SEO (search engine optimisation) is about optimising websites for search engines like bing, google etc. And the customer for these search engines are your customers, human beings. By ensuring your SEO is customer focused, you can, in turn, provide a better customer experience.
The companies with the best customer experience are those that put customers at the heart of everything they do!
SEO isn’t just about getting your website in front of people - it’s also about providing these searchers with reliable, up-to-date information and a solid customer experience.
The search engines will rewards engaging sites that have great content, are easy to use and provide a good customer experience by making them visible to their customers, who are in fact your customers too!
When used right, SEO for customer experience can also be a powerful tool for creating a smooth online experience for your users.
A Better Customer Experience
In this article, I’ll show you 5 customer centric SEO strategies that can provide a better customer experience and why good customer experience is important.
Post relevant content
Write for your audience and not just for Google
Use internal links to help readers discover more useful content
Improve site speed
Make sure it’s mobile friendly
How to Improve Online Customer Experience with These SEO Strategies
1. Post Relevant Content
Content marketing is a key part of any good SEO strategy and a key contributor to how your site ranks.
Without content, it’s impossible for your site to rank in search engines. It’s therefore crucial that you post quality content that is actually useful and adds value to your customers.
Blog posts, videos, guides etc are a great way to provide your customers with valuable information to your customers while optimising your website for SEO.
Before producing any content make sure you do your research on what people are searching for first! Keyword research is a crucial element of modern SEO. Whether you’re kick-starting an old blog or developing your content strategy for a new one; good quality keywords are one of the most efficient ways to attract consistent, quality traffic to your site. Here are what I think the best keyword research tools are at the moment.
Don't forget to analysis your data - For example lets say you're a fashion brand that’s been doing a good business marketing your clothes to an audience of 21- to 30-year-olds. After tracking and reviewing your landing page metrics in Google analytics, though, you discover that visitors aged 60 and older are converting three times as well. Rather than ignore this small but highly converting pot of visitors, you can use content to appeal to them.
2. Write for your Audience and Not for Google
When writing SEO snippets for Google you want to include your the best keywords to help with your ranking position but this doesn’t mean stuffing your title with keywords giving you a title that makes no sense!
Of course, you want to please Google, but your audience is even more important and should always be number 1.
Make sure you write for your audience. Write clearly, don’t make it harder to read than it should be. You want to share your information as smoothly as possible.
A meta description can influence the decision of the searcher as to whether they want to click through to your content from search results or not. The more descriptive, attractive and relevant the description, the more likely someone will click through and the better the experience is.
3. Use Internal Links to Help Readers Discover More Useful Content
Internal linking is connecting one of your website pages to another page of your website. For example, here is an internal link to my blog post about the 10 best lead magnet ideas.
Google uses links to find out what content on your site is related and the value of that content. Google considers pages with a lot of internal links as more important.
In addition to SEO benefits, you can use internal links to help users navigate through your website and help them find additional content that may be relevant and therefore improve their overall experience.
But remember, don’t just use internal links for the sake of it. While you want the SEO benefits from internal links, you also want to focus on the customer experience.
4. Improve Site Speed
Your site speed is important. In fact, Google uses site speed as a ranking factor for your website.
In addition to SEO benefits, your site speed also has a significant impact on your customer experience and website engagement levels. Users quickly become frustrated by a slow website. According to 2018 research by Google, 53% of mobile users leave a site that takes longer than three seconds to load.
Therefore, if you want to win at SEO, you have to improve site speed. And by improving site speed, you will also see better customer experience!
5. Make it Mobile Friendly
Your website needs to be mobile friendly for your users and for Google.
Google prioritises mobile page load speed as a key metric when determining your website’s search ranking. If your mobile website is slow or unresponsive, it comes with a hefty penalty to your overall ranking across all devices.
An easy to use mobile friendly site positively impacts Customer Experience. If users can’t navigate your site on mobile or can’t see the full page, they’ll simply leave.
Best Customer Experience Practices
If you’re still focusing your SEO efforts on building backlinks and adding keyword stuffed content, you need to rethink your 2022 SEO strategy. When used right, SEO can be a great customer experience tool.
SEO and Customer Experience work nicely together. Any step you take to improve SEO (creating helpful content, improving site speed, make your website more friendly) will have a positive impact on your customer experience. By following these simple customer centric strategies you will be providing your customers with a better customer experience.
If you’d like an SEO audit on your website or simply just want to chat about ideas on how you can improve your customer experience to increase conversions then drop me an email – i’d be happy to help. What is your best customer experience online or what do you think the best customer experience companies are? I'd love to know your thoughts.