Creating a good user experience (UX) for your website’s visitors is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Unfortunately, many webmasters overlook the importance of UX – especially how it relates to SEO. However, if you understand why search engines exist – to connect their users with the most relevant, user-friendly sites, then it’s easy to understand why creating a good experience for your visitors will improve your organic rankings. Here are four UX principles that are critical to improving your SEO strategy.
1. Offer Visitors Immediate Value
The vast majority of users conduct search engine queries to find an answer for a question that they have about a given topic. Furthermore, most want to find what they are searching for quickly. Therefore, you can offer visitors a good user experience by providing them with valuable content – that’s hopefully relevant to their search query – near the top of your web pages and/or blog posts. That way you won’t have to make them scour your website for a long time while they try to find what they are looking for. Chances are, many visitors will end up leaving your site in frustration – and most of them won’t return. However, by giving your visitors clear value up front, you will improve your site’s SEO.
2. Build Trust with Your Links
Another important UX and SEO consideration for Google has to do with the trustworthiness of a website. Therefore, if you want to make your site more trustworthy to search engines, you need to create search-friendly permalinks that accurately describe what’s on a web page. That way both Google and your visitors will know the topics of your respective web pages when they visit them. Creating search-friendly permalinks will also make your website more user-friendly as well – which improves your search engine rankings.
3. Write an Informative Meta Description
As mentioned, a cornerstone UX principal for any website is to ensure that your visitors can find all of the relevant information that they are searching for as quickly as possible. A big part of that comes from telling your visitors exactly what they can expect to find on a web page. You can do that by providing informative information in your meta descriptions. Here are a few tips on how to write a good meta description:
- Write a brief summary of your web page using about 160 characters – which is the maximum length Google typically displays in its search engine result pages.
- Try to include a good call-to-action to entice users to click on your page.
- Provide clear examples of value in your meta description.
A good meta description helps your SEO strategy by making your website more user-friendly to search engine visitors.
4. Add Your Website to Google My Business
Google My Business is a free resource that can help you manage your company’s details appear in Google searches and on Google Maps. For example, you can select a business category, upload images, add your address and contact details, and encourage customers to leave (hopefully) positive reviews. By creating a GMB listing, you provide your target audience with a detailed overview of your business before they visit your website. That way they have a good idea of what to expect from your company’s website which will improve their user experience – and your SEO.
In short, every SEO strategy must focus on providing visitors with the best user experience possible. Good UX is about helping your visitors quickly find exactly what they are looking for on your site. You can do that with descriptive permalinks and informative meta descriptions. Don’t forget to take advantage of Google My Business to provide your audience with more detailed information about your company before they click-through to your site. That helps reduce your site’s bounce rate which can hurt its SEO.
