SEO and UX were once two completely separate disciplines: one focused on keyword optimisation, crawling and indexing, the other focused more on design.
However, websites have evolved massively over the last 3 decades, as well as what users come to expect from a website. And with SEO becoming more user-focused, the boundaries with UX have started to blur.
The good news is that good SEO generally equates to good UX, and vice versa; however, there are ways to marry the two to truly take them to the next level. This means that, as SEOs, we already possess some of the existing experience and skill sets to improve UX.
If you’re wondering where to start and where to look for UX and SEO improvements, we’ll take you through:
- What is UX? Navigating UX, CX and CRO
- Why you should care about UX
- Where SEO naturally crosses over with UX
- Tools for analysing where to improve UX
- How SEO and UX data can work together to drive improvements
What is UX?
To best understand how SEO intersects with UX, we first need to understand the concept of UX (or user experience). A holistic definition of user experience from the Norman-Nielsen Group outlines it as:
User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.
How the user interacts with your website is therefore one example of user experience, and the aspect that is most relevant for SEO. User experience principles can also apply to apps, in-store experiences, and even products themselves.
The main principles of UX
User experience relies on a few key principles, and they all need to work together in tandem to provide a good experience. The four main principles are:
- Usability: Ensuring the product is easy to use, efficient, and intuitive.
- Consistency: Maintaining uniform design elements and interactions across the experience, so these remain easy to find.
- Accessibility: Making the product usable for all, including those with disabilities.
- Desirability: Creating an engaging and aesthetically pleasing experience that users enjoy.
If you tick all of the boxes except one, this remains a poor user experience. For instance, a website can look ‘pretty’ but be completely unusable, and despite its aesthetic appeal, still be off-putting to users.
The differences between UX, CX and CRO
You’ll often see UX used interchangeably with CX and CRO. These are related, but not the same – here are the key differences.
User experience (UX)
- Purely about product usability
- Focuses on how a user interacts with a specific product, service, or interface
- Involves design, functionality, and ease of use
Customer Experience (CX)
- Broader and encompasses the entire cross-channel journey
- About the overall brand experience across all touchpoints
- Includes not just the website but also marketing, sales, customer service, and post-purchase interactions
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
- A specific aspect of UX, focused on driving conversions and revenue
- Whereas UX can also cover other information featured on a website, such as aftercare, CRO does not include these aspects
- Based more on quantitative data than qualitative data
In a nutshell, CX includes UX, and UX includes CRO, but not the other way around.
As SEOs, we are typically most concerned with CRO, as one of the main goals of SEO is usually to help drive conversions and revenue.
The general UX of the website shouldn’t be neglected, though. SEO can be harnessed to help with all touchpoints on the website and, therefore, the full website user experience. For example, it may feed into FAQs on your brand or how to reach the audience to educate them about your brand.
Why UX is important for SEO
UX continues to become a greater priority for SEOs and ecommerce managers, as well as the need to work alongside designers, developers and product teams. If you don’t already, here’s why you should care about user experience.
Good UX improves your SEO (and Google have said this)
If there’s any reason for an SEO to do something to their website, it’s because Google said so. And while Google doesn’t normally give away a lot about what it favours in the SERPs, it has repeatedly stated that it values user experience and wants its results to ultimately benefit the user.
Its developer guidelines state:
“Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results.”
And:
“Google’s core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you’re providing an overall great page experience across many aspects.”
There are also a few aspects of user experience that we know Google considers as a ranking factor. Core Web Vitals is perhaps the best known, stated by Google itself, and although it’s one of hundreds of factors, it’s still worth paying attention to.
We also found out from the Google algorithm leak that Google does take clicks into account when evaluating a website, including the behaviour following the click. This is ascertained by metrics such as the time spent on the website, clicks to certain pages within the website and ‘pogo-sticking’, where a user hits the back button soon after landing on your website.
The need for more results from a smaller pool of clicks
With the rise of additional features appearing in the SERPs, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, the percentage of zero-click searches continues to grow. This means fewer website clicks as a result, as more user queries are met within the Google interface itself.
So with fewer clicks actually coming to our website, we need to be getting the most out of them that we can, maximising them for revenue and conversion wherever possible.
Another result of the changing state of the SERP is a bigger emphasis on driving branded search and direct traffic. With more work required to drive these, the user experience is especially important for this kind of traffic; these users are already familiar with your brand, so you’re losing that investment in the brand if you lose that user.
With the current state of search, getting users onto our websites is hard enough – we don’t want to lose them!
More focus on conversion & revenue KPIs
With the need to maximise the click comes the shift away from clicks as an SEO KPI. While clicks are still measured, other cost-driven metrics are now of higher importance, such as organic revenue, conversion rate and average order value.
Brands are starting to further diversify their marketing, so we need to continue to show that SEO has a place in a brand’s marketing strategy by proving return on investment. By implementing SEO best practices and also placing user experience at the heart of them, we can not only drive a higher quantity of traffic, but a higher quality too, and therefore return on investment.
