Which is more important for your website business –SEO or UX?
Who is more important for websites? Is it SEO that drives quality traffic to sites or is it UX that makes sites user friendly and engaging? There was a time when SEOs and UXs were competing with each other for supremacy on website business but the reality is that they are incomplete with each other. Though roles of SEOs and UXs are different, their goals are similar.
Goals of SEO and UX are common
SEO and UX are two sides of a website and the bigger goal of the website is to make money for its owner. The site relies on its presence on the web; it serves content to the visitors; tries to answer their queries or it will be more appropriate to say that the site tries to fit into the search queries of its targeted audiences.
Customers turn to search engines for queries and search engines direct users to websites in answer. On-site, the visitors get some experience on which they decide whether to remain on the site or click back to find a more relevant site. Here goal of SEO and UX becomes common. SEO primarily drives traffic and UX is concerned about the user experience of the visitors. Ultimately both are trying to bring targeted customers to the website and providing a better user experience to visitors.
SEO and UX are interdependent on each other
SEO has the data UX needs to build a great website and UX has the content that SEO can optimize for better search engine results and traffic. SEO team collects data about the search intent of users from different sources and shares the data with the UX team; the latter creates amazing designs and unique content to serve the customers and SEO team optimizes that content.
How SEO data affect UX design?
Online marketing starts with search engines that use algorithms to identify what users are searching for. Search engines provide info about the search intent of the users in the form of keywords. The SEO team uses keywords to optimize websites. The key responsibility of SEO is to identify customers and publish optimize content for the targeted customers.
Keywords are also vital for UX as they work as samples for the designers. The UX designers integrate the SEO data into their designs to create sites that not only attract visitors but that is also able to retain visitors. The sites engage the visitors in many ways like questions and answers; graphics; graphs and other important data.
Why UX is crucial for SEO?
Role of SEO is limited to optimizing sites for search engines and its role with visitor engagement with site remains indirect that is to provide data for UX design. The UX team is responsible for creating a smooth design and providing a great user experience to visitors. The SEO data gives insights on the behavior of targeted customers but it is the UX team that translates the data into a functional design that not only attracts visitors but that also helps in SEO.
A website navigation plan is a good example of UX design that impacts both the user experience and search engine ranking of the site. Other UX features that have a say in SEO are the fast downloading speed of sites and making the content more engaging for users and search engine crawlers.
Conclusion
SEO and UX can never be competitors but friends. Together they can make a site that not only works on search engines but that also gets high ratings by targeted customers.As search engines and other technologies related to web business have evolved, website businesses should redefine roles and goals of their SEO and UX teams.
