Nowadays, it is difficult for new businesses to compete with more established businesses since competition is fierce.

Thus, a great website with a top-notch UX is crucial for organizations to connect with their audience. If you want to make it easy for users to find your business, you need more than a good website.

Focusing on SEO is vital. Before, SEO strategies were exclusively focused only on using the right keywords and getting the correct links on a website.

Although both elements are still essential, many SEO experts are starting to realize the importance of UX in improving and maintaining search rankings.

How can UX design boost SEO?

Google’s search ranking algorithm remains a puzzle even to the savviest marketers.

Although having an effective keyword implementation is once the clear path to success, it takes more than that these days.

However, Google has one clear goal- offering users the best user experience possible. That’s why UX is so important in Google’s algorithm since it integrates different user testing metrics that determine the probability of users enjoying their experience on the site.

This is where UX designs come in.

Actionable Strategies for Improving Your Website’s UX to Boost SEO

1. Check the bounce rate metric

People navigate away from your site for various reasons, from landing on it by mistake to not having the products and services they’re looking for.

It could also be due to several factors such as formatting, style, and the site’s overall feel that doesn’t match their expectations.

Thus, they choose to navigate away, which is recorded in your site analytics if you’ve connected to Google Analytics. Now, if people land on your home or landing page and navigate away, this is often called a bounce.

A high bounce rate is an indication that something’s not right with your site. This could be due to several reasons. They could be put off because of your site design, lack of content on your site, too much text, slow loading speeds, etc.

That’s why it’s worth spending your time and energy understanding the issue and how you can fix it.

Although bounce happens, you wanted it to happen less frequently. Ideally, a bounce rate of below 40% is a number that you should be aiming for.

2. Boost your website speed

Your site speed is one of the most crucial elements in site design. It would be best if you made the whole user experience faster and more convenient.

The last thing you want is to waste time waiting for your site to load and risk losing your visitors.

Here are some tips that can help you improve your site speed:

Compress the images on your site so that they’ll load faster
Allowing caching. That way, returning visitors don’t have to wait for your site to load
Switch to another server if it isn’t good enough
Optimize the code

3. Use proper headings

Headings are like a roadmap that guides site visitors through your content. They’re also one of the best ways for search engine crawlers to understand the purpose of your site.

Proper headings make it easy for both site visitors and search engines to know what your content is all about. They allow you to organize your thoughts, develop a logical hierarchy, and simplify scanning.

4. Prioritize readability for your site’s content

We couldn’t stress the importance of clarity and legibility and not being carried away simply by the aesthetics of a site. The text size, spacing, and quantity can also significantly affect readability.

Your visitors need to know what the content of your web page is. Doing so allows them to engage with your content, making a converting decision.

5. Use responsive web design

It would be best to consider that many visitors would access your site using mobile devices.

At Sytian Productions (web design philippines), we always tell our clients that if your pages aren’t optimized for mobile, they’ll provide you with a less than ideal experience. Moreover, search engines will more likely prioritize sites with a mobile-friendly design that ranks well for mobile search.

This is precisely why web designers should use responsive web designs that help them build pages and work well across all devices.

6. Create a user-friendly URL structure

A user-friendly URL structure is also one of the essential components of a UX site.

A highly effective URL architecture lets users know their position with your site’s broader hierarchy. The opposite has an ineffective URL structure, wherein a lack of it conveys little to no information about the content of your page.

Moreover, the keywords in your URL also play a crucial role in the overall search rankings because search engines use URLs to understand and index web pages.

It would help if you focused on creating a clean and logical URL that users and search engine bots can understand.

7. Optimize navigation

Your site navigation is one of the first elements that users interact with. Thus, making it easy to understand is essential.

You should also ensure that your site follows navigation best practices like having clear and descriptive product labels, prioritizing critical pages in your site, ordering things logically, and including elements.

Similarly, you may also want to direct people on it so they can move around your site effortlessly. Often, sites with well-designed navigations are much easier for users and search engine bots to read. Thus, they rank better.

Apart from that, a site that’s easy to navigate tends to convert more users because they offer a better user experience.

Here are some tips to help you create a better site navigation

Avoid checking complicated or multi-level menu items
Double-check your mobile site navigation as well
Make sure to include a navigation menu on every page
Add a search bar

8. Add or improve calls to action

A CTA or call to action is a direction people often need on what to do next. This could be in the form of “Buy Now,” “Sign Up Today,” or “Find Out More.”

Adding a compelling CTA to your site can make all the difference in persuading users to take the next step.

Final Thoughts

Undoubtedly, UX is an essential aspect of your SEO tasks. It helps your site become more accessible by humans and crawlable to search engine bots.

Moreover, creating a valuable and credible user experience encourages returning visits from your customers, which helps you gain authority in your specific industry over time.

By applying an excellent SEO strategy to a site with a strong user experience, you’ll quickly have a recipe that can place your page on top of search rankings.