How important is the user experience?

Something Google has placed increasing emphasis on in recent years is user-friendliness, with the goal of giving visitors the best possible experience. This means that website owners should always aim to create the best possible user experience. But what does that actually mean?

This is a broad topic, and there are many factors that contribute to the user experience. Today, we’ll go over three of them.

Site Speed

Site speed refers to how quickly a website responds to web requests. It has long been one of Google’s ranking signals—and for good reason: no one likes a slow website.

There’s a high chance users will return to the search results and choose a different site if yours takes too long to load. I know I’ve done that myself. We can all relate to the frustration of just wanting to quickly check out a pair of jeans or proceed to checkout, but being stuck on a loading screen.

If you’re a website owner and haven’t reviewed your site’s speed yet—do it. We recommend checking the “Page Experience” section in Google Search Console and using the free tool PageSpeed Insights.

Search Intent

This is a topic we’ve brought up before, but it ties so closely to user experience that it’s worth repeating: always focus on search intent.

Search intent refers to the reason behind a search—the “why” behind the query. No matter what industry you’re in or what topic you’re writing about, you need to keep this in mind. As a user, no one appreciates landing on a result about “SEM” when the query was clearly about “SEO.”

Navigation

Website navigation isn’t just important for Google’s crawlers to find your pages—it’s also key to a smooth user experience. Clear and intuitive navigation helps visitors find what they’re looking for easily and quickly.

A great example is breadcrumbs, which help users understand where they are on your site at any given time and how to navigate back if needed.

Focus on the User Experience

To sum up: user experience is a broad topic, and we’ve only touched on three important aspects that every website owner should prioritize. Ask yourself:

• Does the site load quickly?
• Does this article answer the user’s search query?
• Can I navigate to these pages easily?

If the answer to any of these is “no,” it’s time to take a closer look at your site’s user experience.