Maximizing SEO Performance Through UX/UI Design Strategies

Did you know that UX designers have secret search engine optimization (SEO) superpowers? It’s true! Unfortunately, most designers don’t even know they have them, let alone know how to use them.

This guide will show you how to get the most out of your UX skills can be used to improve a website’s SEO. We cover the basics of how search engines work, explain how UX and SEO are related, and share five specific tactics for using UX to improve a website’s SEO.

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How does UX affect SEO?

User experience is about creating a user-centric experience and optimizing the way users interact with a website without confusion . A good UX makes it easy for users to find the information they are looking for. When users can quickly find what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to continue reading and engaging with content. This improves user engagement metrics, which Google’s algorithm uses to rank websites. Therefore, if you focus on creating a good UX, you will see improvements in search rankings and traffic.

To understand the importance of UX for SEO, let’s take a look at the main factors that Google considers when choosing which links to display on the first page. Below are the results of a SEMrush study that analyzed over 600,000 keywords to determine the importance of various ranking factors:

Factors highlighted in blue (time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate) are directly related to user experience on a page . With UX-related factors ranking second, third, and fourth, the relationship between the two is clear. To understand why, let’s get a high-level overview of how search engines work and where these ranking factors come from.

What UX Designers Need to Know about SEO

* For the purposes of this guide, I will use “search engine” and “google” interchangeably, recognizing that there are many search engines in the world.

Let’s start by putting ourselves in the shoes of a search engine. As a search engine like Google, their goal is to provide the information that a search engine is looking for. The searcher’s objective is called “search intent” in SEO lingo.

When a searcher searches for “how to fix a toaster”, you want give him something. most comprehensive toaster repair guide. If you search for “nearby showtimes” instead, it may be a list of showtimes for nearby cinemas. Alternatively, the researcher might ask “How tall is Obama?” and want to give only one definitive answer (6'1").

These are all different research attempts.

The challenge for search engines is to match the vast library of content on the web with these search intents . They do this by loading and saving a copy of almost every page on every website through a process called “crawling”.

Each page is then evaluated against various criteria, or ranking signals, to determine what content is most likely to meet the searcher’s intent. These signals show quality content and the best pages appear at the top of search results. Google has created a video to make this process easier to understand:

While it may not be obvious at first glance that UX and SEO can go hand in hand, but classification signals can provide clear indications that this is indeed the case. So let’s take a closer look:

SEO Ranking Signals

There is Hundreds of ranking signals, which search engines take into account. However, they all have one goal: to help Google identify “quality” content and maximize the likelihood that searchers will be satisfied with the results. The most important signals can be divided into two types: engagement ranking signals and reputation ranking signals.

Engagement Ranking Signals

The first type of ranking signals is the commitment. classification mark. These show how engaged the user was in reading the content and serve as an indicator of the value of the content. The most important metrics here are time on website, pages per session, and bounce rate. In other words, the longer the user stays on the page and the fewer the bounces, the more value the user will find in the content.

For UX designers, engagement signals have the greatest impact. Everything from layout to loading speed has a direct impact on user behavior. Later, we’ll learn how good UX can be used to improve these behavioral metrics and increase organic search traffic.

Fun fact: because of this, recipe websites are often cluttered with superfluous content at the top, an unfortunate result of bloggers tricking the system and encouraging users to stay on the page of the book. more.

Reputation Ranking Signals

Fortunately, for a UX designer, ranking signals are reputation Best left to others to optimize. Reputation ranking signals help Google understand a website’s reputation. The most important reputation signal is how often other websites link to your website. When a reputable website links to your site, it validates your brand reputation. Similarly, Google equates these links to reputation or “domain authority”.

Pro tip: Save time by managing all of your website’s SEO activities using a white-label SEO dashboard. Track your entire team’s metrics in one place and create fully customized SEO reports.

Getting those inbound links, or “building backlinks,” takes time and effort, but higher authority means higher rankings for every page on a website. While this is best left to your marketing team, as a UX designer you want to make sure your website is optimized for responsive design. Not only does this improve the user experience across devices, but it can also provide some consistency that increases credibility with those considering linking to your site.

How Can a UX Designer improve SEO?

