Die 8 UX-Basics für eine SEO-freundliche Website
You will learn the UX basics of
an SEO-friendly website. They're fundamental points, but you
probably won't do them anyway. Have fun! My name is Alexander Rus
and SEO is my bread and butter. On this channel we chat
about SEO and content marketing. If you want to learn how you
can sustainably acquire customers through your website, then subscribe to this channel right now. So that you are now really motivated
for this episode, at the beginning: Results through UX for SEO. We have several cases on our website
and one of these cases is the online shop Elbemetall and one of the most important
aspects that we tackled with this online shop at the beginning was UX design
and adjustments to the user experience. A lot of points also appear in this
video and this is the result. Whoosh! Well, I think you're
really motivated now that we're getting started. Before that, briefly:
the mindset behind these points is: less is more and data about gut feelings. A lot of websites are developed just like that
by random people who have no idea based
on feelings they think because a customer said to them yes that
's a nice website – no, no, no.
Less is more.
Gut feeling data. So where do
SEO and UX typically overlap? Once, of course, when building the website, i.e. website architecture.
Then: navigation. Then of course you could say if the snippet
is the first entry point for title tags. Then of course subheadings that
break up the text and responsive design. Of course, there are many more points where you really
can't separate the two things. So the truth is, they
overlap everywhere because SEO is becoming more and more UX-heavy because that's consumer centric
and ultimately what's the point of your traffic if people hate your site and
then don't buy or inquire from you. Alright.
But let's get started. Number 1: Present a good experience for every device. And what we're seeing more and more now is:
Mobile First was misunderstood.
Ultimately, it's about responsive
design that we have a strong presence on all devices that are important to the target audience
. How can you basically test this now
, only with regard to mobile devices? Google has this Mobile Friendly Test that everyone knows.
From my point of view it is not very meaningful. What I would do to check this is: I jump into Chrome, more tools,
developer tools and then I look based on different devices to see if it all
works or if this whole thing doesn't work. Very very important. Nobody at Mobile First understood that
the goal was to get people interested in having a good mobile site and
doesn't mean just go mobile and nothing else. But most web designers, unfortunately, sorry
bro's, don't get the whole thing. Then, number 2, a classic: reduce your loading times. I think it has never been so easy and
clear to get the input you get.
Simply open PageSpeed Insights,
copy the website and then you'll see the core web vitals here anyway and
you'll get a wonderful list of what the problem is that you need to solve so
that your site can perform better. Is this now about you
building the fastest website on the planet? No. But at least it shouldn't be slower than the competitor's website and if we're
thinking in terms of conversion optimization, faster is better, but (!) if you
don't have pages that can rank for anything, it doesn't make sense to spend time in
the investing in performance.
If you have pages that are serving demand, yes, you can
improve performance, but only in small increments. Classic rule: 80% is good enough – 100%
is unnecessary and irrelevant. Number 3:
Use search data for your website architecture. Google is this crappy company
that gives you tons of information for free (free…
Google ads, the keyword planner – you need a google ads campaign to
look at that, or you have some other keyword tool that also
costs money) – but in principle this data is actually free and tells you exactly
how your website should be structured. How does my target group search? What should
my website's hierarchy look like? And now the message to all agencies
and in-house devs who develop websites. Classic misunderstanding:
You don't build a website based on the input of the CEO (i.e.
The
managing director), but on the input of the SEO, because he knows where the demand is,
what demand is relevant to the company, which pages do we need and
he decides what pages are there. Not the CEO, but the one who has the data. What keyword research
should look like so that you can design your website architecture is something like this: As I said, a fictitious company with
“dummy data”, which is fictitious, but as I said, you could build the whole thing like this if you
is doing a relaunch or building a new website. Before you start building a page, before
you build the first page, you think about it, then you know which page types do I need,
which mockups are necessary, which wireframes, then which page types still need to be implemented
and then I build and to these pages. This is the key and game changer. Now you probably
want best practice examples.
I think
we (evergreenmedia.at) have a best practice website architecture for service providers,
how we approached it, how we built our site, what
our navigation looks like and for an online shop Elbemetall is certainly a good
example. how to build it all. Then, number 4, and that goes hand-
in-hand with the previous point: only build as many sides as necessary. And if you don't think that's important, John Müller has a relatively cryptic
answer, but one that's clear for an SEO, namely: There are two strategies, so to speak. If you have a small website, then
you want to start with few pages or URLs. If you have a big page,
you can… now that was wrong! When you start a new page, you want to make that page as small as possible
, as few URLs as possible.
If you have a strong established brand,
then you can afford more sites. And when it comes to competitive keywords
, you want single strong pages. If you
want to cover all those little long-tail questions, then of course it makes sense
to build smaller but highly relevant pages for those keywords. And that's sort of the
mix you should be building. What doesn't work, but is
incredibly popular: Let's say you have achievements
and you only build one page with all your achievements – it will never rank. You can have a performance overview
and then you need sub-pages for each performance – only this can work because
relevancy is always determined at page level. But to reiterate: When you start, start
with as few URLs as possible. We have had some customers who start
with a domain rating of 0, with one million URLs. I just say: "Good luck!" Unimaginably difficult
to rank something like that and always think about the average page quality
– does this page add value? Yes or no? If that's a "no" and the page
doesn't rank for anything – then away with it.
