Focus on user experience and SEO success will follow

Hellen says: "Focus on what is best for the user and SEO ranking improvements will come naturally. Improve your website experience, listen to the user, and make your content relevant. You will not only make the user happy; you will make Google happy and also improve conversion rates."

What constitutes a good user experience in 2022?

"As we know, in 2021 we had the Google algorithm update called the Page Experience update. Google is telling us that experience is a priority. In order to determine what is best for your users, you need to listen to them and do your research. However, you need to start this research from search, before the point where the user lands on your website. Get to know your user's journey, their pain points, and what kind of content they need. You need to observe what search results your users click on so that you can create pages and content that will rank - because they will get more engagement."

What does high quality user research look like?

"You can look at your Google Analytics data to see which pages people are accessing, and how long they are spending there. You can also use other software to see things like mouse movements for your users. However, the best way to get what you are looking for is through interviews, and video recordings of people going through their searches and trying to find your site. A service like UserTesting.com will give you that kind of data. It is really useful to get several minutes' recording of someone going through your site, and hearing what they're saying when they're experiencing your site for the first time.

Importantly, a recording can also show you what users are doing when they are searching for a product, and doing pricing research in the category of business that you operate in. You can observe what types of results they are clicking on and why - therefore you can see how they interact with your competitors. You can find out what your competitors might be doing better to see what areas you can improve in. Then, you can also see the whole user journey on your own website until, hopefully, they end up buying something. That will help you to optimise your page to make it more user-friendly and you will make Google happy as well."

What signals is Google getting from this optimisation? Are they able to recognise user satisfaction and reward that with SEO rankings?

"Google is a user in a way, but it is also a machine. It's not a human user but it is looking for the user-based signals that are telling it whether your website is good or not. First with the mobile-friendly Google algorithm update, and now with Core Web Vitals, Google has shown that it's mainly focussed on providing the best user experience. Alongside having good content that is relevant, and having a competitive product, you need to provide a good user experience. In that sense, think of Google as a user as well."

How do you measure the impact of improving user experience?

"You should mostly be looking at conversion rates. It's the first signal you can see clearly. You can also observe the impact that your improvements are having on rankings, and on your visibility. Google will see that you are converting more and will therefore recognise that your page is relevant for the search. The result of that will be an impact on rankings.

If you improve the user experience on a certain page, and don't make improvements to the user experience of a very similar page, you can test to see the precise level of impact that the improvements have had. It will be a visible difference. This also makes it easier to get commercial buy-in. Everyone understands user experience, but not everyone understands search engine optimisation. When you have an impact on the bottom line, on revenue and sales, and have an impact on organic traffic - that's ideal."

What are some typical improvements that need to be done, where SEOs and website designers are making mistakes that result in a bad user experience?

"Often the area where users are having trouble, during their interaction with a website, is in filtering the information and being unable find what you have to offer. When a user comes from search, they land on a specific page. Users may not land on the best page for their result straightaway. From there, it can be difficult to see what the best result for their query is within your website. You need to improve the user journey to make sure that they convert.

In the end, we want to sell more. We are on Google because we want more traffic, and we want more conversions. Making sure that your users are able to filter the information on your site, and reach the best result for their query, is a fantastic example of user experience and rankings working together. You need to understand how users interact with the search results in order to do that."

Do you think Google will make more of a formal announcement about precisely how much user experience is going to impact rankings in the future?

"I believe they will keep pushing for improvements to user experience because no user likes to land on a dodgy web page. Users don't like it when they want to click on something, but it moves out of the way, or when the page is slow to load. I believe that Google will continue to show their focus on user experience, step-by-step, as they have done with mobile-friendly and now Core Web Vitals. They will continue to focus on showing the sites that provide the best experience in their results."

How often should SEOs be looking at conversion rates and recommending improvements to the user experience?

"Mainly, it is a one-off major project prior to initiating a major website redesign. Apart from that, it's about incorporating it into your regular checks and keeping an eye open for key changes. I look at it by product and by the important areas of the website. As long as you have first addressed the pain points during the user's journey, you don't need to revisit too often. When you see new things that can be improved, then you can revisit. It is a big job because you need resources to optimise the page: content, design, SEO, and technical SEO behind the pages. Just make sure that you keep listening to the user and tracking your rankings. Whenever you see a group of pages that are not ranking as well as they should, you can revisit and try to understand why."

What's something that SEOs should probably stop doing in order to spend more time focusing in on user experience?

"A lot of SEOs create content just for the sake of creating content. They create many pages which don't get that much traffic, and with time they become out of date. It's a legacy to manage. Whenever you create new content, or a new page, you need to make sure that you are maintaining it - and it is relevant for the user. You need to think about where this page will sit in the user journey, and what purpose it is serving."

Hellen Benavides is eCommerce Experience & SEO Lead at giffgaff.com.