UX is about so much more than page load times—and with the recent revelations about Google’s leaked search API documents, it’s more important than ever. Here’s why you should be putting UX front and center in your SEO approach, from the team at Apex Growth.
- UX encompasses all user interactions with your content, including navigability, clarity, and design.
- Improving UX can enhance your search engine rankings because Google measures user signals that provide data on how people are engaging with content.
- Optimizing your content for UX includes engaging visitors quickly, keeping content updated and accurate, establishing authority with trusted sources, and offering unique value to stand out from competitors.
- Technical SEO still matters for UX. Improve your page load speed and mobile optimization by using responsive design, minimizing HTTP requests, enabling browser caching, and regularly testing across different devices.
How We Know Google Values User Experience
When you think of UX in the context of SEO, you probably think of page load times or core web vitals. But UX actually includes every element of your content that a user interacts with—including navigability, clarity, design, and more.
All of these elements contribute to the overall experience a person has on your page. And since Google cares deeply about the way users engage with content, improving this experience can also improve your search engine rankings.
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If you work—or even dabble—in SEO, then you probably heard about the leaked Google Search API documents that were made public in May 2024. If you didn’t, here’s a quick rundown of what happened and why it matters in the context of this conversation:
Basically, tons of documents from inside Google’s search division were leaked, the contents of which contradicted numerous statements made by the company in recent years. One of the biggest revelations was that Google looks at clicks and engagement on searches both during and after each main query, and uses this to help refine their rankings.
The leak also suggests that Google is using click and engagement data from its popular Chrome browser.
In other words: Google’s rankings are directly impacted by the experiences users have when they visit web content.
What Is Google Looking At?
The leak suggests that Google could be weighing previously unknown factors like:
- The number of clicks to your site
- The amount of time users spend on your site
- The longest amount of time users spend on a SERP result
That means SEO has to account for UX in a holistic way—not just nail a few key metrics. Competitive SEO requires optimizing for UX, and UX now means anything and everything your audience interacts with on your site.
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Four Easy Steps to UX for Content
Google’s stated goal is to reward content that offers authentic value for users, so most of what they want to see from a UX perspective is common sense if you keep that goal in mind.
But to help you drill deeper, we’ve created a few guiding principles you can use to make sure the UX your content offers is on point. Here’s what we recommend:
Get to the Point
The sooner you engage visitors when they land on your site, the less likely they’ll be to hit the back button. That means you want to optimize your hero section and introduction to grab and hold interest.
This keeps your bounce rate low—which in turn tells Google that what you’re offering users is delivering enough value to keep them on your page.
Keep It Fresh (& Accurate)
Another revelation from the algorithm leak? “Content freshness” is a thing, even for content that you might not think as timely.
Keep your content up to date and make sure the information you’re providing is always correct and relevant. This means no keyword-stuffed clickbait jargon, and no leaving articles up for years without checking on them. Review and update your content matrix often.
Related: Mass Publishing Blogs Doesn’t Work for SEO Like It Used To
Establish Authority
When your content comes from—or is endorsed by—trusted sources, Google assumes it has more authority. A big part of this is securing high-quality backlinks for your site, and avoiding spammy links (which will hurt your credibility and sink your rankings like a stone).
Every serious SEO campaign needs an authority building component, which should be a mix of backlink generation, brand mentions, and branded-search generation (getting people to Google your brand name). As AI Overviews become more prevalent, earning and maintaining authority will become an even more important differentiator than it is today.
Stand Out from the Crowd
This is especially important in the age of Google’s AI Overviews, which create AI-generated summaries based on web content to answer questions and long tail keywords. These summaries are now displayed at the top of search results, along with a limited number of links to the content they reference. All traditional search results get displayed underneath.
Getting your content linked to in AI Overviews means better visibility—but because space in this section is so competitive, your content needs to be uniquely valuable. Offer useful information or an experience that users can’t get elsewhere in the SERPs.
Related: Google’s AI Overviews Are Here: What It Means for Your SEO Campaign
UX for Navigation & Layout
Making your site easy to navigate also plays a critical role in improving your UX. Your site architecture (the hierarchical structure of your pages) fulfills two main SEO purposes:
1. It makes it easier for users to find what they’re looking for, increasing their engagement and lowering your bounce rates.
2. It improves crawlability for search engines by making the connections between your different pages clear and logical.
Always think in terms of the user’s journey when creating your sitemap and wireframes. You want menus, headings, and CTAs that help people find what they’re looking for and take appropriate action easily.
Technical SEO Still Matters for UX
You can make significant improvements to all of the UX elements we’ve covered above just by putting yourself in the user’s shoes and imagining what you’d want to see if you were them. But that doesn’t mean you can forget about the technical SEO aspects of offering great UX. Here are a couple of musts:
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Enhance Your Page Load Speed
People expect immediate results—if your page takes too long to load, they’ll likely leave. Here’s how you can speed things up to keep your bounce rate low and your audience engaged:
- Compress and properly format images to balance quality and load speed.
- Enable browser caching so pages load faster on subsequent visits.
- Minimize HTTP requests by reducing elements like scripts, images, and CSS files.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute your content across multiple locations worldwide. This can improve load times for global users.
- Try lazy loading, where images and videos only load as they come into view for each user.
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Optimize for Mobile
Most searches now happen on mobile devices, so you need your site to look great and work smoothly on phones and tablets. Here’s what to focus on:
- Use responsive design to make sure your site smoothly adapts to different screen sizes and orientations.
- Implement mobile-friendly menus (like hamburger menus) that are easy to access and use.
- Avoid intrusive pop-ups. Pop-ups can be particularly annoying on mobile. Use them sparingly and make sure they’re easy to close.
- Make buttons and links easy to click by keeping them large and well-spaced.
Regularly test your site on different mobile devices and browsers to ensure consistent performance.
Invest in UX Support that Drives Results
Because UX now touches literally every part of a given user’s interaction with your site and content, it’s a far deeper rabbit hole than most people imagine. And since we now know more about how it factors into the way Google ranks your content, there are strong SEO-related arguments for taking your UX seriously.
Improving your site’s UX isn’t rocket science—but it also takes consistent time and effort to ensure that it helps you rank effectively. Reach out to our team at Apex Growth to learn more about how we can improve the experience you offer users and help you sustainably grow your digital presence.