In the ever-evolving web of digital marketing, there is one essential thing in determining the success of online businesses: user experience. It essentially explains the kind of experience and satisfaction users derive while interacting with a website or an application. This would mean that it encompasses aspects of usability, accessibility, efficiency, and effectiveness in accomplishing its prime goal: the delivery of value to its users. As a consequence, this would deliver enhanced user engagement, loyalty, and finally, revenues.
For quite a while, Search Engine Optimization was focused mainly on the optimization of a website or product for search engines. Still, considering the evolution of search algorithms, the focus shifted towards the optimization for the end user. After all, search engines are just the medium of bringing users to your content; therefore, user satisfaction is relevant. And in this scenario, UX has become one of the cores of successful SEO strategies.
The relationship between UX and SEO is symbiotic. Good SEO methods improve the user experience by leading users to the most relevant information quickly and effectively. Positive UX leads users to be more interactive and makes them have a meaningful engagement with your content, thus improving SEO performance.
For instance, Etsy, an ecommerce platform embraced the power of UX on their product listing pages. They redesigned, made navigation way easier, and improved page load speed. The result was that they noted a drastic fall in bounce rates and a spike in page views; hence, they attained better SEO performance.
The other important element of the UX is mobile responsiveness. With the increased use of the internet on mobile devices, responsive websites that change depending on the end-user device have become a must-have. Furthermore, Google has moved to indexing by mobile-first, making the case for mobile UX seamless and perfect even more pressing. O’Neill Clothing is an illustration of how mobile responsiveness can impact SEO. It resultantly redesigns their mobile site and increases mobile conversions by 600%, with a 27% increase in organic traffic.
Though content may be considered the king in the realm of search engine optimization, user experience is the queen who complements it. The more user-friendly, well-structured, and compelling your content is, the greater its contribution toward good user experience, keeping users on your site for a longer time, thus increasing conversions. Mailchimp has at last combined UX and SEO. This suggests high-quality, well-structured content that is easily reachable and engaging. Consequently, a focus on UX will drive up the average engagement, decrease the bounce rate, improve conversion rates, and ultimately improve the SEO organic rankings for the website and products.
The other important elements that enhance UX are the call-to-action elements. This is what leads users to compel CTAs instruct users to take desired actions—like making a purchase or downloading a guide, which may result in higher conversion rates, positively affecting SEO performance. One of the rightly done CTAs is by Dropbox, a cloud storage service. It uses easy, actionable language and includes it visibly. The result was great UX, high conversion rates, and better SEO performance.
It is an indication of the importance of UX, since we are living in an SEO era. Therefore, focusing on user experience helps to drive user engagement, improve SEO performance, and drive businesses toward their objectives. Success stories—like what happened with Etsy, O’Neill Clothing, Mailchimp, and Dropbox—show just how integrating UX and SEO works. Again, let’s put the user back in user experience and let our SEO be steered by UX.
