The growth game: 5 ways to flex your UX to rank better in SEO

December 8, 2021 | Read Time : 3 mins

As we embrace Precision, Agility, Speed, Scale and Efficiency in how we redefine a website’s experience, most businesses instinctively grasp the need to change in order to drive more growth and brand discoverability.

But to make it happen, they need to be more deliberate and disciplined to create an asset that’s designed around the recommended Google’s heart framework to help achieve UX metrics.

These metrics play an essential role in providing a better experience to users which meets users’ goals and business goals.

In this article, we talk about five common SEO problems which UX can solve. These problems will help give a better understanding of how SEO is not only about the abundance of keywords but user experience too.

Let’s first understand how SEO works:

Search Engine Optimization is a process that an organization goes through to ensure that its site ranks high on search engines.

Google uses over 200 metrics to optimize a website. These metrics help Google rank the website according to their SEO and give users access to the right and necessary information. Ranking of websites also helps the search engine gain trust with its user, as the user is assured when searching for anything on the website.

The top metrics on the consideration list are:

  • Keyword relevancy
  • Ease of navigation
  • Site Structure
  • Content relevancy
  • User Experience metrics

5 UX checkpoints for better SEO Ranking

Page Speed

The speed time of your website is as important as putting the right keywords. Human attention span has come down to eight seconds, and a small thing like the upload of the page can make users leave the site at that moment.

How UX helps:

Visitors often leave your website if it takes a lot of time to load. When it comes to web development, the goal is to keep visitors engaged with the page and provide the best experience possible, regardless of device or network type, and that is where a good UX comes into the picture. Simple effective techniques like optimised photos, animation, fonts, and texts aid in the speed of the page by a lot.

Relevancy and context

While website content and keywords are important for the website to have better rankings, text-heavy pages can make the comprehension extremely cumbersome for the user.

Establishing a context with your website visitors is important, and this can be improved by using easy-to-read pieces, designed based on the UX laws.

Using apt headers, titles, descriptions, graphics, and representation of content via bullet or number lists can help Google promote your content under featured snippets.

How UX helps:

Use context to your advantage by employing good UX designs. Interacting with a new website might be confusing, but a large amount of explanatory language can be an inconvenience to a regular user. Tailor these two groups’ experiences in distinct ways. As users return, begin to eliminate instructions and provide more advanced functionality.

Dwell Time

Dwell time is the amount of time Google searcher spends on a page from the search results before returning to the SERPs. Many SEO professionals consider Dwell Time an important Google ranking signal.

The dwell time helps search engines find out how much time a user is spending on the website before coming back to the SERPs. Here the websites have to create a hook for users coming for the first time, so they can navigate easily and get access to what the website has to offer them.

How UX helps:

The user experience could be a big factor in a low dwell time because readers who aren’t impressed with the above-the-fold UX or home page – at the least, won’t stay long.

It’s also important to consider the content. If your introduction is confusing or doesn’t get to the point quickly enough, you may have a low dwell time. Alternatively, it’s possible that your material doesn’t correspond to the user’s goal.

Thirdly, like discussed before, Page load is also an imperative factor when it comes to Dwell Time, if the page doesn’t load fast, visitors tend to leave. Therefore, optimising page load can also have a positive effect on Dwell Time.

Multiple Device accessibility

For both usability and SEO, multiple devices responsive design has become a must. Mobile searches account for more than half of all traffic. Sites that are not mobile-responsive risk alienating more than half of their visitors. If your website is not responsive across devices (such as tablets and different web browsers), your user engagement metrics will most likely suffer as a result.

How UX helps:

With the work from home scenes post-pandemic, mobile and personalised content consumption have given rise to smartphones and tablet usages. And responsive web design is the game-changer must-have to accommodate the growing range of screen sizes.

While users interact with the desktop website via clicks, the mobile users interact via touch and swipes, making the responsive web a must. A mobile-first approach and focus on the primary objectives first, removing unnecessary friction caused through multiple click-throughs, placing CTAs wisely within easy reach areas can significantly leverage user engagement.

Site Navigation

Menus are one of the most important parts when it comes to designing an efficient website. The less complicated your menu navigation design, the better for site visitors as they have a specific goal in mind that will help them find what you offer on-time and easily without getting lost along their search process. Analytics data can give insights into how different designs affect performance so test out various options often!

How UX helps:

Orient people within your website with better UX. Tips like putting menu buttons on familiar locations, understandable link labels, and using visual communication to your advantage can help navigate your visitors through the website efficiently.

There’s no denying that user experience is one of the most important criteria in ranking your website on search engine result pages. You must align your UX and SEO strategies if you want to improve your online presence and, as a result, your conversion rate.

A better user experience equals better search engine optimization, and vice versa. Although SEO might attract visitors to your site, if the user experience is poor, you will rapidly lose them. In turn, UX sends engagement cues to search engine algorithms, which can either increase or degrade your ranking

Without UX and SEO, your company will fall behind the competition in an ever-changing search ecosystem.

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OriginUX Studio

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Team OriginUX

OriginUX Studio is a CoE for User Experience providing UI & UX across Product, Service and Customer Experience Design. We are a cross-disciplinary design team that loves to create great experiences and make meaningful connections for businesses and their users through UI & UX.

Founded in 2016, our larger purpose is to help brands understand what they want to do and where they want to go. To do that we have to make understanding customer experience simple, effortless, and affordable for everyone.

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