Your position in the search results is determined by an advanced algorithm that consists of approximately 200 ranking factors. Key components of these ranking factors include session duration, pages per session, and bounce rate. This makes sense, since Google wants to provide the best possible user experience to its users.
In this article, we’ll share a number of (combined) UX and SEO tips that will help you:
When you start working on on-page SEO optimization, increasing the SEO KPI “session duration” is a key consideration. It can be difficult to determine an optimal session duration for your website, as it depends heavily on the type of page and the user’s search query.
When a user is looking for the answer to the question “Who is the king of Spain?”, it makes sense for that question to be answered on a single page. Since this user is unlikely to navigate to the menu on your website right away, it’s important to display additional relevant content. That way, the user will still click through. Below, we highlight a number of ways you can increase your visitors’ session duration.
Using internal links offers several SEO benefits. With internal links, you not only pass on SEO authority to other pages, but you also help your visitors discover other relevant pages.
By using internal links, you can prevent visitors from clicking away and visiting other websites. When you start using internal links, it’s important to link to relevant pages using informative anchor text, such as a keyword or the title of an article.
When someone is looking for information about the king of Spain, there’s a good chance they want to know more than just his name. By including additional relevant content on a single page, you can answer multiple questions the user may have.
Google ranks a page with additional content higher than a page that answers only one question. This is because you’re providing the user with valuable information. Pages that answer multiple questions are often ranked higher than pages that answer only one question.
When it doesn’t make sense to include multiple questions or articles on a single page, you can link to related content. Linking to related content is common on blogs and news websites and is a smart way to encourage your visitors to keep clicking.
For online stores as well, linking to relevant products is an effective way to display more products based on interests or topics. Large online stores make smart use of this technique to increase conversions and the number of pages per session.
Since user-friendliness is a top priority for Google, it’s important to encourage interaction with a page. To further optimize the time spent on your website, you can also implement the following optimizations:
A page’s bounce rate has been a ranking factor since 2010 and affects a page’s position. Page load speed has also been a ranking factor for several years now. And this will become increasingly important due to the mobile-first index.
A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When you provide an immediate answer to a search query, it makes sense that a higher percentage of visitors would leave the website right away. The technical SEO optimizations for page load speed listed below help increase conversion rates, improve search rankings, and lower the bounce rate.
Caching is one of the easiest ways to increase your website’s loading speed. By enabling browser caching, you ensure that browsers store files such as images, JavaScripts, and CSS. As a result, pages load much faster.
Tip: Be sure to check out all the useful SEO plugins for WordPress.
Enabling GZIP compression reduces the size of files before they’re sent to your browser, just like with a .zip file. This saves valuable KBs, allowing a page to load faster. GZIP can be configured through your website’s .htaccess file, among other methods. To see if your website already uses GZIP compression, you can use this GZIP compression test tool.
It’s not always easy to find a good, fast hosting provider, but this is crucial for your page load speed. If your hosting provider takes a long time to send data to your browser, it will slow down your page load speed.
A fast hosting provider is particularly important for Time to First Byte (a server’s response time). You can test your website’s server response time using tools such as Google PageSpeed.
By using a CDN (content delivery network), your website’s content is cached on local servers. This ensures that your content loads quickly anywhere in the world. If your website targets only one region or country, this is less important. Good CDNs include CloudFlare, Akamai, and MaxCDN.
A large image can significantly increase your page size and load time. That’s why it’s important to compress the images on your page. The best method is to convert all images to WebP format, which is 30% to 90% smaller than a JPG or PNG image. If that’s not possible, it’s best to compress the JPG and PNG images using Photoshop, Tiny PNG, or JPEG Optimizer.
Compressing files is a smart way to reduce page size. When you compress your website’s HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files, blank lines and comments are removed from the files.
This has a significant impact on the total size of these files, which translates to faster page loading times. With our CSS minify tool, you can easily compress CSS files.
To analyze your website’s speed and identify areas for improvement, you can use a variety of free tools. The three tools we recommend for this, as an SEO agency, are:
These tools will also provide immediate recommendations for optimizing your website’s loading speed.
UX optimization and search engine optimization are closely linked. By optimizing your website in various areas, you can improve both its discoverability and its user-friendliness.
Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about: providing the best possible website experience for your visitors. Using the tips above, you can get started right away on further optimizing your website.
Would you like to learn more about technical SEO? You might find these articles interesting:
With a passion for SEO and an unmatched drive for results, Jarik Oosting is the driving force behind SmartRanking. With over 15 years of experience in the field, he has built an extensive body of knowledge spanning technical SEO to complex site migrations. As the founder of SmartRanking, he has assembled a team of like-minded SEO specialists who help businesses achieve sustainable online growth.
His academic background in information science at the University of Groningen, with a specialization in natural language processing, gives him a unique perspective on the world of SEO. For Jarik, it’s not just about visibility in search engines, it’s about sharing knowledge and guiding businesses toward sustainable online success. That mission also led him to write a Dutch book about GEO.