The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: You can’t rank sites purely on keywords and backlinks today. Ten years ago, this was not possible. User engagement variables such as bounce rate, site time, and visited pages are all important ranking factors.
Google recognizes human behavior when it comes down to ranking sites worthy of high search rankings. Usability and UX design are now integral parts of SEO. Sites require basic on-page SEO. However, simple UX design considerations can help to support engagement and thus rank well.
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Intro
Below are 10 tips to help you decide where to focus your efforts.
1. Clear Goals: What are Your Business Goals?
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Websites are a crucial part of any business. They are the first impression for many potential customers. A well-designed website can increase conversion rates, customer loyalty, and sales. However, a poorly designed website can have the opposite effect. An effective website should meet the goals of both SEO and conversion optimization.
For example, suppose a company wants to increase traffic to its site. In that case, it should ensure that its keywords are properly optimized for search engines and that its site design is user-friendly and responsive so that it will be easy for visitors to navigate through the site on different devices such as smartphones, tablets or desktop computers. A website should be easy to navigate.
Additionally, a website with lots of products with little labeling information has low conversion rates and will not generate income for the owner. A good website should have FAQ sections, navigation menus, contact information, an about us section, and shipping and payment options so potential customers can easily locate what they need.
2. Optimize the Process: How to Design a User-Friendly Website?
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: As competition in business continues to get more challenging, companies need to be able to reach their target audience. A well-designed website is one of the most effective ways of reaching out to potential customers. In the past few years, online ad networks have grown exponentially.
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: As a result, it has made it easier for companies of all shapes and sizes to access targeted audiences and market their services/products. But what is an online ad network? Online ad networks allow companies to reach out to a specific industry or target audience through various marketing materials like online ads, banner ads, or even video ads.
The most commonly used form of an online ad network is in the form of a website. The website will have various pieces of information that can be used to help companies reach out to their target audience. A company can use these websites for advertising their services to attract new customers and increase sales as they know they are reaching an audience specifically interested in their offer.
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Through a well-designed website, companies don’t need expensive marketing campaigns or advertisements on radio stations or television networks. Online ad networks are also a cost-effective way for companies to reach out to their target audience because they don’t have to pay as much for each displayed ad, and they won’t be charged until the viewer clicks on an ad.
3. Create Engaging Content with Clear Calls to Action
(seo ux best practices) There are a couple of things that you should know about content before you start writing. The first thing to remember is that content needs to be engaging. Engaging content will draw readers in and create a desire for them to take action. The second thing you need to know is the call-to-action (CTA). A CTA is a message that tells readers what to do next, and it’s usually placed at the end of your post. Lastly, ensure that your CTA is specific and gives readers clear instructions on what they should do next.
4. Consider Productivity Metrics in Your UX Strategy
Productivity metrics are a vital component of any user experience strategy. They provide insights into the effectiveness of your strategy and help you make decisions in the future. They also provide a clearer picture of what your users want and how to deliver it. Some of the most common metrics used to measure productivity are: why ux is important for SEO?
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Page Views per Visit: This metric is simple; it measures the number of pages viewed on a site or app. This can be further divided into how many people viewed a page and how many times they viewed it. This metric helps understand your audience’s needs are and whether those needs can be met with current content.
New Sessions per Day: This metric gives insight into the most popular time to visit your site or app. This information can help you determine when it is best to post content, what content should be created, and how much traffic you should expect.
5. Integrate Mobile SEO Strategy into UX Design Processes
Mobile SEO is a powerful marketing tool to help you reach your target audience. The most important thing in mobile SEO strategy is understanding your target audience and creating the content they are looking for.
With over 60% of all online searches being conducted on a mobile device, your UX strategy must include mobile integration.
How UX effects SEO? There are many ways to optimize content for mobile usage, but the most important thing is to understand what people are looking for when they search on their phones and ensure that your content meets those needs.
6. Simpler Navigation on Your Website
The common problem between UX Design SEO and SEO is that both encourage robust site architectures, which often lend themselves to complicated navigations. You would think that more pages are better. But not so.
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: A study from Ahrefs discredits the old SEO practice of creating particular pages focused on narrow keyword groups. It also supports new SEO best practices for ranking one page for related keywords. A single page that is both informative and user-friendly can be a strong SEO asset across multiple search queries.
We will now go over how to harness search data for site architecture (based on the above). However, the main point is to have a focused website with simplified navigation. Mobile users significantly benefit from this.
Fundamentals of UX design PDF: You want your users to be able to navigate your website easily. Although more SEO-friendly than complicated navigation structures, they can cause users to leave your site sooner. Instead of focusing on making search engines accessible all pages, consider how user-friendly they are. A stripped-back navigation that has fewer pages can often be SEO-friendly navigation.
