UX and SEO are all about a happy visitor on your website, through design and content.
With the recent algorithms updates, there is no more space for marketers who see UX and SEO as two completely different key aspects of a digital marketing strategy. UX elements can take SEO efforts to another level as they influence the way that the visitor interacts with your website after they find it in search engines results. Behaviour metrics, like the website’s bounce rate, organic CTR and pages per session reflect whether your visitors enjoy navigating on your site. Here are 3 tips that bring real results for your website:
Have Simple Navigation
A website that is easy to navigate helps people to find the information that they are looking for and increases the page views per visitor. Moreover, navigation is a great place to include your keywords, leading people to the content that you want them to see. For example, “services” or “products” don’t help your SEO because nobody is searching for those keywords. But if you change general labels for specific ones, they will contribute to your ranking.
Make a Good First Impression
Take the opportunity to grab the attention of your visitor as soon as they arrive. If someone finds your website through organic search, they want the answer straight away. They don’t want to scroll down to find what they are looking for. So, push the content above the fold, and include a headline that goes straight to the point outlining the key benefit of your business.
Also, include one or two sentences explaining the details of your service or product and a clear call-to-action (CTA). To generate leads, include in your CTA a persuasive text, creating a sense of urgency. Here are some examples: “Try it for free”, “Get your free consultation now” or “Join Now”. Use the best features about your product or service to hook your visitors from the minute they land on your website!
Example of a good header, a straight-forward headline with a catching call-to-action (credit: Double Jab)
Work on Your Website Loading Time
Don’t make your visitors waiting while your website is loading. Here are some ways that you can improve your page speed:
- Choose an effective hosting plan – check out some tips here
- Use high-quality images, but lower the size by compressing – If you use WordPress, Smush is a great plugin for that;
- Remove auto-play multimedia formats
To check your website speed, you can use the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool.
Build a Mobile-friendly Website
Do you know that mobile-friendly websites rank higher in results when people do searches using their smartphones? Make sure that your website has a responsive design that loads quickly and correctly on mobile devices. More than that, make your customer’s life easier. For example, if your contact number is not a button, the user needs to copy and paste to dial to call you.
Don’t Give Reasons for Your Potential Lead Leave Your Website
Make your website (design and content) for humans, not for search engines. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and provide solutions to them. As UX and SEO share a common goal, which is to quickly provide visitors with information about your business that answers their search query, you can take advantage of these improvements to make it a win-win for you and your customers.
Learnt some SEO and UX tips for your website? Here are some more Marketing.com.au articles: