It is regrettable that, in the SEO world, User Experience (UX) is commonly overlooked.
SEO and UX have often been regarded as incongruent, competing approaches to digital marketing, but, in reality, these disciplines are intrinsically linked by a mutual objective and work in harmony to form a winning strategy.
This comprehensive guide will explain the importance of UX, examine the interplay between UX and SEO, and teach you how to implement UX into your digital marketing strategy in order to see growth in your customer base and conversion rates.
What is User Experience (UX)?
UX, in this context, encompasses all the features that enhance and simplify a customer’s experience with a website. A good UX strategy involves optimising a website’s accessibility, interactive features, layout and visual design.
UX goes far beyond aesthetics – it is grounded in functionality. Though the organisation and presentation of your web content are paramount in designing an attractive and cohesive user interface (UI), you’ll also need to focus on creating an effortless experience for your website users by embedding navigation tools and prioritising loading speeds.
The importance of UX in digital marketing cannot be overstated; a seamless, user-friendly and visually pleasing website will make for satisfied, returning customers who, in turn, will buy your products/services and recommend your brand to others.
How UX and SEO work together
UX and SEO strategies bond over a shared goal: to design and augment a website that reaches, attracts and satisfies many customers. SEO achieves this primarily through tailoring websites to the algorithm, while UX has a greater focus on website features, but the two ultimately work towards the same favourable outcome. When paired tactically, these strategies cover all bases necessary to optimise websites and drive business growth.
It is a common misconception that SEO revolves solely around keyword research and backlink building in order to rank highly in the SERPs. The success of your SEO strategy is, at least in part, dependent on your UX features. Search engines like Google don’t only consider the technical factors you might associate with SEO – they also track user interaction, bounce, click-through and return rates on websites and factor this data into their SERP rankings. These features are largely determined by your UX strategy.
If your site is UX optimised, you’ll hold the attention of your visitors and please the algorithm, but bad UX practices, such as disorganised content and poor loading speeds, could push customers away. Essentially, if you want to secure a spot on the first page, you must ensure your website has a clean design and user-friendly features.
Below, we’ve outlined the most fundamental UX tactics to help you get started on your UX journey and refine your combined strategy.
Mobile-friendly Responsive Design
Due to the surge in web traffic from mobile devices, optimising for mobile is essential for the success of your digital marketing strategy. In fact, your rankings depend on it – since Google introduced mobile-first indexing, a poor mobile UX could compromise your SEO.
To satisfy your site visitors across all devices, it’s crucial to invest in responsive web design. Responsive design allows your page to automatically and seamlessly rescale and rearrange web content in order to render beautifully on all screen sizes.
Simplicity is key here: if you want your web design to be responsive to all screens and, therefore, accessible to all users, you have to remove any complex site features that complicate UX on mobile devices. Optimised UX requires user-friendly features, readable content and clear CTAs.
Page Speed
To provide your users with the best online experience, you want to ensure your web content loads quickly. For maximal conversation rates, aim for a load time between 1-2 seconds. Your page speed has a huge effect on your retention, bounce and conversion rates – if your site takes forever to load, you risk turning customers away. Search engines are well aware of this fact and account for loading speeds in their rankings.
To improve your page speed, we recommend reducing the number of plug-ins, files and images on your site – an excess of unnecessary web features can significantly impact loading times. As for necessary files, compress and crop them to avoid any rendering delays.
Browser caching is another highly effective way to speed things up. Caching is the process of storing web page features (images, videos, HTML pages, JavaScript, etc.) in files so that they can be accessed quicker.
To keep on top of your page speed, we recommend that you check your Core Web Vitals (CWV), which measure not only your loading speeds (LCP) but your page interactivity (FID) and visual stability (CLS). If your UX is poor, you’ll receive a low-performance rating on your CWV report, and risk a disappointing result in the SERP rankings, so it is vital to optimise for UX and stay informed about your CWV analytics.
Navigation and Layout
To enhance your website for UX/SEO requires that you employ clear and logical site navigation tools. This is fundamental from a UX perspective because it allows site users to find relevant information and accomplish their tasks efficiently, but navigation also plays a pivotal role in your SEO – if you map out your website effectively, it will be easily scannable and verifiable by search engines.
Of chief importance is the order and organisation of your content. Ensure your content is simple and readable by including bullet points and images while avoiding big, indigestible blocks of text. Prioritise and highlight key information and catchy CTAs, and include useful, relevant links and user-friendly buttons. All of your site pages and info should be organised in your site menu so users will have no trouble finding their way around.
Yet again, we implore you to keep it simple – don’t overwhelm your site visitors with a ton of web pages and ensure that your web pages are all reachable with minimal clicks from the homepage. Create clear, uncomplicated pathways that are quick and easy for users to navigate and interact with.
For an extra SEO boost, we recommend inserting prominent, interactive social media share buttons so that users are more likely to share your site. This will spread brand awareness and since Google rewards shared content, it could also upturn your ranking in the SERPs.
UI Design
Though search engines may be less fussy about aesthetics, the look and feel of your website will make a big impression on users. People do, in fact, judge books by their covers, and if you want to boost sales and lower your bounce rates, you have to make a good first impression with your web design. UI design is highly influential, as it could make or break your customer retention rates, and this will inevitably impact your SEO.
As discussed above, simplicity and clarity are top priority when it comes to optimising for UX. For UI design specifically, be wary of clogging up your page with a high volume of images (especially low-resolution ones), an excess of H1 headings and overwhelmingly long paragraphs. Be intentional and selective with your use of images and remember to keep your content organised and concise – this will result in a much cleaner visual experience for users.
It is vital, also, to be consistent with your design and to stick to your branding. Establish your brand’s logo, colour palette and font and ensure this branding runs throughout your site and across your other online platforms. This attention to detail will create aesthetic cohesion on your site and boost brand identity and recognition in the process.
Of course, an attractive website with useless content will perform just as poorly as a website with first-rate content but a messy, uninviting design. The goal is to strike a balance between compelling content, technical fluency, and visual appeal, and with all the tips in this article taken together, you’ll be on the right track to realising this balance.
Implement UX Into Your SEO Strategy
By harnessing the synergy between UX and SEO strategies, you can attract, engage and retain your website visitors and see an increase in your customer base and conversion rates as a result. This combined strategy simultaneously boosts your performance in search engine rankings and fosters brand loyalty by providing a positive experience to your site visitors.
At Clarus Digital, we cover all bases necessary to help you refine your digital marketing strategy and optimise your website for both users and search engines.
Find out more about our tailored SEO services, or reach out to the team here to get started today.
