How factors for UX affects SEO

The days of getting your website on the top of search engine results pages by keyword stuffing are long gone. Today, Google considers hundreds of different elements when determining which pages will rank the highest, including elements of the user experience.

User experience is the study of how users perceive and interact with your website. SEO now seeks to provide information to answer user queries, which is where SEO and UX come together. The difference is SEO targets search engines while UX targets your website’s visitors.

There are many elements of UX that have been rolled into SEO. User experience and SEO share a common goal – help the user complete tasks by providing them relevant information.

SEO will lead a user to the content they requested, and UX helps answer the queries on the page the user was led to. This article will highlight different factors of the user experience that impact SEO.

Navigation and Site Structure

Navigation and site structure are two of the most important factors contributing to the overall user experience.

Site structure is not only important for your users but also for search engines. Not all your users will enter your website through your homepage, so search crawlers need to easily navigate through your site to find relevant information. If you have clean site structure and navigation, your sitelinks are more likely to appear in Google search results.

TransUnion ShareAble for Hires is a perfect example of a site that has a strong site structure. Their site is clean, headings are clear, and their buttons are easily accessible to the user. The user experience is simple and easy.

 

Headings

Headings on a web page makes it easier for both visitors and search engines to find and understand the content on a given page.

Users can understand what the page is about by looking at the <h1 tag>, which is the first heading on the page and usually the title. You should only use one <h1> on a page. The rest of the heading tags (<h2> – <h6>) are subheadings, which help organize the rest of the page.

Headings not only help readers understand the context of the page, but they help organize the page to help users if they get lost or want to scan through a given page.

Site Speed

Another important ranking factor is site speed. Since 2010, Google has used site speed as a prominent ranking signal for searches conducted on desktop computers. In 2018, they announced page speed would be a factor in mobile searches as well.

Site speed is not only an SEO issue, but it also has a huge impact on user experience. If a user goes to a website on either a desktop or mobile device and it takes too long to load, they’re more likely to click off the page. In fact, 47% of consumers expect websites to load in two seconds or less — and 40% will abandon a page that takes three or more seconds.

Since many internet users primarily use their mobile devices to access websites, you should monitor page speed from a mobile device.

A few extra seconds could have an impact on your efforts to generate leads and make sales. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool enables you to enter your URL to see what issues may be causing your site to load slowly. It also provides suggestions for reducing page load time.

Several factors can influence how long each page on your site takes to load, so there are many different steps you can take to increase your site speed. Here are some things you can to do speed it up:

• Select a reliable hosting plan
• Minimize HTTP requests
• Defer JavaScript loading
• Reduce redirects
• Compress and crop high-quality images to lower their size
• Enable browser caching
• Eliminate auto-play multimedia formats
• Reduce server response time

You can also read: Basic on-page SEO techniques

Mobile-Friendly Websites

Google released a mobile-friendly update in 2015 and Google rolled out its first mobile index in 2018. Since then, Google crawls the mobile version of a site when a search is conducted as opposed to desktop.

Every element on your mobile website impacts UX and SEO. To be mobile-friendly, your site should have a responsive site design enabling it to adjust properly no matter what device it’s being accessed from.

To have a good mobile experience, users need to able to find what they’re looking for quickly and conveniently. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test enables you to check how your website appears on a mobile device.

Below is a great example of responsive site design from Hausera.com. Notice how to screen adjusts from desktop to mobile view, making it more user-friendly for the device it is being accessed from.

Desktop view:

Mobile view:

Summary

As you can see from this article, UX and SEO are a team. They work together to create a positive website experience for both users and search engines. Implement these tips to improve your users’ experience and make it easier for search engines to find information on your site.

Related: SEO strategy

About the author: Corey Doane is a contributing editor for 365 business tips. She has a B.S in Public Relations from San Jose State University and has experience in PR, marketing and communications.