Good UX also lifts performance on other channels
It might go without saying that good UX not only boosts the performance of organic traffic, but it lifts up the performance across other channels too. This is especially important as many other marketing channels (such as social) are focused higher up the funnel, so conversion metrics tend to be lower anyway. The uplift in conversion rates and metrics as a result of good UX will bring added value to those channels as well.
With the fragmented way that audiences now consume media, more and more brands are taking an omnichannel approach, and UX can underpin all of this, bringing the best practices for SEO along for the ride.
Where SEO crosses over with UX
There are several cases where SEO recommendations also correspond to UX ones, and where we can apply our SEO knowledge to make the website a better product.
Meeting search intent and giving users answers
Key to SEO is ensuring your pages match the correct search intent, and that often lays the foundations for how users interact with and move on through your website.
In terms of finding out what people want to know and meeting it, keyword research is just the starting point. We can also use this SEO skillset to find out what the audience wants to know elsewhere, and there are a whole heap of places where we can look for this information.
Internal site search
This may indicate that the user is looking for a page which either doesn’t exist or they can’t find, where you can plug the gaps.
Customer service queries
Ideally, we don’t want the user to have to write an email or pick up the phone to get what they’re after. Drill into these queries and address what you can on your website.
Product Q&As and reviews
Product Q&As may shed light on missing product information, which you can add to your listings. Reviews highlight the things about your product that matter the most to your users, to help you decide how to show your product information.
Social media comments
Like with customer service queries, this is another good source of frequently asked questions to answer on your website.
Surveys and focus groups
These are especially good for finding out what matters to your target audiences, rather than your wider pool of data from all of your users and audiences.
Heatmaps
These can highlight how much the various elements on your website or pages attract users’ attention.
A few common ways ecommerce sites align with users’ needs and intent
- Product details – both at a glance and in more detailed descriptions
- Highlighting discounts or offers available
- Signposting to delivery and returns information
- Videos or 360-degree photos showcasing the product
- Reviews or examples of real-life experience
These are all things that users might look for to inform their buying decision. Elements such as discounts and delivery costs are especially important, as the user may be close to making a purchase, and at the point of choosing whichever website has the edge in these aspects.
Displaying EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust)
EEAT is not only important to Google, but it’s also helpful for the user experience.
If you’re operating in a high-competition space, EEAT can give you the edge, as it helps indicate why users should choose you over a competitor.
This is especially important if the user is not already familiar with your brand; you can win their trust with authoritative content, show that you know what you’re talking about and demonstrate that you are there to help throughout their journey. This all adds up to a positive user experience and first impression of your brand.
Experience doesn’t only need to come from seasoned experts. Reviews and UGC also reflect real-life experiences of your products and services. With millions of pages of information out there on the internet, and more and more AI-driven content, users are seeking out first-hand opinions as a more trustworthy source of information to base their buying decision on.
Competitor analysis
Competitor analysis is not only a great way to spot opportunities within the SERPs, but also to spot additional features or functionalities that benefit the user.
A page rarely ranks in position 1 just because it is well-optimised – often, there is more to it. It could be anything from how the content is structured to the page’s position within the website hierarchy.
As SEOs, we should already be asking ourselves: what gives top-performing content in the SERPs the edge, beyond keyword optimisation? Often, what gives the top-ranking pages the edge in the SERPs will also give them the edge when it comes to user engagement.
Content marketing
Making recommendations for content marketing is part of an SEO’s bread and butter. But we can take it further than just recommending keywords, headings and topics to address. We can also make recommendations that keep eyeballs on the page and beyond.
We’re in an age of skimming and scrolling, so content needs to be made as digestible as possible for mobile screens. Google’s mobile-first indexing also emphasises the importance of this. Key elements therefore need to be front and centre.
We only have around 10 seconds of the user’s attention before they think of looking elsewhere. So think carefully about what needs to be shown above the fold (before you need to scroll), as it’s your chance to grab the user’s attention.
Your on-page content then needs to be easy to find and navigate, so users can easily find what they’re looking for if it’s not right there in front of them. A few elements you can use to organise page content or links to other pages clearly include:
- Tabs, for organising different strands of product information
- Accordions, to pop out only the content that the user needs (such as in FAQs)
- Contents or jump links, to take the user to relevant sections lower down the page
- Buttons, to outline the key calls to action
- Clear headings and broken up sections, to make long-form content more digestible and skimmable
Making websites more accessible
Accessibility to all is something we should all strive for, especially with the arrival of the European Accessibility Act. Core Web Vitals address some of the accessibility issues that websites can present, but the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) set the precedent for what websites operating in the EU need to comply with.
Websites can also be perfectly accessible on a desktop, but not translate well on a mobile, so it’s vital to test across all device types.
Improving general website performance, including Core Web Vitals
SEO also plays its part in improving general website performance by making recommendations for Core Web Vitals. As well as being a ranking factor, poor performance can be a deterrent before the users even get to your content. Think slow loading times, pop-up ads, and pages not responding when items are clicked.
