If you’ve been wondering “what is user experience and how can it impact my SEO efforts?”, then you’re in the right place. In the following post, we’ll discuss how you can improve your search engine optimisation results by factoring in user experience. Keep reading to find out what it all means.
What Is User Experience?
Simply put, user experience (UX) is how easy it is for a visitor to interact with your website. There is an entire profession dedicated to UX design, but there are elements that SEO specialists should be aware of, too.
Recently, Google has become even more in tune with what a user is truly looking for when they input a question or keyword. Similarly, it’s also more aware of what your webpage is actually showing them in response. This means that Google is better at understanding whether a searcher’s query has been adequately answered or not.
As a result, it’s now more important than ever that your site provides your visitors with what they need.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWVs) have been introduced to help identify which sites are providing a good, technical user experience. It offers a slight ranking increase to those that deliver this, so making your website work for your customers will make it work for Google.
The CWVs are made up of three factors:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This is how long the page takes to load its largest content element (i.e. an image or video)
- First Input Delay (FID): This is the length of time it takes for the page to respond to the first click or interaction by the user
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This is the amount that the layout moves unexpectedly while someone is using the page
How Can You Improve User Experience on Your Site?
Firstly, investigate your own site’s web vitals performance. There are various tools available online to help you do this, including SEO measuring software like Google Search Console. Then, you should endeavour to fix any issues that could be causing low scores, for instance, by speeding up page load times.
It’s also important to optimise your site for mobile and other non-desktop devices. Google will penalise you if you have not considered how your pages will work on a tablet or phone, for example. So, make sure to check the site’s layout and usability across each one.
Up Your Content Game
Today, it’s not enough to just focus on keywords alone. Keyword research is of course still necessary, but you need to be doing much more than simply adding a few high-volume keywords into your content.
Explore what your target audience is searching for, and think about what your site should provide them with in order to satisfy their query. Try to impart relevant information that fulfils what they set out to achieve when they clicked on your page.
Become User-Centric
If you follow our advice on the importance of user experience in SEO, then Google should reward you with higher rankings. Or, if you feel you’ll need a helping hand, simply get in touch with our team of experts.