Sanjay Kumar / 4 Mins Read
Updated: March 3, 2025
UX and SEO both share the goal of helping users to complete their tasks by providing them with relevant information. SEO leads a person to the content they need, where as the UX answers their queries once a user ends up on the webpage.
At various points in our careers, there come periods when we are so knee-deep in our specialisations that we sometimes miss out on the bigger picture.
This is especially true of young SEO professionals (in some cases even experienced ones!). A widespread misconception among them perfectly summarises my first line in this article above.
Many in the field assume (sometimes even believe) that SEO is all about link building, clicks and keywords. It sure is! But it is also so much more! Among the gazillion factors, Google takes into account while ranking pages, UX is right up there on its list of priorities.
Think of SEO and UX as two halves of a larger umbrella – User acquisition and conversions.
Good SEO lays the bait, cooks up a mouth-watering aroma and entices Google to push your site up the rankings. As with good food, users would want to see a suitably sumptuous dish at the end of the aroma trail. Great UX is that dish.
Alphabe(s)t:
Here’s a real-world example when I search for “funniest movies 2019”:
Sure, cosmopolitan punches above its weight and outranks Marie Claire on the list.
But the latter's light-hearted, contextually relevant description won me over compared to the former's long-winded, heading-nowhere description.
Not only did good SEO help Marie Claire rank on Page 1, but great content (a subset of UX) also closed the deal, luring me to make that click.
Good UX begins right from the SERP…
… to rank, you need to nail search intent with the magic of language.
Gone in 6 seconds:
So, you’ve done it. SEO’ed your way to the top SERPs. A catchy line to attract the user to the page.
What next?
A screen that takes 10 seconds to load.
The entire journey falls like a house of cards.
“10 seconds is fast enough right?” I hear you mutter. The below quote by Maile Ohye, former Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google, will help add some perspective
“2 seconds is the doorway for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second”.
Half.
A.
Second!
Let that be a reality check as you test your site speed. Start bringing in the speed now!
Ain’t nobody got time for that:
We live in an impatient world that needs things in the blink of an eyelid. Rising bandwidth speeds, reduced internet bills, apps for everything—everything is moving at breakneck speed. There is so much to see in so little time!
This is the kind of users we’re catering to today. Page loading speed is the next step to lull your users into familiarising themselves with your website.
Chief culprits when it comes to extending load times are heavy imagery. Always resize any image that goes up to the exact requirements, not a pixel more or less.
Make use of tools like tinyjpg.com to compress images and supercharge those loading times.
Hello Operator:
Skip the shady providers and contact a reputed domain hosting service like Amazon. While marginally expensive, this simple upgrade will save you the hassle of long loading times, unexpected downtime, etc.
All the small things:
What irritates or bothers us when we visit a site is what irks your users. Use apps like Evernote to quickly note such encounters so that you will be better informed while creating a memorable experience for your users.
Some top-of-the-mind observations
Coming to think of it, SEO professionals don’t need to be full-fledged UX experts in their own right.
But they can’t also be living under a rock regarding UX trends and user preferences.
Here is how UX design and SEO are connected and how they can be integrated strategically:
Get this into your headings!
In this content jungle, the easier you make it for customers to follow a path, the better.
Rather than landing in a dense forest, create dirt roads around the wilderness so that they can choose where they want to go.
Headings such as the H1 tags, H2 tags, and H3 tags help readers and search engines to understand the contents of each paragraph and section.
H1s lead the tribe and are pointers to the first piece of content on the page. This is followed by H2s and H3s in sequential order.
Two roads diverged in a wood… and created confusion!
Don’t confuse your readers. If they get lost in a labyrinth of sections and subsections, they’ll leave in a jiffy.
Creating orderly site navigation and structure will not only help searchers find their way around but search engines too.
Not everyone will land on your site through the homepage, so you’ll have to give them ample access throughout the site, especially the homepage.
Finally, a clear-cut site structure and navigation can land your site links in Google search results.
Slow and steady doesn’t win the race here…
Let’s face it: your users don’t have much time. So, if you lose precious seconds with a slow-loading site, all your SEO efforts will go to waste.
Your mobile page speed is especially important since Google considers it an essential ranking factor.
The more content you have on your website, the more crucial it is to keep an eye on your site's speed.
Being the tortoise will clearly not help you win the race here.
The key to perfection is never being satisfied and keep on testing. With changes happening to your site almost every day, it’s important to test everything.
It’ll help you learn more and recognise your shortcomings and weak points so that you can improve on them.
Creating a perfect balance will help you create websites that work well with users and search engines.
Now go and keep your balance on the tightrope walk!
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Sanjay Kumar is s Senior Creative Strategist at Neil Patel Digital India. With over a decade of experience in mainline advertising, social media and digital marketing, Sanjay is always on the lookout for exciting innovations and disruptions in the field. An avid gamer, board gamer and a gadget freak, he is currently figuring out ways stop draining his pay check before the first week of every month.
