As Pay Per Click Advertising, sometimes called Search Engine Marketing is what almost every website owner is on the lookout for these days, Search engine optimization (SEO) has become more and more complex over the years. There are hundreds of factors that are taken into consideration within Google’s algorithms. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the search space – and for good reason – it is the best at providing searchers with the most relevant content as quickly as possible. That leads many businesses, which rely heavily on search engines, to wonder: is there posting software for GMB listings, because Google My Business is too vital a software for such businesses.
At a very high-level, Google rewards those sites that provide searchers with a great user experience (UX) and relevant content. Below you will find tips on how to use the combined power of SEO and UX to rise to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) and compel your audience to complete your desired action(s).
1. Create substantial, valuable, accessible content
- Target Audience: To dominate the search space within your respective industry, it is critical to understand your target audience’s needs and wants.
- Content should answer the questions that they have in order to guide them through the buyer’s journey and ultimately complete your desired action(s).
- Keyword research: Researching popular keywords is an important data-driven way to understand how your target audience is searching for things. Make sure to use this research to inform your content strategy.
- This process will help create guide posts around the content creation process to ensure that content is centered on relevant topics in the vernacular that users are searching for and ultimately help people find your content. Start posting yourself and check top guests’ reviews, as their needs are the most critical component of any purchasing decision.
- User Experience (UX): It is important from a UX perspective, that key pieces of content along the user journey are easy to find and the layout of the page makes the content digestible and engaging.
2. Create a website that is easy to navigate across devices
- We live in a constantly connected world where people are using various devices to conduct their research. Your content should be accessible and easily digestible across all of them.
- If your website presents a poor user experience on mobile, you could frustrate a potential prospect and be dropped from their consideration.
- From both an SEO and a UX perspective it is extremely important that your site loads quickly on all devices. 53% of users are apt to drop from your site if it takes more than three seconds to load.
- Make sure that your key calls to action (CTA) are easily visible across all devices and don’t drop off on different versions.
3. Leverage data to understand where the site experience could be improved
- A site is a living and breathing thing that changes over time and it is important to analyze user behavior on the site to understand where the user experience and content could be improved upon.
- Leverage analytics to understand the pages that may not meet the needs of the user.
- Assess things such as bounce rate, exit rate, and time spent on page for key pages in the user journey to understand if the metrics that you are seeing align with the desired intent of the page.
- If something seems off in the data, use this as a signal to evaluate the page at a deeper level. Analyze the page with these key questions in mind:
- Is the content meeting the needs of the user?
- Is it easily accessible?
- Is it digestible?
- Is it visually compelling?
- Is there a clear CTA?
At the end of the day, providing a great user experience and content that is tailored to your target audiences is a win-win-win strategy. Your audience benefits from having their needs and wants met, Google benefits from being able to serve up relevant content quickly, and you benefit from achieving organizational goals and/or driving more business from your web efforts.
