seo & ux

Search Experience Optimisationthe impact of UX and responsive content on

search engine rankings

linkedin.com/pub/joanne-lumsden

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Joanne Lumsden

" Joanne Lumsden | SEO & UX 2014

What is SEOThe practice of improving and promoting a website to increase the number of visitors from search engines.

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" Joanne Lumsden | SEO & UX 2014 �3

The areas which to understand the workings of search engine algorithms.

RANKING FACTORS

01 Indexable Content

02 Crawlable Links

03 Keyword Targeting

04Title/Meta Tags

05URL Structure

06Canonical/Duplicate Content

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# UX is user’s interactions, feelings, and opinions about your website. Additionally, keeping your user engaged all depends on why and how they found your site - source/query?

Poor UX will lead to poor SEO


AREAS OF UX THAT EFFECT SEO

& SITE SPEED

% ENGAGEMENT

$ RESPONSIVE


SITESPEEDPage speed or page load time is crucial, not only

is it a factor in rankings, it's now essential.

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Factors that are slowing your site down - effecting UX and ranking

SLOWING YOU DOWN

01 Hosting

02 Media Files

03 CSS, Javascript, Fonts

04Platform theme/plugins

05Site Errors

06SSL


Page Load speed and how users engagement degrades with time

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EFFECTS OF TIME

ya lost em

Thoughts are straying

Happy User

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Will abandon a site after 3 seconds *

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Of these, only those who will not return *

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will go on to tell others of their experience


our client who after technical changes to site, saw improvements

CASE STUDY

✓ Decreased overall site load time - following googles webmaster tools

✓ Increase in enquiries after site speed increased

✓ Minor keyword improvements seen in ranking results

✓ Behaviour metrics improved in analytics:

DECREASED LOAD TIME

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to help with your sites performance and ranking

IMPLEMENTATION

✓ webpagetest.org

✓ googleanalytics

✓ google tools

✓ yslow

✓ web browser - devtools

✓ pingdom

Depends on the site, however following guides and best practices is best in regards to images, cache and scripts. Using the Googles Site Speed tools as a guideline.

Various plugins and services found online to optimise scripts and images.

IMPLEMENTATION tips

TOOLS / TIPS #1


ENGAGEMENTHow ENGAGEMENT and user behaviour metrics effect ranking factors and Google SERP results.

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some simple metrics you can use to understand how google reads quality

SIGNALS OF QUALITY

Engagement Metrics

When a search engine delivers a page of results to you, they can measure their success by observing how you engage with those results. If you have a search query, and click through on a result but immediately hit the "back" button to try the another result - the user wasn’t satisfied with the result.

Machine Learning

Google’s Panda ranking algorithm, significantly changed the way it judged websites for quality. Its computers could now accurately predict what the humans would judge as low quality site. The end result was a seismic shift which rearranged over 20% of all of Google's search results.

Linking Patterns

The engines discovered early on that the link structure of the web could serve as a proxy for votes and popularity - higher quality sites and information earned more links than their less useful, lower quality peers. Nobody likes to link naturally to a crummy site.


Design using principles of Search Engine Optimisation

DESIGN & SEO

Create content for the user and the search engines01

Push for H1 & H2 tags02

Work to improve link equity, menu functionality, and menu names03

Create clear navigation labels04

Use focused product descriptions and names05


RESPONSIVEIt’s the same person, regardless of what

device they are on.

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Google supports 3 different configurations for creating mobile websites

GOOGLE’S TAKE

RESPONSIVE

An optimised web design (RWD) that enables the site across different screen sizes without creating multiple websites.

This is Google's recommended configuration.

DYNAMIC

When a user visits your site, the web server detects what kind of device they are one and presents a custom page/content on the same url.

Not cloaking, perhaps the best solution – where a site can have multiple interpretations and delivers the best content

SEPARATE

A separate url and site that is independent from main website, with different code and content (eg. m.yoursite.com.au).

http://m.yoursite.com.au


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Because responsive design sites have one URL and the same HTML, it’s easier and more efficient for search engines to crawl, index, and

organise content.

Easily Found

- FOUND

SITE CRAWL


.77% of mobile searches are near a PC or when we are at

work.

77%

Sequential screening, 90% use multiple screens over time to

accomplish a task.

90%

98% of people move between devices on the same day.

98%


With the right set up, will cut down on web maintenance and content creation

Content Management

!If you have a mobile site that has less content or looks significantly different than your regular site, you’ll frustrate return visitors who are looking for something they found on the desktop version.

If you don’t have a mobile site at all, 61% of visitors will return to Google to find a site that is easily readable. Either way, your bounce rate will rise and your rankings will drop.

Reduce Frustration

CONTENT


CreateOncePublishEverywhere


/With a responsive web design, a link to your main site is

a link to your mobile site as well - and visa versa. A responsively-designed website will have the backlinks of

your original site.

Links & Back Links

- FOUND

LINK BUILDING


✓ DevTools – user agent overrides

✓ CRO and user testing for mobile

✓ Qualaroo – surveys

✓ CrazyEgg – heat maps

✓ Optimizely – split testing

View the users interaction across all sources/devices more efficiently in your Google Analytics account with universal analytics, so you can get a better understanding of how users interact with all of your online content.

UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS

MEASURE & TEST

TOOLS & IMPLEMENTATION


SUMMARY

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Thank You! [email protected]

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Start small if your site speed is not optimised, use the tools to find incremental changes which

will improve your sites performance.

SITE SPEEDAs Google and other Search

Engines develop more sophisticated algorithms - user

experience will increase in importance and factors.

ENGAGEMENT

Think about your user, and how they want to engage with your content. Deliver the best result

for their experience.

RESPONSIVE

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