5 Ways to Improve Website UX with SEO
What is UX and SEO?
If you’re wondering why user experience matters so much for a website, simply try using one that’s hard to navigate. It really is a frustrating experience which will then reflect on how you perceive the business behind the screen. In this article, we explore the connection between SEO and UX, as well as how it’s become a guideline from search engines. There are actionable, easy to implement tasks that will increase the quality of experience your website has for users. By the end of this article you’ll understand how to keep user experience at the forefront of your SEO strategy, so that you can rank well, convert visitors and beat competitors in the SERP.
SEO’s purpose focuses on improving the visibility of a website on a search engine results page, with the objective of attracting and increasing organic traffic. Tactics include keyword optimisation, on page SEO, link building and content creation.
User experience is the overall experience a user has, when navigating a website and is about how people feel when they use a website. It includes things like how easy it is to navigate, how quickly the site loads, and how engaging the content is. This includes factors such as accessibility, performance, engagement and perception.
Before 2020, SEO and UX didn’t always match up. Search algorithms have not always considered what real users needed. But then, Google made a big change. Google announced that UX design would be a key part of their search algorithm, promising a ‘user-centric’ search experience that focuses on real users.
As search engines increasingly prioritise UX, it’s clear that a website’s design and functionality will directly impact its SEO performance.
What is the relationship between UX and SEO?
UX and SEO’s relationship is becoming increasingly overlapped. Traditionally, SEO focused on climbing up the search result rankings. The scope has expanded to include user satisfaction, a core element of UX. Modern search engines prioritise sites that provide users with a fast, accessible and enjoyable user experience. Google’s guidelines and algorithm updates increasingly incorporate user experience elements into its algorithm and best practices.
The synchronisation and alignment of SEO and user experience has been a process over time…
In 2021, Google emphasised that “a great page experience enables people to get more done and engage more deeply”. This alignment resulted in the integration of several user experience elements into the search algorithms. In 2014, Google rolled out the secure browsing protocol (HTTPS) as a ranking signal. Then, in 2018, they introduced the PageSpeed Insights tool, noting that “speed has been used in ranking for some time.”
In September 2020, Google implemented mobile-first indexing, and by May 2021, they introduced Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal. In 2021, Google emphasised that “a great page experience enables people to get more done and engage more deeply,” reinforcing the integration of user experience elements into their algorithms.
Whether introducing new guidelines, such as mobile-first indexing in September 2020, or launching tools to improve user experience, like the PageSpeed Insights tool and the secure browsing protocol, Google has consistently focused on enhancing the user experience.
How to improve website user experience (UX) with SEO?
1. How to improve UX with SEO: Organise your website’s architecture
Information Architecture (IA) is a core aspect of SEO, it helps search engines to understand your services based on a hierarchy. A website’s IA also acts as a guide for users to navigate around the site as effortlessly as possible, improving UX and conversion rates. It’s vital to place the most important content at the top, so search engines can better understand what your content is about.
Good site navigation is essential for a website’s success. Users should be able to find information quickly and easily. This is achieved with a simple main menu, divided into clear sections based on content or user needs.
There are considerations to be made when updating and optimising site IA. Firstly, you need to examine your content in terms of reviewing what needs to be organised, what types of pages there are, from product pages to blogs and how it’s arranged in a website structure.
Next, you need to understand the website’s context. Every website is different and questions that help to identify context include:
- What business goals can be supported by the information architecture? e.g. If trying to get more registrations, place the sign-up button in the header navigation.
- Who are your target audience? Examine who are the intended users of the website, what are their preferences, behaviours, what language do they speak? e.g. is the user aware of the industry jargon for a service or do we need to speak in simpler terms for them to understand a page’s purpose, is there a term used by target audience and experts?
- What resources are available for the IA update? Think in terms of budget, time and capacity.
- Review the existing IA and identify what issues do you need to address?
3 Ways to optimise website architecture
- Create a sitemap: Both HTML and XML. HTML sitemaps improve the overall user experience, especially: Accessibility. Discoverability. Findability. Usability.
- User research: Consider the information-seeking behaviours of your users, their level of experience, and their cultural context. You should also map out the user journey of how your users might interact with your site.
