Does an Improved User Experience Help Gain More Rankings if Yes how?

Improved User Experience (UX) seems simple but it’s a pretty complex process and indeed improves ranking on SERPs, how it helps the webmasters and SEO experts to improve the ranking is a different story and will try to describe here. Whenever you think that you need to improve your business presence and standing online, the first action comes in mind is search engine optimization.

It seems easy when you think, SEO would require optimized content, few more images, and a few other things, and this is where you make your first big mistake. SEO is not a simple thing at all, it involves more than 100 factors to improve your website standing or your business standing on the SERPs on a search engine. Behind all this process, your ultimate goal always remains the same, appearing on the first page of Google’s search result pages.

It needs a lot of effort, tons of time, and indeed a heavy investment to succeed. Google always makes it hard for the SEO agency, this is why they never disclose their any update. There is no freedom of information at Google itself. SEO experts spent their time and effort to understand what algorithm changes Google has made and how to work be on top, once the strategy to work with the search engine completed, big boss releases another algorithm change and webmasters suddenly find that what once was working for them is no longer useful.

All strategy crapped due to uninformed algorithm change by the big boss. In the last few months, big boss has frequently released the algorithm updates and pushed the webmasters across the globe in a tough situation with every passing day. To get an exact idea, how SEO is hard on Google, simply understand that Google says it considers 200 ranking factors only to rank your business on the first page but at the same time considers top paying six to eight business for paid ads as well.

The 200 factors Google talks about what they consider ranking were never been disclosed to the webmasters by Google and none of them is 100 percent sure that what actually are they? There is a number of lists made by the webmasters and bloggers have written articles on them but out of those lists only a few are proven factors, however, rest of the listed factors are just speculations.

What we have best known about the overall strategy of Google is that they are trying to best improve the user experience on their search engine. They want webmasters to continuously work hard on the web to improve the user experience.

What is UX and where it is on your website?

The search engines especially Google has only one mission and it is to deliver the most relevant results to the user. This is where user experience kicks in. the best-improved user experience UX design is something pushes your page to the top rankings. The UX is not something a rocket science which is hard to understand, it is a very clear term in its own, and the relevancy of your online standing to your business and clarity of your products, and indeed the meaningfulness of your content to the user is called user experience.

It becomes more clear and complex when you dig it down to improve the user experience. The UX starts from your website design and takes part in the entire development process from scratch. It is important to create links between UX and SEO as UX cannot be achieved without SEO. One of the SEO experts and webmaster from a UK SEO agency says that the user experience is critical to Google, so how it can be neglected in an SEO campaign?

In the past, SEO was around keywords and things, but now it is not. It’s all about presenting your business to the Google users in a way they love to see. Showing your best offers to them and Google will push you to the first page even you have started your website last week, says Google. Domain life no longer has a bigger impact on your ranking.

Are you ready for UX specifics?

Does an Improved User Experience Help Gain More Rankings? This question has been answered and it is a big YES! Indeed it considered as a critical factor. And how it helps, has also been touched and now you have a good idea that how UX impacts on the rankings. But the next is how to improve user experience? This is something needs consideration. Here are five tips on how to improve UX design and improve your SEO rankings.

1. Boost the Site’s Speed

Think if you are a website user and landed on a page which is taking ages to open, how long you would wait to let it open? 2 seconds 3 seconds 5 seconds? And you will close it and find the next the next one. Once you would close it before opening, the search engine would take notice of it. Next thing, as a user, if the page opens in well before Google’s standard 3 seconds time, the responsiveness of the website would be the next big thing for you as a user.

You do not want to move left and right, up and down to find the required information on the website, no matter how good information it is giving, the waiting makes you exhausted. Result in bad user experience. Page speed is one of the most critical factors in the UX design, but does Google consider the page speed while showing you on result pages, yes it does. The speed update was announced by Google in January 2018. Google said that the speed is a crucial factor and the page speed will be the ranking factor in the future. Says Google. Use the Google page speed insight tool to improve your page speed experience.

2. Do everything to keep the user on the page

The time your user spend on the page another factor in UX design, although it cannot be considered as a ranking factor and doesn’t affect the rankings still it is a critical factor in UX design. The time user spent on your page is an important factor and a strong signal of good user experience.

More they stay on the page means more they like the content on your page and more likely they would share and comment your content and this factor is directly connected to the other factors in user experience.

How to improve this factor?

Always connect old content to the fresh content to give the user a chance to explore your website. Add more visual content as visual content processes 3000 times more than texts. Videos and images help the user to retain on the website.

3. Do not forget Call to Actions

The page speed and responsiveness are important factors but at the same time call to actions are the elements which convert your user into a customer by helping them achieve the goals. The call to actions indicates the next step on the website. Call to actions clearly improve the user experience and it means everything for SEO. It increases the click-through-rates and Google looks at the data, and it is a clear factor that affects the rankings.

4. Improve Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are the important factor in SEO and page ranking, they actually inform the search engine about the purpose of your page, that’s how they impact on rankings and UX factor. Although Google announced in 2009 that the Meta tags don’t impact the rankings, if they are well written, they increase click-through rate and it answers everything.

Meta description must include vital keywords, rich snippets are the must, a visual will attract the user thus improved UX. Google now allows Meta descriptions of up to 300 characters from December 2017.

5. Focus on Mobile Experience

John Mueller, a Google webmaster, in 2016 says AMPs are not ranking factor but Google’s current updates strongly pushing on mobile strategy. They have considered it as ranking factor now. Navigation, responsiveness are the two main factors for good mobile experience.

Design, button sizes, and page scale is the most important factor you pay attention to. Tiny and small menus are a big no on these pages, use prominent features to show them big and bold. Make it easy for the user to find what they are looking for. The success formula and a winning combination for the current web is user experience + SEO = Success and improved ranking.