Does user experience matter for your ranking?
If you have read UX blogs over the Internet as well as on our platform, you must have an idea of how UX works for your ranking. UX stands for User Experience. If your website is easy to use and engaging with minimum bounce rate, you have a good UX score that further improves your ranking.
But here comes the twist.
Google has officially told that UX has no role to play in ranking over its search engine. Interestingly, the search engine giant is launching its Google Page Experience Update algorithm in 2021 to consider user experience an important ranking factor.
But Google still doesn’t accept that it uses user experience and social experience for ranking.
Is the search engine lying?
PROBABLY, YES.
This is because Google is relying on Google Analytics and Chrome data for ranking purposes.
Here’s How Google Secretly Considers Your UX Signals for Ranking
Although UX is not a major part of the algorithm, Google still considers it as a score for ranking. How does Google determine the UX of any website?
Well, most websites have Google analytics on them for goals and conversion. Google sees all that information to get an idea of your conversion rate, engagement, and bounce rate. These things might be directly plugged into the algorithm. Despite all that, Google will not admit to using such UX factors for ranking (till the launch of its new algorithm).
WHY GOOGLE IS AFTER UX SIGNALS?
A visitor looks for great user experience on the website.
For example, there is a competitive keyword used by several websites. The site that occurs on the top (for the keyword) is not successful to convert the visitors. People just visit the site and immediately back out, meaning that they don’t like the site.
However, the other sites that are on the 2, 3, 4 spots and onwards are converting the users with a lower bounce rate. Then Google is likely to move the first site a bit lower and move other ones up based on the conversions. After all, the success of Google relies on its ability to provide quality results for each user. There is no use of keeping the poor sites on the top no matter how good keywords they have.
Secondly, UX helps Google understand the search intent so that it can show the relevant websites to the users.
The search engine also considers responsiveness and page load time which are also important UX factors. Although it is not clear why Google doesn’t officially accept UX as a ranking factor, it determines the ranking on the UX signals in one way or another.
Important UX Factors to Work On for Your Website
Whether you take Google’s denial of UX for ranking seriously or not, ensuring a great experience to the visitors is the key to success. It keeps your audience engaged and positivity affects other Google metrics for your website. Most importantly, Google is going to launch its user experience algorithm, requiring you to do things beforehand to survive it. Here are some key UX factors to incorporate into your website.
Load Time:
Make sure your website or webpage loads quickly as soon as it is clicked. Otherwise, a user is likely to leave the site if doesn’t open within 5 seconds. Some basic tips to improve the site load speed are to minimizing the file sizes, image optimization and making the fewest possible server requests.
Mobile Responsiveness:
The website should look and feel great on both desktop and mobile screens.
User-Friendly URL Structure:
A good URL structure tells what the page is about. A messy URL structure can confuse both the user and search engine.
Site Navigation:
Good site navigation guides the user on various parts as well as what action to be taken next. Use categories, clear CTAs, and above all keep everything clear and simple for the users.
Wait! That is a Trial and Error Method
While UX is said to be the part of ranking algorithms, there is no hard and fast rule to ensure what UX can work. That’s a bit puzzling. Top of that, it is a popular saying in the digital marketing world that do the opposite what Google says.
Some marketers say that UX signals like CTR improved their ranking while some said they didn’t.
The best way to see if your UX works for ranking is to build some test sites or run some experiments with your website. This way, you can see the difference between the sites and determine which UX can work. However, it is important to imply the basic UX rules such as user-friendly navigation and page load time.
The bottom line is here that you need to test, test and test till you see the results.
What do you think? Drop your opinion to the comment box given below!
Started working as a digital marketing expert, Varun Sharma is now also a well-known digital marketing speaker – a speaker on performance development, and a trusted mentor to businesses in the digital world. His keynote expositions are based on the digital marketing theories, which provide a fascinating insight into the secrets of high performance.