Fixing issues flagged by Core Web Vitals can sometimes be resource-intensive and make little real difference to the user. Focusing on above-the-fold performance is perhaps the most important, as the first few seconds on a page are crucial.
Making navigating between pages easy
In SEO, clear internal linking is key to strong rankings, as it demonstrates to Google the hierarchy of your site and how various pages are connected.
This also translates to the user experience, in that, within our internal linking strategies, we can consider all of the potential next steps a user might take. Any page could be the first place that users land on your website, so you need to ensure they’re not met with a dead end.
A mega-menu is a key way to provide sitewide navigation, while breadcrumbs, filters and sidebars can make navigation between parent and child categories easier. You should also be linking to related pages or content wherever possible. And while a site search function can fill in the gaps as a last resort, it ideally shouldn’t be the only way that users can find a page.
Last but not least: hassle-free checkout experiences
The last step of any ecommerce website experience – and one of the most important – checkouts are often forgotten about when it comes to optimising user experience.
But depending on how customisable your checkout is, there are plenty of opportunities to make the purchase as quick and easy as possible for your customers:
- Minimise steps on checkout forms
- Guest checkout options to save time logging in/creating accounts
- Autofill for details such as address
- Quick payment options such as Apple Pay and PayPal
You can have the best website ever, but if your checkout experience is bad, you can lose the user completely, along with the purchase they were planning to make.
Tools for analysing where to improve your website’s UX
Whether you have a small or large budget, there are plenty of tools out there (some free!) which give you insights into different aspects of user behaviour and overall website experience.
Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights
These two free tools are both already part of every SEO’s toolbox, helping to audit a web page’s technical performance and whether it is adhering to web best practices. They are crucial for identifying where to improve on Core Web Vitals (a Google ranking factor), which in turn cross over with improving important aspects of user experience such as loading, interactivity and visual stability.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another free tool with bags of potential for diving into user behaviour on-site. While metrics like engagement rate and event tracking are the more obvious ways of tracking user behaviour at your disposal, the Path and Funnel Exploration tools within GA4 give great insights into the journeys your users take around your website.
These journeys can be pinpointed from the beginning or end of the journey using both pages and events as touchpoints. Whether you want to see the steps users take before heading to checkout, or where users go next after landing on your homepage, these tools offered by Google Analytics will help visualise this.
Website optimisation tools
There are a host of website optimisation tools out there, which typically collect both qualitative and quantitative data, offering more detailed insights on user behaviour than the other tools listed above.
Key features of website optimisation tools often include heatmaps for clicks and scrolls, identifying how far down a page users get and which elements of the page they are clicking on. Many also offer session recordings, giving further insight into what makes users tick on a qualitative level. These can be time-consuming to analyse, but are one of the best examples of real-world data to help you build a case for change.
Some tools also offer A/B testing to measure which version of a page or page element performs best, along with survey and feedback widgets, inviting users to give direct feedback on their website experience.
Popular tools on the market include Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Optimizely, UserTesting and Lucky Orange. These are all paid-for tools (though free trials may be available). However, Microsoft Clarity is a free open-source tool worth trying to find out if a website optimisation tool is for you.
How data can drive UX (and SEO) improvements
Equipped with insights from the tools listed above, along with search data from your existing SEO toolbox, you can create powerful strategies to improve both your SEO and UX at both a page and a website level. Here are just some of the ways you can layer these insights together.
Improving site structure and navigation
UX data is key here for identifying important pages and content to bring to the forefront, in turn optimising your navigation. Pair this with search volumes for the target keywords of each page to demonstrate demand and to recommend a navigation strategy that accurately reflects this. These insights can also help inform internal linking strategies elsewhere on the site.
Enhancing page load speed
Dive into your Page Speed Insights to identify the main areas to improve from a technical POV: which areas are seen as poor in Google’s eyes? Then use website optimisation tools to look a little closer. With these, you can identify the page types where slow loading times are a real issue for users, along with which page elements the user looks to interact with first, to build business cases and prioritise actions.
Optimising content based on user behaviour
As well as identifying issues at website and page template level, UX data can reveal opportunities for increased user engagement on individual pages too.
Heatmaps, scroll maps and session recordings can all show how users interact with your content and where they may be dropping off. Layering this with keyword research to identify related FAQs and searched-for topics means you can develop comprehensive, detailed content that ticks your target audience’s boxes.
A/B testing
A/B testing is a definitive way to measure the impact of a change on-site, but it should be measured with both UX and SEO in mind to more fully outline the upsides and downsides of a test.
Use UX tools to study the interaction with different layouts and elements before and after, and tap into SEO tools to monitor the impact the change can have on rankings, click-through rates and organic sessions.
Get the most from your website traffic with a UX-driven SEO strategy
Looking to unlock your website’s full potential? Get in touch to find out how we can help with a UX-driven SEO strategy for your website.
Our team of ecommerce SEO specialists can help you find and address your website’s biggest weaknesses and greatest opportunities to help lift organic traffic, user engagement, sales and revenue.