So how does a UX designer improve a website’s engagement ranking signals? We achieve this by ensuring that the user gets the information they need quickly and seamlessly. Here are some best practices to help your users:

1. Prevent Bounces by Focusing Above The Fold

The most important factor that contributes to a high rebound is a poorly designed upper area. When users land on a page through search, they decide if the page is relevant once visible elements appear on the page. The decision often takes less than a few seconds.

So it is important that the en- header is activated of the page matches the SEO title and is clearly visible to the user:

When laying out an area in the top half of a page:

Increase header visibility: Avoid using large images which often push the header down the screen. The user should immediately see the header, confirming that they are on the page they are looking for.

Match header title with title SEO: search engines only have a fraction of second to decide to bounce and if the header text doesn’t match what it appears When you open the Google results page, they’ll quickly decide to leave.

Reduce clutter: Avoid cluttering the top half of the page with advertisements or additional content, making it difficult for the user to read the header and recognize the first paragraph.

2. Reduces website load time

Except the design An anti-bounce layout in the top half of the page. The second most important factor for a smooth first website experience is the speed at which the page loads. Fast load times delight users, while slow load times can quickly increase your bounce rate and negatively impact search rankings. Many technical factors affect page speed, but here are a few ways a UX designer can affect page load time:

Design with speed in mind: The layout of a page can have a big impact on how fast it loads. Remove any unnecessary flourishes or images that only serve to distract the user and slow down the page. Learn more about how performance impacts user experience.

Optimize images: Large images not only slow down the overall load time of a page, but also the ease with which the page scrolls. Resize your images, then use a tool like TinyPNG or TinyJPG to further reduce the file size.

Visible Content Priority: As a UX designer, it’s important to explain to the development team what content should be visible. If the page architecture is not correct, the less important parts of the page can slow down the speed of elements in the top half of the page.

Also, it is important to include speed reference points in the design process . By using a tool like GTmetrix or Pingdom, you can get quick feedback on your site’s load time and how you can improve it.

3. Specify next steps with call-to-actions

One way to engage your audience with your content is to provide a clear next step they can take after reading it. By using a call to action or CTA, you can give them a clear path, reduce bounce rates, and increase time on site. CTAs can direct users to a variety of different actions, such as:

• Download additional content
• Rate content
• Read a related article
• Enter a Contest

A great flexible way to add a CTA to your content is to use a tool like Qualaroo to collect user information. Qualaroo Nudges can be easily customized to perform any of the above actions and can be modified without changing code.

4. Create clear information architecture

Information architecture is one of the most important factors for a good user experience. Bridging the gap between users and the information they seek means easy and straightforward navigation. For example, consider the following header navigations:

GNC’s Megamenu plus grande encourages exploration and allows the user to access the product category of interest more quickly. With Herbalife, the user must click on “Product Catalog” and then select from their catalog to find the same information.

Good information and navigation architecture also affects how search engines crawl and index your website, which can also affect SEO. ‘a website. Tools such as Screaming Frog and Botify can provide insight into crawling issues that may be preventing pages from indexing.

The best information architecture is useless if there isn’t enough information to meet the user’s intent. Therefore, creating rich content is a crucial factor in ensuring users stay engaged. Content optimization tools like Topic or MarketMuse give content teams an easy way to address all search intent on a specific topic.

5. Layout for mobile experience

Mobile devices are quickly becoming the primary way users use the internet. Over 50% of web traffic now comes from mobile search. Google segments engagement metrics by mobile and desktop to decide which results to show. This means that if your website experience is not mobile-friendly, organic traffic from mobile will suffer. A great way to check your site’s mobile compatibility is to use Lighthouse’s built-in mobile performance checker, which is built into Google Chrome. See these instructions for more information.

Conclusion

As a UX designer, this is worth worth thinking about namely SEO. After all, organic search drives a huge amount of business: according to Brightedge, 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search traffic, and 81% of people research online before making a purchase. .

Anyone who needs extra help with Fortunately, there are plenty of small business SEO agencies that can handle this. UX designers bring unique skills that are often underutilized by SEO teams. By implementing good UX design, you improve user engagement, which affects search rankings and organic traffic.