And I mean, an "About Us" doesn't rank for
anything, but it's still important to users. Just differentiate that. Number 5: Your main navigation is your display. Now that's a point again where
I can get endlessly upset about it again. The misunderstanding of what mobile first means. Mobile first doesn't mean
I s*** on desktop. Mobile first for ordinary people means:
Hey, you've only optimized for desktop so far and mobile is important too, but desktop
is still important and it doesn't mean: I'll make a mobile main navigation on desktop.
In what world does that make sense?
It doesn't make any sense at all. What are the rules there? A maximum of seven main points. The most practical thing is simple, if you
then have more sub-items, a mega menu. The rule applies again: As few points as possible,
but as many as necessary. And move everything unimportant one
level down. What does that mean specifically? If we are on evergreenmedia.at
then you see, we have a maximum of five points.
The actual maximum is seven. You could add that now. Then there is simply a classic mega-menu that is super clearly hierarchical
in terms of UX. Then, these pages are all important,
we also want to rank them to a certain extent. This is of course important for conversion. Then under "Learn" the
most important pages are linked and "About us" – there are of course
also sub-items, but we don't want all of these sub-items to
be linked internally from every sub-page because it is not relevant for the user and
because you so that the link juice is badly distributed.
That means you click here and only then
you get to the sub-items and as a result we have of course completely changed the link juice flow
, which is just super super important. Every point in the main navigation
must be rated "hardcore". Every item that appears in the main navigation
is linked from every damn subpage. That means this point has to bring massive value
, otherwise it doesn't belong here. Number 6: Reduce friction on each side and
that's such a mindset story.
Always think about it like this: "How do I create a situation in which I
frustrate the user as little as possible?" That means if he gets in via a search engine
or no matter how, how do I create a situation where he doesn't
think so : "Phew, they're so sh*t." But: "Yes, that's a really
nice, smooth experience." That means what's involved. Let's take an example from a guide. The most important thing is above the fold. That means the user should
see immediately that he is on the right page. I like to show the example because it's extreme
long-form content and it's not that simple. The user immediately sees a
table of contents for long-form content. That means he knows immediately whether
his question will be answered here.
He sees the author of the content, he sees the
main topic, when was it updated. Then he immediately gets a short answer here and
then, if we are now talking about long-form content, because it is easier with short-form content
, but the mindset is always: make content easy to consume. That means, for example:
summary at the beginning – not everyone wants to read everything. Then: Just make everything as cool
and useful as possible. That means whenever you think to yourself:
"ah, there is a relevant post here or if I see a number, then
I want to know where this number came from." If I do some research,
let's say someone who is looking for this, is in the agency selection, then I want to
show more content on this topic.
Subheadings and a
table of contents help the user to quickly skim or scan
what is currently relevant for him at his point. I want to keep the blocks of text as short as
possible so he doesn't feel like he's reading a wall of text, like
a book, but that's all loose. I want to loosen everything up with
pictures, my own videos, lists, boxes, always highlight important points
so that you don't always have to read everything, but see:
Ah, summarized after each chapter… Always make everything as
easy as possible for the user. Then:
calls to actions. Always show, ideally from chapter to
chapter, what the next step is. There is a recent video where
we talk about this topic. Namely People Search Next, where it's just so
important, on the one hand you want the user if he now makes an information search like
this (it's already bottom of the funnel with "beste seo agentur") but
you want him further run in the funnel. Does that mean the funnel
always has to go down? No, that's a Stone Age
view, welcome to 2022.
The online customer journey is fully variable. But I still have to
offer a clear next step. Then, as already mentioned: Always link highly relevant
content on each topic. There is an extensive video about it. Also the benefits in terms of
ranking, not just in terms of UX. Then, another hate topic from me, number 7: Sliders are junk. And no, that's not an opinion, there
are tons of studies out there. This is also a guy who gets upset about it. There are tons of studies
that show again and again how unimaginably worthless and crap these
carousels and sliders are on websites. If you can't prioritize content, then
you have a content prioritization problem and you don't need a slider to stuff stuff into.
No no no. Anyone who still builds sliders today, the agency, you can say they
have no idea what they're doing there. You can sign it right away: No plan! And the last point, number 8, is a small
point, but I still want to mention it because we currently have a relatively large
customer who has never heard of it: tend
not to use serif fonts online. Serif fonts are that stuff, like
it is in the newspaper and serifs in print have the benefit of sort of
guiding you from letter to letter, and it's super simple and easy, but
online, for a number of reasons that will be explained in this Link are explained very well, readability tends to be
much more
difficult when using serif fonts, especially for people with reading and eye problems.
That's why you'll never find a UX website
that uses serif fonts, and that's why you shouldn't
use serifs when you build a new website. No, no, no, let it be. And with that we're done again.
These are such basic UX things that bring the most massive benefit to your website. In the next episode, we'll talk
about fundamental technical points to create a perfectly clean technical foundation so that your website
is as SEO friendly as possible. Thank you so much for watching
and see you next time. Bye!.
