Growing the reach your small business has will require you to focus on creating an online presence. Long gone are the days when business owners could rely solely on print ads and billboards to generate a buzz about the products/services they offer. These days, small business owners have to focus on digital marketing if they want to edge out the competition.
An appealing and functional website is one of the most important digital assets a business owner needs to reach a larger audience. As you start to design a website with the help of an experienced web developer, you need to consider the experience it will provide the people who visit it. If achieving your small business SEO goals is a top priority, then educating yourself about the importance of website user experience (UX) is essential.
Failing to provide a great website user experience can affect your ability to generate online sales leads. In a recent study, over 88% of consumers claimed they would not return to a website that provided a bad user experience. Rather than allowing potential customers to slip through your hands due to a bad user experience, you need to optimize your domain.
Below is important information about website user experience and why it should be an essential part of your small business SEO strategy.
What Is Website User Experience?
The way visitors feel when navigating or interacting with the content on a website is referred to as their website user experience. Things like user interface and usability are key components of the website user experience. When trying to design a website that provides a great UX, small business owners will have to consider possible pain points.
A pain point is a place on a website where users might get confused by the interface in place. If you want to provide a great UX, you have to identify these pain points and fix them before they run potential customers off. A great user experience will allow visitors to easily locate the information they are searching for. By providing a great UX, you can, in turn, increase engagement.
Engagement Metrics and Small Business SEO
When crawling a website to rank it, the Google algorithm will consider a number of user experience metrics. These metrics allow this algorithm to assess how well a website is meeting the needs of search engine users.
Page Dwell Time
The more engaging your website is, the longer a visitor will hang around. Dwell time is the term used to describe the amount of time a website visitor will spend on a domain after finding it on a search engine results page. If a user spends a long amount of time on a website, Google will consider this a positive indication that the domain in question is meeting the needs of search engine users.
However, if search engine users spend a short amount of time on a website, Google may get the impression that the content it contains isn’t helpful or relevant. Improving dwell time can help you boost the results garnered by your small business SEO campaigns.
You can improve website dwell time by providing visitors with relevant content. Making sure the content on your page aligns with your target user’s search intent is vital. Using informative introductions and easy-to-scan long-form content can help you keep website visitors on your domain for longer periods of time.
Bounce Rate
If you are passionate about achieving your small business SEO goals, you need to become familiar with the term bounce rate. The percentage of people that leave your website after viewing one page is known as your bounce rate. If your bounce rate is high, it means that the people visiting your website didn’t find the information they needed.
Websites with high bounce rates usually have a hard time getting to the top of search engine results pages. Some of the most common problems that lead to high bounce rates are things like:
- Slow page speed
- Confusing user experience
- Bad web design
- Irrelevant content
As soon as you discover bounce rate issues, you need to look at the factors mentioned above. By addressing these problems, you can keep website visitors on your domain for longer periods of time.
How To Improve Website User Experience
Now that you know more about the correlation between a great website user experience and small business SEO, it is time to discuss ways to improve the experience your website provides.
Page Load Times Are Extremely Important
Once a person lands on your website, they will be looking for certain things. One of the main things a website visitor will notice is how fast your domain loads. Most modern consumers expect a website to load in three seconds or less. If your website takes longer than this to load, you run the risk of losing 50% of the consumers that visit your domain.
Instead of allowing page loading speeds to affect your ability to achieve small business SEO goals, you need to take action. Improve page loading speeds will require you to do things like:
- Perform a media compression audit
- Lower server response times
- Reduce HTTP requests
- Research website hosting options
- Implement asynchronous loading for JavaScript and CSS files
Allowing a web developer to perform an audit of your website can help you pinpoint the problems causing your loading issues. With this information, the web developer can fix these problems and speed up your website in no time.
Optimize Your Landing Pages
In most cases, the links that consumers find on search engine results pages will be to landing pages. A landing page is designed to cover the benefits of a particular product/service. These pages are created to turn website visitors into actual customers. Since landing pages provide the first experience a consumer will have with your brand, you need to make sure they are optimized. If you want your landing pages to provide a great user experience, then you need to consider doing things like:
- Implement a responsive design
- Use relevant high-definition images
- Include social proof
- Test and optimize calls to action
- Optimize content for readability
Landing pages that provide a great user experience will generate more leads. Optimizing your landing page design is crucial when trying to turn website visitors into actual customers.
Make Content Shareable On Social Media
Did you realize that search engines like Google gravitate towards content that has been shared on multiple social media platforms? With the help of social media integration, you can make it easier for website visitors to share your content. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by putting social share buttons at the top and bottom of your blogs.
These buttons allow website visitors to share content with one click. You also need to think about putting a live feed to your various social media profiles on your website. Doing this can help you keep potential customers in the loop regarding what your business is up to online. This can also help you grow your following on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Use Clear and Concise Navigation
Some business owners have a tendency to make the navigational elements of their website too complicated. If a website visitor has a hard time getting from page to page, they will get frustrated and leave. This is why you need to realize the value of clear and concise website navigation.
Making your website easy to navigate will require things like:
- The use of sticky menus
- Adding a search bar
- Clear menu labeling
- Linking your logo back to the homepage
- Page prioritization
Rather than trying to iron out the details of website navigation on your own, you need to work with an experienced web developer.
Publish High-Quality Content
Another thing you can do to improve both website user experience and small business SEO is to create quality content for your audience. Website content quality is one of the top-ranking factors considered by search engines like Google. Google has stated in the past that providing a great page experience doesn’t override the need for great content.
This is why you need to focus on creating content that is both relevant and well-written. Many SEO experts recommend creating blogs that contain around 1,000 words or more. In most cases, longer-form content will perform better on Google.
You also need to realize the importance of internal/external linking when creating new blog content. With the right links, you can improve how well these blogs perform on Google. Most business owners don’t have the time or skills needed to create great blog content.
This is why outsourcing content creation to experienced professionals is one of the best things you can do. Having the guidance of a professional will help you keep consumers engaged in the content you are creating.
There is no denying the correlation between website user experience and small business SEO. Using the tips in this article can help you provide website visitors with a better experience.