In a world ruled by algorithms and search history, your brand’s web presence is as important as ever.
Consumers are gathering information and “window” shopping online for days or weeks before actually making the decision to purchase with you. We often hear about user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO), but what exactly do these phrases have to do with your web presence? Simply put, SEO targets search engines while UX targets your website’s visitors. Both share a common goal of giving users the best experience and both are being used in tandem to determine where you show up when people are looking for your products or services.
Auditing your website for user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO) can help increase your visibility and leave site visitors, and potential customers, with a positive impression of your brand.
Below are a few things to consider when conducting a SEO and UX audit.
Intuitive navigation
Your site navigation is crucial in creating a positive customer experience and also helps optimize SEO. Putting yourself in the shoes of your shopper and enlisting others to make notes on their navigation of your site can provide valuable insight. Remember that not all customers will come to your site through the homepage and start to click around. Be sure your navigation isn’t full of pop-ups or long lists. Also view your site in different browsers and on different devices. Streamlining your navigation can make a large impact on UX, and in turn, SEO.
Site Speed
I think we have all been on a site that takes a minute to load. Though that downtime may not seem like a big deal, load time and site speed has been a long standing pillar in SEO and absolutely has an affect on user experience. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is a great place to start when determining your website speed. When you enter your URL, it will allow you visibility to any speed issues your site may have.
Mobile Friendly
Consumers are using their mobile devices first. This means it is imperative that your site is not only mobile responsive or use dedicated mobile-optimized versions. Mobile-friendliness is also a google ranking factor, so it will not only improve your UX and overall brand perception, but it will help boost you in search results.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is often what we think about when we consider website SEO. Your On-page ranking factors can play a big role in optimizing your site properly. Your page content is what brings people to your site. Ideal content pages should be specific to a given topic and be hyper-relevant. Customers are looking for information that you can provide, and filling a demand will always produce higher clicks. The goal of all marketing content is to drive traffic to our sites, so making sure it is also linkable and able to be shared across a number of platforms is a must in order to move up in search results. Once you have a linkable page, having the title and topic of the content repeated in the URL, title, body text and image tags will help move you further up on the search page.
An audit of your website for user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO) can have many benefits to your brand identity.
Don’t forget to grab a copy of our Website Audit Roadmap for everything you need to know on how to evaluate your website's performance, search engine optimization (SEO) and overall quality to boost lead conversions for your products and/or services.