Getting someone onto your website is only half the job.
SEO can help your business appear when potential customers search on Google, but what happens once they click through matters too. If your website is slow, difficult to navigate or frustrating to use, getting that initial click isn’t going to achieve much.
This is where SEO and user experience come together.
Good SEO helps the right people find your website. Good user experience, or UX, helps those people find what they need once they get there.
UX (or user experience) isn’t simply a case of making your website look better, many of the things that create a better experience for users also support a stronger website from an SEO perspective.
What is user experience?
User experience describes how easy, useful and enjoyable it is for someone to interact with your website.
Think about the last time you visited a website and couldn’t find the information you wanted. Maybe the page took ages to load, the menu made no sense or a pop-up covered half the screen.
You probably didn’t stick around for long.
A good user experience removes those frustrations. Visitors should be able to understand what you do, find the information they need and take their next step without having to work for it.
That could mean:
- Pages that load quickly
- Simple, logical navigation
- A website that works properly on mobile
- Clear headings and easy-to-read content
- Obvious calls to action
- Useful internal links
- A layout that puts the important information first
Google’s own guidance encourages website owners to think about page experience as a whole, rather than focusing on one isolated metric.
What is the relationship between UX and SEO?
UX and SEO have slightly different jobs, but ultimately they are trying to achieve something very similar.
SEO is about making your website understandable, accessible and relevant to search engines and the people using them. UX is about making that same website useful and easy to use once somebody arrives.
For example, imagine someone searching for an accountant in Sheffield.
SEO might help an accountancy firm’s service page appear in the search results. But once the user lands on the page, they still need to quickly understand:
- What services the firm offers
- Whether it works with businesses like theirs
- Where it is based
- Why they should choose it
- How to make an enquiry
If that information is buried beneath a confusing design or difficult navigation, strong rankings alone aren’t particularly useful.
Google also recommends creating content primarily for people and asks site owners to consider whether somebody will leave a page feeling they have learned enough to achieve their goal.
Does user experience directly affect Google rankings?
This is where things can get slightly confusing.
There isn’t one single UX score that Google looks at and uses to decide where your website should rank.
Google states that there is no single page experience signal. Instead, its ranking systems consider a variety of signals, with Core Web Vitals being one of the confirmed areas used by those systems.
That means you shouldn’t redesign your entire website purely because you think changing a button or reducing your bounce rate will instantly move you up Google.
SEO still depends heavily on things such as relevant content, search intent, authority and technical accessibility. However, when Google has plenty of relevant pages to choose from, providing a strong page experience can contribute towards better search performance.
How can UX improve SEO?
1. Improve your website speed
Nobody enjoys waiting for a website to load. Speed is also one of the clearest areas where user experience SEO overlaps.
Google’s Core Web Vitals measure real-world aspects of a visitor’s experience, including loading performance, responsiveness and visual stability.
The three current Core Web Vitals are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Measures loading performance. Google recommends an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
Measures how responsive a page feels when somebody interacts with it. Google recommends less than 200 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Measures how much content unexpectedly moves around while a page loads. Google recommends a score below 0.1.
In practical terms, that means optimising oversized images, unnecessary scripts, poor hosting and other elements that could be slowing your website down.
2. Make mobile users a priority
Your website can’t provide a good experience if it works beautifully on a desktop but becomes a mess on a phone.
Google uses the mobile version of a website’s content for indexing and ranking, known as mobile-first indexing.
Your mobile website should therefore offer the same useful information as the desktop version, while being easy to use on a smaller screen.
Check things like:
- Is the text large enough to read?
- Are buttons easy to tap?
- Does the menu work properly?
- Are forms straightforward to complete?
- Do images fit the screen?
- Is important content hidden on mobile?
Don’t treat mobile optimisation as an optional extra. For many visitors, the mobile version of your website is your website.
3. Simplify your website navigation
A visitor shouldn’t need a map and compass to find your services. Clear navigation helps people understand where they are, what you offer and where they should go next.
A complicated menu containing dozens of poorly labelled pages can create unnecessary friction. Instead, group related services together, use descriptive menu labels and make your most important pages easy to reach.
Good website structure also helps search engines discover and understand your content.
4. Make your content easy to read
Ranking a page isn’t much use if nobody wants to read it.
Large walls of text, vague headings and paragraphs that take forever to reach the point all make content harder to use.
Break information into manageable sections using:
- Clear H2 and H3 headings
- Short paragraphs
- Bullet points where appropriate
- Descriptive subheadings
- Images or graphics where they genuinely add something
- Plain English
Keywords still matter, but they should fit naturally into useful content.
Google’s Search Essentials recommends using the words people search for in prominent places such as titles, main headings and descriptive link text.
The key is using those terms to help explain the page, not forcing the same keyword into every other sentence.
5. Use internal links properly
Internal links help users continue their journey around your website. If someone is reading a blog about improving Google rankings, it makes sense to point them towards a relevant SEO service, another useful SEO guide or perhaps a website audit.
Internal links also help search engines discover pages and understand how content across your website relates. The important thing is relevance.
Don’t add links purely because somebody told you internal linking is good for SEO. Link somewhere because it genuinely gives the reader a useful next step.
6. Make the next step obvious
UX isn’t only about helping someone consume information.
For a business website, you also want visitors to know what they should do next.
If someone reaches the end of your service page and wants to enquire, don’t make them hunt through the menu looking for a phone number.
Calls to action could include:
- Get a quote
- Speak to our team
- Book a consultation
- View our services
The right CTA depends on the page and where somebody is in their decision-making process.
How do you know if your website has good UX?
You don’t have to rely on guesswork. Start by actually using your website as a customer would.
Try completing important actions on both mobile and desktop. Find one of your services, submit an enquiry form, locate your contact details and navigate back to the homepage.
Then look at the data.
Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report uses real-world usage data to highlight groups of pages with performance issues. You can also use tools such as PageSpeed Insights to investigate individual pages.
Analytics data can then help you understand how visitors behave once they arrive. Look at trends in conversions, page journeys and engagement alongside what you’re seeing on the website itself. Just remember that no single metric tells the whole story.
A short visit isn’t automatically bad, for example. Someone might land on your contact page, find your phone number in ten seconds and call you. That’s a pretty successful user journey.
SEO or UX: which should you prioritise?
You shouldn’t really have to choose.
A website built entirely around search engines risks becoming awkward and unnatural for people. A beautiful website built without considering SEO might provide a fantastic experience to the handful of people who manage to find it. The best websites consider both.
SEO gets people through the door. UX makes sure they don’t immediately want to leave again. Build pages around what your customers are searching for, answer their questions properly and then make it as easy as possible for them to find what they need and take action.
That’s where SEO and user experience work best together.
Improve your SEO and your website experience
Getting more traffic is useful.
Getting the right traffic onto a website that’s actually capable of turning those visitors into enquiries is much better.
At Dialled In, we bring SEO, website design and digital marketing together rather than treating them as completely separate jobs.
Whether your website isn’t getting found, isn’t converting or simply isn’t giving your customers the experience it should, we can help work out where things are going wrong.
Want to get more from your website? Get in touch with Dialled In and let’s take a look.