There is a tendency in the world of SEO to concentrate solely on keyword optimization and while this is hugely important, we can’t overlook user experience and website usability.
Let’s look at a scenario to demonstrate. Website A has amazing SEO and great keyword optimization but users find that the pages load slowly, and the website is pretty tricky to use.
On the other hand, Website B has good SEO and keyword optimization, but a smooth website with lightning loading speeds and customers can enjoy a seamless browsing experience on any device. Which is preferable? Obviously website B! To make sure your customers have a great time using your website, we give six simple UX improvements that an SEO audit gives below.
1. Improve Page Loading Speeds
I get so frustrated when websites load slowly – it’s infuriating. Just give me what I want instantly, is that too much to ask? An SEO audit will outline the loading times and performance of your website and show what changes you can make. Fast loading times help customers get where they want and what they want quicker which in turn makes them happy!
2. Make Sure all Links are Working
Ok cool, I’ve found a decent website that seems to have what I want, let’s look at the products. What’s that, Error 404? Ok… i’ll try a different link, web page not found? Hmmm. Ok, maybe I’ll go elsewhere.
In this situation, an SEO audit could have found these broken links and allowed you to fix them to avoid customer dissatisfaction and going elsewhere.
3. To Keep Content Relevant and Useful for the Customer
Today, more relevance is placed on the quality, relevance, and usefulness of your website content so an SEO audit helps show where your web pages are perhaps bland or don’t give customers much value.
You can use SEO audits to improve the quality of your blog pages, product descriptions, and general web content so everything has value to the end user and they can engage with it.
4. Easier to Read Content
Readability is another factor that is taken into account with search engines like Google but it’s also something you should make easy so your customers don’t need a degree just to understand your content!
SEO audits show where your written content can be improved. This includes paragraph length, reading difficulty, an overuse of the passive tense, and general spelling and grammatical errors. You can make your content much more readable regardless of the person’s literary level.
5. To Give a Streamlined Navigation
I hate websites that don’t have a clear navigation and make it incredibly difficult just to find anything. Google hates this too and it likes websites that it can crawl and index quickly.
SEO audits look at things like site hierarchy, your internal linking structure, and sitemaps. You can then make improvements to make sure all your pages are accessible in a logical manner and that each page can be reached within a single or couple of clicks.
6. To Enable Mobile Optimization
Optimization for smartphones and tablets is imperative in today’s smartphone era and Google also looks kindly on sites that do this.
With an SEO audit you can check that your site loads correctly on smaller screens and improve the usability so mobile users can still do exactly the same as desktop browsers. No one wants to try and use a desktop version of a website on a smartphone!
Get an SEO Audit Today to Make Positive Business Change
So SEO auditing services are not just beneficial to boost your Google rankings! They are also superb for giving your customers a smooth, engaging, and hassle-free experience when visiting your website.
This is just as important as ranking for those keywords and as search engines evolve, user experience and the quality of UX is taking a more prominent role.