- Navigation optimisation: Update menus across a website, too many options can overwhelm users, leading to decision fatigue. Instead, keep things as simple as possible, organisation of pages needs to be logical and coherent to make sense to users.
2. How to Improve UX with SEO: Structure Internal linking
Internal page links are an important aspect of SEO. Not only can they be used within a page to direct people straight to another page of interest, without using the main navigation, but they also help to give SEO weighting to your most important pages.
Each page must include enough internal links to aid the visitor in navigating your site effectively. However, too many links on a page can be detrimental, as the SEO importance of each link on that page is then diluted. Therefore, having an excessive number of links on a page can make it unclear to search engines and users of the site which pages are most important.
Using a navigation bar at the top of each site page can be beneficial for internal linking, as it allows users to easily access other pages and find what they are looking for. It is also another way to indicate pages of high importance to users and search engines alike.
How to improve internal linking for UX
- User journey analysis – use GA4 path explorer to visualise how users explore your site. Identify common pathways and look for areas where there are high bounce rates as well as where users drop off, get lost or confused.
- Crawl report – review your website’s crawl report for broken links then update with keyword rich anchor text. Identify orphan pages that aren’t linked to from anywhere else on your site and update with relevant link placement. Finally, review the internal link structure for your site and make sure it reflects the hierarchy of your website IA.
3. How to improve UX with SEO: Mobile performance & optimisation
Google’s shift to mobile-first indexing means your site’s mobile performance is more important than ever. A site must be optimised for different devices, as this ensures greater usability and allows mobile web crawlers to be able to understand the content and structure of your site properly. It’s worth noting that these metrics fluctuate depending on many factors including page, time of day, type of browser, etc.
How to to audit your website’s mobile usability
Mobile Friendly Usability Test: This will highlight any issues and guide on how to fix them.
Common issues that are easy to fix include:
- Content Wider than Screen: Avoid horizontal scrolling by using relative width and position values in CSS and scalable images.
- Text Too Small: Set a viewport and scale font sizes within it to prevent users from needing to zoom in.
4. How to Improve UX with SEO: Accelerate Website Speed
As we now know, Google’s definition of good SEO, includes web pages that load fast and work smoothly. A 1-3 seconds, web page load time increases bounce rate probability by 32%. (Source: Envisage Digital) It’s especially important for pages to load quickly on mobile phones and tablets because Google ranks websites based on how well they work on mobile devices first, before desktop computers.
How to improve website load time
- Optimise images: Big images, large videos, and files that aren’t compressed will slow down your website. Make sure to reduce the size of these files to make site speed faster for users.
- Clean code: Messy HTML, too much CSS, and unused JavaScript can make your website take longer to load. Organise, update and remove any unnecessary code to speed up a website.
- Review server performance: If your server is slow, especially with lots of traffic, it might be due to low-quality hosting or too much traffic. Review if this is the case, if so upgrade your server or hosting plan to handle more visitors.
- Enable caching: Without caching, your site might have to download the same files repeatedly, slowing it down. Set up caching so that files can be stored and accessed faster.
5. How to Improve UX with SEO: Make your website accessible
The web should be for everyone, regardless of hearing loss, vision loss, cognitive ability, or dexterity issues. But disabilities can make it hard to navigate the World Wide Web. According to the World Health Organisation, over one billion people have disabilities, which is about 15% of the global population. For example, people who are blind might use screen readers. It’s important to make websites accessible, so everyone can use them.
Google doesn’t rank websites based on how accessible they are. But accessible websites are usually also user-friendly, which is good for SEO. For example, clear heading structure helps people using screen readers navigate and search engines to understand your site.
How to improve website accessibility for SEO?
- Conduct an Accessibility Audit: Check your website accessibility by reviewing your site’s navigation, coding and structure to make sure it supports accessibility tools like screen readers.
- Optimise website content for accessibility: This would include checking all images have descriptive Alt text, that text has good colour contrast and scalability, and videos include captions. Test your forms, make sure they are easy to use and submit using only a keyboard. Update the content structure, including headings and the order of text.
Our team of innovative SEO experts can support you with SEO strategies to improve your website’s user experience. Contact our expert SEO team to discuss your SEO and UX challenges, we would love to help.
