/how-user-experience-design-affects-seo.
Respaut, Elyssa. “5 Strategies for Improving Your Website’s UX to Boost SEO.” Medium, Medium, 22 Aug. 2018, medium.com/@AmDee_Elyssa/5-strategies-for-improving-your-websites-ux-to-boost-seo-a0d7d5777513/.