In this modern digital world, especially in business, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization plays a significant role. This is not only an essential aspect to make your business website more visible and achieve a high rank in the Search Engine Result Pages but also to make it more appealing to the users. Therefo4re, you will need to focus on the User Experience aspect as well, commonly termed as UX.
Therefore, in UX design, the focus should be on SEO, and this needs a unique level of expertise to make the best use of the vast field of UX optimization. As for a typical SEO professional, it is not mandatory to possess UX skills or be a full-fledged UX expert. However, on the other hand, the same cannot be assertively said when it comes to a UX designer.
Ideally, UX optimization is something that can be achieved when the designer focuses more on the visitor, in addition to the focus on the requirements of the search engines. This is because the search engines additionally consider what their searchers or users want to rank a site.
- The search engines use some of the most advanced data mining operations to help users find what they want.
- The search engines also collect data to understand user behavior and tweak their algorithms so that the searchers get more of what they want and less of what they do not wish to.
This means that websites that provide better UX will do better in SERP ranking and do a better job of meeting the varied needs of the searchers. Therefore, as a UX designer, you should not consider UX as a by-product of SEO. You should analyze the user behavior to find out the reasons of them bouncing and then figure out the best ways to provide a better UX to the visitors overall, to gain higher SEO results.
UX and SEO make users happy
One of the most significant UX jobs is to make the users happy. This is also the job of SEO. Therefore, there is a distinct link between the two and is feasible enough to say that both share common goals, such as:
- Both target and optimize exact-match keywords
- Both want to rank high in the SERPs and peoples mind, as the case may be
- Both works on the user intent and
- Both are built after proper analysis of the search queries.
According to the report of a New York-based SEO agency Four Dots, today, voice search optimization has become the most crucial aspect of any SEO strategy. Therefore, you will need to design your app or website in such a way so that it meets the goal of Google, which is to provide the searchers with the best solution that solves their issues and answers their questions. Therefore, to appear high up in the voice search result, you will need to:
- Optimize your content
- Make it more conversational
- Make it more question-based and
- Use long-tail keywords.
Lastly, focus on your website design so that you can answers the questions faster. This will not only improve the UX but will also boost brand awareness and show your professionalism.
Important SEO and UX practices
Some best SEO practices will influence UX and help you to get it right. These are:
- Focusing on the image tags: The image tags provide details when it does not load so that the user receives the same experience even without the image.
- Focusing on headers: These will help the structure page content as well as improve the readability of the page.
- Creating longer page copy: A page over 600 words will help the users to get in-depth knowledge about the subject matter as well as provide relevant answers and solutions to their questions and issues.
- Mobile-friendliness: Mobile phones today makeup 52.2% of the market share and is used to surf the internet more than the desktops.
- Page speed: Ensure that the page loads fast because no one will stay with a site that takes more than two seconds to load.
These practices will get your SEO right, but to get your UX right as well, you must keep these following things in mind:
- Make sure that your UX and SEO strategies are both perfectly aligned with each other
- Focus on UX designs that complement the set SEO principles
- Create a more responsive web design to reach out to smartphone users
- Ensure simple navigation by making your website more intuitive and
- Focus on quality always.
Other useful factors to consider are the page layout, content originality and relevance, internal link structure, and continual testing of your site to find out areas of improvement. All these will ensure better UX and SEO results.
Challenges to meet
It is due to the several problems in aligning SEO and UX that most of people think that these two will not go well together and treated individually. However, this is a wrong concept, especially in today’s given digital marketing perspective. All it needs is understanding these challenges and finding out the easiest ways to overcome these.
- First, you must look at these challenges from the perspective of both an SEO expert and a UX expert.
- Then consider the point of view of the machine to make your product or design more visible to your users.
- Thirdly, know and use the keywords that the search engines prioritize to find out whether or not your site and its content is useful to the searchers.
- Lastly, make sure you use adequate and relevant images and links in your responsive product or website design.
However, make sure that you do not go overboard to include anything in your design excessively, as that can be detrimental to the design itself. Remember, today, less is more.
The sweet taste of success
In summary, SEO and UX is a winning combination and will ensure success in both your UX design and SEO. You will be successful in creating and providing a better experience to both your human users as well as the search engines’ machine language.