Over the past 20+ years, Google has become incredibly intelligent. Not only is the content of your site important, but the experience of your site can also affect your rankings in the search results. Designing a website in the 21st century is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” type of exercise. If you hope to stay on at the top of the search results, you’ll need to always work on improving your site’s user experience (UX) and usability. In this post, we’ll explain exactly what UX is and why it is important for SEO. Additionally, we’ll touch on some practical to-do’s to help keep your website’s visitors happy whenever they pop in to check you out.
5 minutes
What does UX mean?
UX is short for User eXperience. In the business world (as in the SEO world), it basically means how customers experience a physical product. In this case, that product would be your website. While the rest of SEO can get rather technical and focus on “pleasing Google” (for lack of a better phrase), UX focuses on how a visitor feels when using your website.
Does the website make them excited? Are they impressed with it, and pleased with how fast and effortless the checkout process was? Or are they angry that the pages never load, that elements are too big or too small? Are they able to find what they are looking for with ease? Can they do what they want to do on your site easily?
But that isn’t all. User experience goes a bit farther than just basic usability of your site. Not only should your site be straightforward and easy to use, but it should also be a unique experience of your brand. In short, it’s all about aesthetics. The colors, fonts, text sizes, and images must all work together to encapsulate your brand and provide your visitor’s with a one-of-a-kind unforgettable experience.
Why is UX important for SEO?
Search engines want to provide people with the best result for their query. This means not only giving you the best possible answer, but giving it to you in a fast, pleasant, and secure way. Your blog post might be amazing and provide the exact answer everyone is looking for. But if your site is unsafe, slow, or messy, Google will choose your competitor’s site over yours. And you’ll lose that coveted top spot.
You may be wondering, “Well, how does Google even know how people experience my site?” Essentially, Google uses different methods to make its best educated guess. Google looks at things like site speed (page loading times), mobile friendliness, site structure, and external links to your page (links from other sites on the web) to decide which sites give the best experience to their visitors. In addition, Google uses user signals or behavioral patterns, to draw conclusions about user experience. Some of these include bounce rate, time spent on a page, and return visits to your site. MotorClick’s experts review these same statistics with our clients in our periodic Google Analytics 4 reports to help them make strategic decisions to improve the experience and usability of their sites.
Do it for your customers!
Many people make the mistake of doing things to their site because they think it will make Google happy. While this is indeed part of the reason why you should improve your site, ultimately, you should strive to be the best because that is what your customers deserve. You make your site secure so your customers feel confident doing business with you and will recommend you to others. You write great content to educate them and help answer some of their preliminary questions. And you make the site easy to use because the last thing anyone wants is a frustrated customer. In the end, your customers are the one who buy your products, come to your events, or subscribe to your emails. Don’t disappoint them!
Getting started…
Not sure where to start? You can always return to the goal of your website and its main pages. What do you want your visitors to do on each of these pages? Buy something? Read your posts? Donate money? Subscribe to a newsletter? Your design and content should support that goal. Having a clear goal for every page will also help you prioritize which pages should be improved first.
Once you have that goal in mind and a page you are set on improving, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What would you expect to find on this page? Are your buttons functional and easy to locate? Does the design support the goal? Is the content well-structured and easy to navigate? Does the mobile version of the page work well?
Addressing blind spots
After spending some time working on your site, it is easy to develop blind spots. To address these blind spots, get some input from your customers. If you have a couple loyal customers, consider reaching out to them personally and asking them to test out your website and report back to you. You could also try sending out questionnaires via email to your current mailing list. Another option would be an exit intent question. Ask customers why they are leaving your site when they move their cursor toward the Close Tab or Close Browser buttons. Lastly, if you have a bigger site and want to make some larger changes, you can implement A/B testing to find out which version of your page customers prefer.
This data can be incredibly valuable when making improvements to your site, so don’t skip this!
Start working on your site’s UX!
Now that you know what UX is and why it is so important for your site’s SEO, it’s time to get started. Looking to improve your website’s SEO? Schedule a consultation with one of our experts today!
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