Content Is King! But Site Usability and User Experience Also Influence SEO!

Did you know that the usability and user experience associated with your website can actually affect its search engine rankings? There is a good reason for that!

Fact: Google cares about Google’s users! The SEOs, businesses and advertisers never have been the top priority of the search engine.

It aims to please those using its search services. And it’s not really a secret; Google has been telling us for years; if we want our websites to show up higher in the search result, we need to care about users.

Here’s what their Webmaster Guidelines tell us:

"Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience"

Despite whatever other products and services it may be dabbling in, Search is set to remain Google’s core product for the foreseeable future, and their success is still directly tied to monetizing these search results. Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest to serve the most satisfying content to their users. And this means providing an amazing search experience.

Usability – Match the User’s Needs and Requirements!

In the context of your website, the term "usability" describes the ease of use of its interface. A website that scores high on usability is designed to facilitate users, to reduce abandonment. The design is easy on the eyes and simple to navigate. It’s possible for first-time users to find the information they are looking for.

It’s possible to measure all these aspects of a website’s usability. As long as you are certain that it doesn’t take users long to get familiarized with your website and perform tasks, then you are in good hands.

User Experience – Enhancing Their Emotional Response to the Website!

Also known as UX, the user experience includes the visitor's perception and response to using your services, products and website.

The importance of creating a user-centered design can’t possibly be overstated, for starters because it deals with our users’ needs but also because a good UX seriously enhances the accessibility to our websites, ensuring that it gets equal attention from users accessing it via mobile and desktop.

If interacting with your website, social media page, web app or software leaves users annoyed, angry or just disappointed, then you have failed at providing them with a good user experience. So a good UX is something that builds on usability and then factors in accessibility, system performance, marketing and even customer service. Google+ and now also Facebook clearly show the reviews and testimonials customers leave behind. Facebook goes so far as to show the time it takes for the business to reply to queries and inbox massages!

So there is no escaping user experience if you want to build a profitable online presence for your business.

Yes, Usability And User Experience Are Still Entirely Different Things!

Usability involves efficiency, usefulness and satisfaction where users are able to carry out, and accomplish certain tasks, without difficulty.

On the contrary, user experience has a broader definition which covers every facet of a user’s interaction with the website or system.

Both usability and user experience have an indirect, yet very positive, impact on the reputation and popularity of a website. Because usability and user experience can help to significantly increase conversions, traffics and recommendations, they also have a direct connection with search engine optimization.

Lower engagement rates not only boost the exit rates, but also take in fewer return visitors. The only way to enhance user engagement and decrease your bounce rate is by improving usability.

If you think that your website is difficult to navigate, imagine what visitors will think of it! And if visitors struggle with it, they won’t recommend it to others; that will eventually lead to low rankings. If searchers cannot find what they're looking for, they’ll move on to another site, without wasting any time on yours.

How to Improve Usability and User Experience

If you are already thinking about ways to enhance your website’s usability and user experience, we’ve got some pointers for you.

1. Avoid putting irrelevant content on the site. And make sure whatever you have put up there, blog posts or web content, is clear, concise and easy to understand.

2. Place the most relevant information where the eye is naturally drawn to. For most web users, 80% of their time is spent on looking at information placed above the page fold. 69% of their time is spent viewing the left side of a web page.

1. It’s also a good idea to install a heat-map system to record your visitors’ click behavior. Then design your layout carefully with its results in mind.
2. Speed up your page load times so users don’t abandon your site out of annoyance.
3. Opt for a simple site layout and follow through with it on each page.
4. Brush up on color psychology and choose colors that are visually appealing for users, but not distracting.
5. Mobile friendliness is a huge part of user experience. Take the time to optimize it for users visiting from smart phones and tablets.

Overall, it's obvious that usability and user experience are key factors for an effective online presence.

The Last Word: Focus on Optimization for The Searchers!

Websites that offer a bad user experience can’t expect to get rewarded by Google. The faults in their ways could be thin content, duplicate content, deceptive tactics or simply poor engagement, Google hates it all because its users do too.

Google wants to provide a stellar search experience to its users. And the millions of accurate search results that are faster and precise is testament to that. They want you to help their users find informative, engaging, and high quality results that match what was searched for. And giving you better SERP rankings is Google’s way of rewarding you for the help.

SEO is so much more than blogs and content. Any good SEO agency for small business will take a holistic approach to their job, ensuring that users get a stellar search experience with a website that offers awesome usability and user experience.

Joseph Dyson is a Digital Marketing expert at Searchberg, a digital marketing firm.He specializes in small business SEO services.