Building simple and intuitive user interfaces is one of the most important aspects of good web design. The better your UX is, the easier your users will find it to navigate and use your website. Visitors to your website are much more likely to become repeat visitors or customers if your user interface provides them with a streamlined experience.
Here are three ways that you can improve your user interface while simultaneously giving your SEO a welcome boost.
Load Times
Google’s SEO algorithms have become increasingly sophisticated over the years. In the search engine’s earliest days, it did little more than assess how many other websites were linking to a webpage. Over the years, Google has refined its approach and trained its algorithms to assess a variety of factors for every website they index.
Consequently, the speed and efficiency of your website load times will have a significant impact on your SEO score. You should be aiming to keep load times as low as possible in order to ensure that your users have the best experience possible. However, it is also an important consideration for SEO. Improving the efficiency and speed of your website will kill two birds with one stone.
Mobile-Friendly
Mobile traffic now accounts for the majority of internet traffic, it has never been more important to provide your users with a solid mobile experience. Some things are always going to be more difficult on a smaller display, your users will understand this and won’t necessarily expect the mobile platform to be as easy to use as the full version. After all, using a touchscreen is very different from using a keyboard and mouse.
However, your users aren’t going to forgive you for not making any effort to improve the mobile experience. Most providers of SEO services today will be able to help you bring your mobile experience up to par. If you are planning on hiring an outside agency to help you with SEO, make sure that the mobile experience forms part of your planning discussions.
Human-Friendly URL Structure
Most of us find our way around the internet using search engines. There are usually only a handful of websites that we access directly by typing the URL into our browser. Because of this, relatively few people give serious thought to how easy to read their URLs are for humans. Ideally, your users should be able to glance at their URL bar while they browse your site and be able to see a clear path to their current page, for example – https://website.com/blog/category/post_title is easy for a person to follow and understand.
Not only will human-friendly URLs assist your users in finding their way around your site, but it will also greatly enhance your SEO. Complicated URLs that look like nothing more than a series of random letters and numbers aren’t just awkward for people; search engines find them confusing as well.
Enhancing your user interface will improve your SEO in a number of ways. Not only are there the direct consequences outlined above, but a better user interface means a more popular website overall and a sustained organic SEO boost.