Digital marketing and SEO techniques have become a major part of businesses advertising strategies in recent years. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is the process that influences online visibility for a website by making it appear higher up on a web search engine result list. While some listings on search engines are paid for, SEO results are not, so are often referred to as organic or natural.
Search engines are advancing at a rapid rate, and thanks to these developments you can now find the answer to any question or be provided with anything you require within seconds.
User experience (also sometimes referred to as UX) refers to how a user feels about using a product or service. In this context, it refers to how easy a website user finds the site to navigate.
The main goal of a business website is to offer its visitors an enjoyable and pleasant experience where they can easily navigate the site to find whatever it is they were looking for. Here is an explanation of why user experience is so essential to SEO and why it is pivotal to a successful SEO strategy.
It Increases Traffic
SEO is ultimately about boosting your traffic with the hope that the more people who visit your site, the more potential there is for future revenue. However, if your site does not offer a good user experience, then this is likely to lead to visitors going elsewhere for their needs. This has been proven as research shows that 67 percent of increased traffic takes place after a website has improved its user experience for its visitors.
By making a good first impression to any traffic that comes your way, a visitor is more likely to return to your website and maybe even purchase something while they are there if the site is easy to use. Make sure that your content is appealing and easy to find and you will see increases in your visitor numbers.
Helps to Convert Users into Customers
As we have just discussed, offering a good user experience to visitors of your website will boost your traffic and encourage new users. However, it may also convert these additional users into future customers.
By helping users to find what they are looking for quickly and easily, due to your amazing user experience, you are allowing a direct link between your customers finding your product and buying it. Research has found that website visitors that have a pleasant user experience on a website are twice as likely to buy the product they were looking for from that site.
By creating content that is clearly labeled and full of frequently searched keywords, a website can offer an efficient user experience.
Boosts Feedback Scores
One of the easiest SEO techniques to implement when trying to boost how high up a website is ranked on search engine results is seeking out reviews and feedback from customers. This can refer to not just feedback about your products or services, but also about the user experience that you provide.
The quickest and easiest way for you to find out how to boost your website’s user experience is to ask them directly. This is pivotal to SEO techniques as it encourages engagement, provides guidance on how to improve the experience, as well as providing you with future content material.
It Makes You Stand Out from Competitors
If you are looking to use SEO techniques to improve your business overall, then you are likely to have checked out the competition. If you haven’t then that is the first thing you should do. Head over to a competitor’s website and see how you find their user experience. Is the website easy to use? Could you easily find what you were looking for?
These are the sort of questions that visitors to your site will ask themselves when they come to use your site. For example, if an internet user is looking to buy a product online, then they are more likely to buy it from the website that is easier to use. So, make sure that you have the best user experience around and don’t lose out to competitors!
It Gains You Credibility
Effective user experience is essential to a good SEO strategy, as it can make the user more likely to trust your company, your website, and your product. There are so many websites on the internet now, and people are more aware of cybercrime than ever before.
Therefore, it is important that you earn the trust of your users in order to later convert them into customers. If your website doesn’t look genuine or legitimate because it is full of broken links or it is difficult to find information, then a user will just go elsewhere to a website that offers a better experience.
Mobile Accessibility is Everything
Having a website that is mobile-user friendly is now one of the most important things when it comes to user experience. Every year, even more of us are using our mobile devices to quickly find information or products that we require while on the go. Therefore, if a website is to rank highly on search engine result pages, then it needs to be mobile accessible.
Having a website that offers a great user experience when accessed through a laptop or a desktop is just not enough these days. With up to 70% of online web traffic now coming from a mobile device, it is essential that a website offers an effective user experience for devices such as smartphones and tablets. If they don’t, then they are limiting potential traffic, and most importantly, potential revenue.
As you can see, user experience is so important and pivotal to the use of search engine optimization because they often rely on each other to efficiently provide a website that is worth visiting. It doesn’t matter how great your products or services are or how high up on Google your website ranks; if users don’t enjoy using your website then you are unlikely to boost your traffic or revenue.
