Do SEO and UX go hand in hand?

After attending the EGR Power Affiliates Summit recently, I noticed a lot of my responses to questions included the phrases “back in the day” or “seven years ago when I first started in the industry”. And apart from realising that I am now middle-aged, it got me thinking about what was important to SEO “back in the day” and what is now.

Back then it was all about rankings. Affiliate portals had the tendency to think that getting keywords featured as many times as possible on a page without making it look too unnatural was the best way to optimise their website. It was also the practice of many an SEO agency irrespective of the target industry.

I’m happy to say that SEO strategies and search engines, in general, have evolved massively since then. No longer can you simply stuff an article with keywords and rank highly on search engines and make money – you need to make sure the user experience is on your priority list too. User experience was always the philosophy of Google, and the progression of the algorithm updates from the search engine is making this vision a reality.

We’ve seen a lot of people manage to get ahead of search engines before the likes of Panda, Hummingbird and Penguin algorithms rolled out, and they were definitely rewarded, and then there were others who were still looking for a quick ranking fix who got left behind. It is important to think about the larger goals that you want to achieve from your portal these days as opposed to simply your rankings, for true success.

Why SEO and UX are linked

UX and SEO come hand in hand in simple terms because they are both concentrated on what a user will see and experience online. SEO will help to determine how a website will rank on SERP (search engine results page), and UX will define whether or not people are finding quality in the results they get.

Because of this, there is a crucial connection between the two.

How critical is user experience?

UX is all about focusing on the visitor and making sure that you have the visitor in mind in your affiliate marketing plan and is critical for your marketing plan. The objective should always be to make the user think as little as possible, and for them to get where they want to without a problem.

Of course, certain activities we perform have search engines in mind, but the search engines themselves have decided that they need those things because it is what they have learned from the user activity.

Google and other search engines, don’t simply help users find what they are searching for, at every point, they are collating data so they can understand the user behaviour. It’s from this data they change and update algorithms to ensure that the user ends up with the results they want, and not what they don’t want.

This means that a website needs to do a very good job of ensuring the needs of the users are met once they are on their portal. Make this the priority and eventually the rankings will take care of themselves.

Creating content for SEO and UX

The trend with the content on your website is that it always needs to be high quality. When you are focused on the quality, the idea would be for you to reap the UX benefits in the process. The trick is ensuring that the content you have produced is strategically placed to find both SEO and UX success. That’s the perfect combination.

The first few minutes on a website is critical, so it’s important you have the right mix. For example, longer pieces of content are much easier for bots to index – so it is important that they appear on your site, but you also need to keep the user’s attention so you may also want to include blog items or graphic elements on the page.

Ideally, you would have the engaging content featured at the top, and then the longer form of content at the bottom. All in all, the content should be informative, be easy for the user to read, have an appealing design element and a clear call to action.

Evolve your UX strategy

A challenge that some UX teams have faced is that their thinking is too linear, and their UX efforts are mainly focused on the homepage. In actuality, although it tends to be the most visited landing page, a large percentage of consumers don’t start their journey on your site there.

This means that there also needs to be more attention placed on the inner pages of your website. If you don’t consider all of the different entry points to your website, it means that the user could end up leaving your portal and look elsewhere.

UX isn’t about providing the best experience to the user on one specific journey that would begin on the homepage, it’s a data driven campaign that should take into account all of the entry points to your website. When you adapt your UX strategy to consider this, organic search success will come as the user is always getting what they need from you.

In order to keep evolving your strategy – user testing is incredibly important. There is always room for improvement. Even if something is currently working on your website, can it be made better?

Sharon McFarlane is managing director and co-founder of Crystal Content. The company launched in 2010, and originally specialised in producing SEO rich content pieces for the egaming industry. Since then they have evolved into a full-service marketing agency, increasing traffic and conversions using design, content marketing, media buying, direct mailing and social media marketing.