SEO and UX: how to retain the user to delight the search engine

When we have a website we want to appear in the first places of Google, since they are usually those that have more traffic. On several occasions we wonder why our digital business is not working, and the answer to this question is that there is no qualified web traffic. Fortunely there is a way to  position yourself in these first places and get this qualified traffic and it is through quality content and a correctly performed SEO.

Nowadays the profile of the consumer that was commonly known has changed, now he is much more critical and informed, besides he carries out his actions in an intelligent way. So, just as the consumer has evolved so do the search engines in order to give the consumer the right information. All this is done by the new patterns that have been found in the way people search. The reason why a search engine wants to give you the information you need in the right way is to achieve a better user experience.

All these changes in the consumer profile and in the search engines, make the SEO positioning and user experience (UX) the key to improving qualified web traffic .

Now to understand how these terms are linked, we must first understand what each one of them is:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

It is a strategy that helps a web page appear in Google's organic results because it improves the site's visibility. SEO focuses on using various techniques to attract qualified users, so it identifies, displays, and optimizes content. In addition to pleasing the user, it also seeks to please Google, since the search engines use algorithms that are assisted by keywords, number of links, friendly URLs, among other technical aspects to classify the pages in the search engine. In addition, it also utilizes aspects of usability that the page has, such as the load time, if the design is responsive, the format of the content and others.

UX (User Experience)

Its main objective is to provide a good user experience when interacting with the website or any other product either tangible or intangible, centralizing the actions on the user in order to satisfy their needs.

Now, we have that SEO focuses on external elements of the website, in order to position the page in the first results and increase the traffic, while UX focuses on making that the users who already arrived to the website, have interest and stay in it even longer, generating more conversions.

User experience entile multiple benefits for the page and for the improvement of SEO. Therefore, it is an important point to be considered when designing your website.

As mentioned before, search engines have evolved to give the new user profile the information that truly adds value to it and thus provide the best possible experience for your readers. Within the metrics used for positioning there are several linked to the user experience, such as permanence in the page, the bounce rate, and the number of clicks.

Perhaps from a first entry we do not understand how these indexes are related to UX, but what this indicates is that users who entered the page found the information they needed and they were able to do it in a pleasant way. Therefore, the longer a user is on your site and the more actions they take within it, search engines will assume that you offer a good experience and will position them higher in the search results.

Factors to retain the user:

These are some factors that can help retain the user through SEO and UX, if these are properly optimized:

1. Attractive and consistent titles: They help users and search engines understand the content and hierarchy within the website. Therefore you must describe in a good way what information is to be found and it should be attractive so that users will want to keep reading the rest of the content.
2. Effective CTA: CTAs must be noticed within the site design, because they intend for the user to interact with it and bring them closer to conversion, it also provides a guide for user navigation.
3. Intuitive navigation: Users must be able to find the information they are looking for easily and quickly without having to waste time. given that immediacy is nowadays very important for people and if they do not find it they will simply leave the website.
4. Fast loading speed: As we said before, immediacy is very important today, so search engines penalize the positioning of a site if it has a slow loading time. In addition, users abandon pages that take a long time to load, so it is important to optimize properly the page to achieve a fast loading time.
5. Fresh and quality content: In the methodology of Inbound Marketing is recommended to provide fresh content and quality to the user because to improve SEO the frequency with which the content is updated is another parameter that take the search engines to position different websites, a page that does not upload new content at least once a month, will not be in the first places. But in addition, we must consider that it is not only about uploading content so that the search engines do not penalize us, but that this content must be of quality to offer the user relevant information, and as we have already mentioned, make them remain on our page for a longer period of time.

In conclusion, if you want to be well positioned in search engines, you must provide users with a good experience, so SEO and UX must go hand-in-hand to achieve the goal of a successful digital business.

For all this, it is important to know the Buyer Persona you have to approach the content, navigation, and all the experience to them, as well as taking care of the optimization of your site. In this way you can charm users and at the same time search engines.