Reaching Higher Search Engine Positions with a Good User Experience

Katja Stržinar, Bojana Sever18.06.2020eCommerce, Websites

Lately, we’ve been reading a lot about how a good user experience on a website can contribute to higher sales and greater number of conversions. If, up until now, high ranking on search engines was attributed to keywords, meta descriptions and a good website hierarchy, the situation has now slightly changed or, in other words, has been upgraded. Namely, Google has recently announced that websites with a good user experience will be ranked higher. Numerous other researches done by Google also show that users tend to stay longer on websites with a good user experience. This of course doesn’t mean that we should forget about SEO factors – it only means that we need to intertwine those factors with UX elements and ensure a friendlier website for its users. What do you need to look out for according to the latest trends? Read below!

It’s now even more important for SEO and UX to work together as a team.

Ask yourselves: Is your website easy to navigate? Is it easy to use for its visitors or do they get lost navigating through it? Does your site contain quality content, which makes your visitors keep coming back for more? Does your site have a lot of traffic but not a lot of purchases? Is your website mobile friendly and responsive? All of these are factors that have an impact on the visitors of your website and, consequently, on whether or not they will decide to explore your site or not.

What does it mean to have a good user experience?

User experience focuses on the understanding of the user itself – what do they need, what do they want, what is useful for them and what do they want to achieve on the site. There are plenty of factors that influence the user’s journey on a website. What we can do is to use various analyses and tests to bring the site closer to the end user and make it as good as possible. This is why it’s not enough to merely redesign your website and then let it sit there for the next few years. A website is a live construct that needs constant attention and upgrades. Of course a good UXer will plan and design the wireframe in such a way that it will be right for your target audience and will be based on research of your target market and good practices, but every site is unique and makes its visitors behave a bit differently. That is why it’s even more important to design a website that is customized for your visitors if you want to keep them coming back and becoming a trusted customer or client.

It is therefore vital what you do after the website is redesigned and renovated in order to make sure the user experience on your site keeps getting better and better. How can you achieve that? At Optiweb for example, we strategically dive into each individual project or client and prepare a user experience that is based on facts, rather than guesses. We take a look at the competition, define your target audience and, based on all the information, plan a website that is a basis for further testing.

After the website launches, we monitor your visitors with the use of various tools – from Google Analytics to Hotjar and live tests with randomly picked users. All this gives us an idea about how the users are navigating through your website, which serves as a basis for all further redesigns that improve the user experience.

An example of a Hotjar recording of our client’s website.

5 factors that influence the user experience

Make sure your website is fast – from a visitor’s point of view, there’s nothing more frustrating than a slow functioning website. Today’s consumers are accustomed to get their answers quickly and if they don’t get them on your website, they will quickly try to find them somewhere else. Example: even if you publish a great article on your website, Google will not rank it high if it sees that the website is slow and unstructured, making you lose key potential customers.
Monitor your users’ interactions – how do they navigate through your website, where do they stay the longest, which are the most common exit pages? Which links have the highest click through rate? What information are they looking for? Did they find what they were looking for? It is of great importance that we monitor the users when designing the content that those users wish to see.
Put mobile users first. Invest more time and money in planning the user journey on mobile. Nowadays, it’s more important than ever how the content is structured and shown on smaller screens. Did the users manage to find the information they were looking for or did they abandon the site due to it being too complex and saturated?
Quality content brings you quality users. Good SEO optimization brings people to your website, while a good user experience keeps them there. This is why it is even more important that the content you’re trying to present is presented in a clear and simple way. Keep your focus on the user and make sure that your content brings them some sort of added value. The content must be distributed in a way that it is hierarchically separated by headings and images or videos and in the event you’re mentioning your products, make sure the links are noticeable. Overall, try to give your users a good experience that will make them want to come back to your site for more.

A list of search signals Google takes into account when calculating the user experience of a website.

5. When planning a user experience, it is wise to think of specific goals for your website and set them as goals in Google Analytics. Setting up goals in also important from the point of view of search engines – Google wants your website to bring you good business results so it wishes to understand how users act and behave on your website. A greater conversion rate (number of people coming to your site and making some kind of conversion) means better business results, which lets Google know that the website is serving its purpose. Consequently, it will try to bring even more users to your site, which is only one reason more for Google to give you higher ranking than your competition for the relevant keywords.
During this process the vital role is played by your site’s user experience. Namely, we wish to build sites that help the interested users find what they are looking for in the fastest, easiest way possible, without any complications and setbacks. We want the site to give them all the information they need to decide on a purchase/order and then of course successfully go through with it. This is why it is especially important to dedicate your time and energy to this aspect of your website in the future.

Good SEO optimization brings people to your website, while a good user experience keeps them there.

Want to improve your website’s user experience but don’t know where to start? Optiweb can help you in preparing a UX analysis, where we make a UX overview of your website based on established practices. The analysis will help you get concrete suggestions and solutions for a better user experience. We can also prepare for you a CRO analysis that covers multiple digital fields (marketing, SEO, UX) and where we track the behaviour of your users with the help of Hotjar and performance tests with real users.

Don’t hesitate to reach out; we’ll be more than happy to help! :)

SOURCES

Katja Stržinar

You won’t find Katja in our offices anymore, but we know that no matter where she is now, she is doing a phenomenal job. We’ve kept a piece of them with us as a memory. :)

Bojana Sever

SEO and Analytics Tech Lead

My mission is to help search engines better understand the content of our clients’ websites, thus making sure they are discovered by the right target audience. It is also my goal to analyse the visitors’ online behaviour to improve their user experience and thus contribute to even better results.

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Reaching Higher Search Engine Positions with a Good User Experience

What does it mean to have a good user experience?

5 factors that influence the user experience

SOURCES

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Katja Stržinar

Bojana Sever

SEO and Analytics Tech Lead

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