At Lumen, we’re always talking about how user experience affects SEO, and honestly, this can’t be overstated! A great UX doesn’t just make site visitors happy, it helps your site rank better on search engines.
Google (and other search engines) prioritise websites that deliver users a seamless, engaging, and accessible experience.
The better the experience, the longer people stick around. The more they interact, the more likely they are to convert. All this tells search engines that your site is worth showing to more people.
If you’re wondering how to improve user experience on a website, you can do the following:
- Be smart with site architecture
- Use proper headings
- Improve page speed
- Optimise your website for mobile
- Implement accessible UX design
We’ll explore how to do each of these methods below. Ready to make your website’s UX better? Let’s dive in!
1. Be Smart With Site Architecture
A well-structured website is a game-changer for user experience!
Visitors are more likely to find what they need on a site that’s easy to navigate, making them increasingly likely to convert. Search engines also understand well-organised sites better, improving your chances of ranking higher in SERPs.
Start by mapping out the backbone of your website’s structure, known as information architecture. This involves categorising content clearly, grouping similar pages and ensuring your most important pages are easy to access.
A simple, intuitive navigation menu and search bar can also guide users effortlessly through your site. Cluttered menus with too many options can overwhelm visitors, leading to decision fatigue and higher bounce rates.
Other ways to improve site architecture include:
- Conducting user research: Understanding your audience’s behaviour, needs, and search habits, then structuring your site in a way that makes sense to them.
- Creating a sitemap (HTML & XML): A sitemap can help search engines crawl your site and improve accessibility.
2. Use Proper Headings
Headings do more than just break up text, they make your content easier to read, improve accessibility, and help search engines understand your page structure.
As long as they’re used effectively, headings create a logical flow that guides users through blog content, keeping them engaged and reducing bounce rates.
To optimise headings for user experience in SEO, follow these best practices:
Use a clear hierarchy: Start with a <h1> for the main topic, then organise subtopics with <h2>, <h3>, and so on. Avoid skipping heading levels, as this can confuse readers and search engines.
Make headings meaningful: Users often scan headings first, so check that they’re descriptive and relevant to the content below.
Boost accessibility: Well-structured headings help screen readers navigate the page, making your content more inclusive. Don’t use bold paragraph text as a substitute for actual headings, as this doesn’t provide the same benefits.
Keep it simple: Too many headings can be overwhelming. Stick to <h2> and <h3> or most pages, unless more depth is needed.
3. Improve Page Speed
Nobody likes a slow website. If your pages take too long to load, visitors are more likely to leave before even engaging with your content, hurting both user experience and SEO.
Google also considers page speed as a ranking factor, so a sluggish site could lead to lower search rankings and less traffic.
Here are some things you can do to make your website load faster and improve your UX:
Optimise images and multimedia: Large image files slow down a page, but you can compress images without sacrificing quality with tools like TinyPNG.
Limit plugins and scripts: Too many plugins can bog down performance. Regularly audit and remove any unnecessary ones.
Reduce server response time: Faster servers mean quicker page loads. Consider upgrading your hosting provider if you have slow response times.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN stores copies of your website’s content on multiple servers around the world, leading to faster loading times no matter where users are located.
Look into minification: Minifying HTML, JavaScript, and CSS removes unnecessary spaces, comments, and long names, which reduces file size without affecting functionality. This speeds up loading times and decreases bandwidth usage, making web pages more efficient.
4. Optimise Your Website For Mobile
With 92.3% of internet users using a mobile phone to use the internet, optimising your website for mobile is no longer optional, it’s a must.
Mobile-friendly sites improve user experience by making content easy to read and navigate on smaller screens. Google also prioritises mobile-friendly sites in search rankings, so failing to optimise for mobile could mean losing valuable traffic.
Here are some mobile optimisation tips for your website:
Responsive design: Make sure your site automatically adjusts to fit any screen size. This improves UX by making it easier for users to find information.
Fast loading times: Mobile users expect quick access to content, so ensure your site loads fast by optimising images, minimising code, and using caching.
Touch-friendly navigation: Make sure that buttons and menus are large enough to navigate touchscreens easily. Avoid clutter and check that everything is easy to tap on a phone.
Test across devices: Check how your site looks and performs on various devices regularly, to maintain a smooth user experience all-round.
5. Implement Accessible UX Design
Accessible website design involves creating an inclusive website experience for all users.
Accessibility itself isn’t a direct SEO ranking factor as it’s difficult to measure, but accessible websites tend to see improved user engagement and better click-through rates. Google values these positive user interactions, which can improve search visibility over time.
Here are some things you can do to implement accessible UX design to improve UX and SEO.
Use Descriptive Alt Text: Add helpful alternative text to images which describe the image’s purpose and context. This helps visually impaired people who use screen readers, as well as those with slow internet connections, as alt text will display if images fail to load.
Colour Contrast For Readability: Check there’s enough contrast between text and background colours to improve readability, as this helps users with low vision or colour blindness.
Enable Keyboard Navigation: Check that you can easily navigate your site with a keyboard. This will help users with motor disabilities who may not be able to use a mouse. Allow users to navigate through all interactive elements (like menus and form fields) with just the keyboard.
Test Users With Disabilities: Continuously test your website with users who have disabilities to identify and fix potential usability issues. Their feedback will help you make your website design as accessible as possible.
How We Can Help
We hope that this post on how to improve user experience on a website has shown you how to improve your site’s performance, usability and, ultimately, your SEO.
At Lumen SEO, we’re committed to helping businesses improve their search rankings and take their website’s user experience to the next level.
Whether it’s maintaining accessibility or optimising page speed, we can help you implement best practices that can boost user engagement and your search engine rankings.
Contact us today to get started.