7. Use UX Design for SEO-friendly Layouts
Many situations can lead to SEO being disrupted by layout design or how content is structured. Aesthetics such as perfectly sized headers or too much text can hinder SEO.
What if UX design and on-page SEO could be married? This would be the perfect companionship to support usabilities and generating organic traffic. Both of these things, we know, complement each other’s success.
These are some principles for using UX design to support SEO-friendly pages layouts.
- Make content simple to digest. While copy and word count are important for SEO, you should avoid pages with too many words that feel like you’re reading technical manuals. It is possible to retain SEO while making it easy to read blocks of text. Bullet and number lists can also be used to promote featured snippets on Google.
- Leverage headers and in many forms. As a rule of thumb for SEO, every page should have one Header 1 Tag that describes the page (and eventually includes the primary keyword target). It would help if you used Header 2 or Header 3 tags to organize supporting ideas. These tags can be used liberally.
- Use images and videos whenever possible – Visual media is engaging for users and can also be optimized for SEO. Including relevant images or videos within every block of content (typically Header 2 tags).
- Make sure to use CTAs. To improve conversion rates and retain users on your site for longer periods, calls-to-action (CTAs) are essential. You can make them as simple as an easy-to-follow link in the copy or a button to click to “learn more”.
- Link elements to related content This is a common strategy to support usabilities and SEO. It involves dedicating an area of a page layout that contains links to related content (typically at the end). These callout links , similar to CTAs, help users stay on your site longer and cross-link relevant content. Both are good SEO practices.
This introduction to interaction design provides more information on how to use UX design to create SEO-friendly pages. It focuses on the author’s points regarding Dimension 2, Visual Representations, and dimension 5: Behavior. Also, the tips that follow those points.
8. Use Search Data to Help Site Architecture
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Referring to simplicity, optimizing pages based on more prominent themes rather than granular keywords is no longer an option. No more building hundreds of pages optimized for specific queries. It’s better to focus on quality and not quantity.
SEO is all about keyword research and search data. It’s the way that that data is used that matters. Let’s take an example: “eCommerce” SEO keyword data.
Globally, this keyword is searched for approximately 2.3k times per month. It’s crucial to think about the long-tails and variations that we will want to include in our keyword targeting strategy if we optimize a webpage for “eCommerce search engine optimization”.
“eCommerce search engine optimization services” will be a primary keyword phrase for an SEO agency. Instead of creating pages for different variations of “eCommerce search engine company”, or “SEO for eCommerce” (which may have been done 10-15 years ago), these keywords will be incorporated on one page.
How does all that SEO data relate to UX design? The new website we designed for this SEO company features a page we optimize for these keywords. As shown below, this new page leverages many of our UX design principles that support both SEO and usability. This framework allows us to capture different keyword variations, as mentioned in the Header 2 tags.
This example shows how important it is to organize both on-page and site architectures so that they are in harmony with SEO and UX. These two departments rarely have to compete.
9. Optimize Site Load Speed
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: GTmetrix is a powerful tool for technical UX purposes that is often overlooked. GTmetrix is a valuable tool in any SEO toolbox. It provides crucial technical insights about site performance, such as load speed. It allows UX designers as well as technical SEO’s to get actionable insights such as minifying HTML, CSS and JavaScript as well optimizing for caching and images.
Website speed is an important ranking indicator. Google’s overarching mission was (and will continue to be) to provide the best user experience. Google also rewards websites that load quickly in both Search and Google Ads.
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Other than GTmetrix, Google Page Speed Insights as well as Web.Dev is worth looking into to improve the speed and performance of your site. These two useful website optimization tools offer actionable analysis and guidance for various components. These tools can offer suggestions ranging from image compression to changing how the server responds to requests. UX designers can use these tools to provide insight into how a site can perform better for SEO and users.
10. Mobile responsiveness is essential
For both SEO and usability, mobile-responsive design is now a must. Mobile search now drives more than 50% of traffic. Sites that aren’t mobile-responsive risk compromising the user experience for more than half of their visitors.
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Most UX designers know that mobile-responsive design is a priority in every project. Your user engagement metrics will likely suffer if your website doesn’t work well on mobile devices (including tablets)
The Google Mobile Friendly Testing tool can check a website’s responsiveness on mobile devices. For more information, see this post on mobile-friendly web design.
Last Thoughts
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: Clear website objectives and cohesive project management have helped enormously to create harmony between UX design (and SEO strategy) despite differences between design and marketing departments. As more agencies, including vendors, partners, and consultants, realize the importance of SEO, it’s becoming more common to see a balanced integration between roles.
Want more information?
The 10 Fundamentals of UX Design for SEO: You can earn an industry-recognized Certificate in UX Design, Design Thinking, or another related topic by taking online UX courses at the Interaction Design Foundation. Some of the most sought-after courses include Design Thinking and Conducting Usability Test. Good luck on your learning journey!
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