What is UX?

UX simply means designing the user experience. It is concerned with ensuring that users of the site or application can interact more comfortably with their service. The people who develop the adventure until the user starts using the service, interacting with it, using the components in it, and fulfilling the purpose of using that service easily are called UX Designers.

If you do not fully understand something, imagine you are looking for information online. You open two different sites and try to find the information you seek. The first site is deprived of the necessary in-site search engine or folders to reach the information you are looking for in a shorter time and is also occupied by many poor quality and irrelevant content. The second site, on the other hand, is designed to facilitate your navigation within the site with targeted tabs, help you interact with the site more efficiently, and help you find what you are looking for quickly. Which would you prefer? The answer is pretty obvious.

In short, UX is the name given to designing and planning the experience on the second site. However, it should not be confused with interface design.

What is UI?

UI is an abbreviation consisting of the initials of the English word "user interface," and its Turkish equivalent is "user interface." They are units used in computer screens, smartphones, tablets, and many other devices that allow us to interact with and use them. To give an example, the keys on the smartphones we use and all the areas we use by clicking can be given as examples of the concept of UI. Of course, it should be noted that what we mean by the term UI (actually) is not buttons or clickable areas but their design. This design is made by people called UID (User Interface Designers). If we make the UI definition again, Everything that the user can see and access on any software or hardware, Everything that allows him to interact with all kinds of tools, the user interface, and their design is also called UI.

UX vs. UI

UX is a larger circle that includes many disciplines, including UI, so we can say UX > UI. UX evaluates a user's use of the relevant thing (product, service, website...) from a broader perspective, such as design, ease of use, easy understanding, and satisfaction while using it. UI refers to the design part of this experience. Let us explain the difference between UI and UX with a simple example. UX is like an architect designing a building. What will be the room layouts and sizes, what materials will be used, and what will be the lighting and colors? It calculates and plans all these... The UI is to do all the planned work. As can be seen, UX is a field that contains more than one discipline and includes more planning but contains sufficient information about sub-disciplines and gives a more abstract output. The UI, on the other hand, is a space that gives a concrete output.

The following example is a good example of this difference:

UI designed the cup required to drink a coffee, while UX added another glass to prevent the hand of the coffee drinker from getting burned. Unlike UI, UX also considers and finds solutions to the user's problems while using the relevant product.

Why UX and UI design is important for SEO?

UX is important as it tries to meet the user's needs. A meaningful user experience allows you to create the most relevant customer journeys for your product's success. To be more precise, the success of your product or service is highly related to the user experience you offer.

Think of UX as a way. The fewer potholes, bumps, or irrational bends people encounter on that road, the better their experience on that road. This quality experience will lead them to use the same road again next time. However, the stonier the road and the harder it is for the person driving the vehicle, the worse this experience is. So, the user will try to avoid this way next time.

How Important is UX For SEO in 2021?

Why should improving site usability and UX be part of an SEO strategy? Google and other search engines want user queries to show the best results. The best result does not just mean the best answer. The best ending. This means being able to articulate the answer with good answers and provide a good experience. For example, if you've written an excellent answer to a frequently asked question, but your site is slow, you have trouble with trust, or your narrative is muddled, Google won't consider you the best answer.

Google uses many methods to detect these experiences. It looks at factors such as site speed and coding structure and does many reviews such as being mobile friendly, not containing annoying Java codes, and external and internal links, but the most important is visitor footprints. It measures the reactions of people using your site by analyzing their behavior.

User signals are patterns of behavior that Google sees on your site. If many people leave your website too quickly, it gives a negative signal if they can't find what they're looking for. Bounce rate can give clues about this, but a high bounce rate doesn't always mean you failed. Because the target information requires this, the visitor may have received the information and left. There may be several exceptions to this. You should keep track of your current ranking to see if you are successful or not. If you're in an uptrend, you've done your job, but something is not right if you're in a downtrend.

The issue we mentioned above is the basis of organic SEO, as in UX. If you manage to become a site that people use and trust, it will come with high rankings. So, it is possible to use UX as a stand-alone SEO strategy.

How to Improve UX for SEO

Thinking in terms of user experience while applying all the operations and design changes on your site will be positively received by the Google algorithm, so the prestige of your site will increase on Google, and Google robots will start to visit your site more often and reward you higher than your competitors.

In this explanation, I will try to explain how you can make your site stand out with the relationship between user experience, visitor friendliness, and design.

Speaking in User Language; Rank Brain

When Rank Brain sees that the user has entered an unfamiliar word or phrase, it matches the familiar word or phrase and presents the appropriate results to the user. In fact, synonym means presenting the results with the more familiar words of the user; the algorithm responds to unfamiliar questions with more familiar synonyms; in fact, when you provide content suitable for this structure in your site content, you will definitely benefit from being one step ahead on the Google side. Remember, Google matches the questions with the answers and answers the questions that the users will ask Google with your content, and it is of great positive importance for Google that you approach the user language and use several different meanings of the words in your content.

By the way, never try to imitate the content in the search results; Google only highlights the content that it thinks satisfies the user in the face of a search.

Examine the hidden answers contained by the websites that rank high in the results, and form an opinion by examining the titles and keywords used in the texts.

Try to find the answers to questions such as how, why, and when for the best answer that users will give to their answers.

To show our content, creating special images and supporting the content with different images may be necessary. You may need to give your message with a visually enhanced presentation.

To provide the most accurate content, use your imagination and ask yourself:

"How can I give this message to people more clearly and unequivocally?"

This is the process of creating content with user experience in mind.

What is the Website Experience?

Google reviews the sites of content hosts with different tests, and after these reviews and tests, they rank the sites with their successful ranking, and this helps determine the ranking of your content in Google searches.

In the competitive environment, we are in, an ideal website should constantly be optimizing experiences. In this context, a server optimized with maximum efficiency for your site speed, your database reading speed, and a plain coding infrastructure also play important roles.

When the speed of your web page is optimized, this will be a process that users will be very pleased with, and it will cause them to spend more time on your website. When you perform optimized actions, it will lead to more conversions, more demand, and more revenue.

Try to read the contents on your website yourself. Have you had thoughts of tiring your eyes, boring you on the site, or leaving the site? If so, you should have found what you need to change.

The images you choose on your site must be different from your competitors, and you should use images related to your content. When users visit your site, there should be texts and images that clear the question mark in their minds, and even you need to support your content with videos and audio narrations. The world is changing and developing; as internet users, when we visit the pages, we want to find the answer to our question of more meaningful information and visuals instead of dealing with different meaningless information other than the subject we are looking for; you should not ignore this detail, and you should optimize your site in this direction, every area in your content should be meaningful.

To Improve Your SEO Strategy with a Better User Experience;

• Your url structures must be meaningful with the subject.

• If possible, change or update your font selection to SANS-SERIF.

• Minimize scripts such as CSS and JavaScript to the minimum possible.

• Be sure to test your page on different mobile devices.

• Support your content and all your pages with original images.

• Don't neglect alt tags for your images.

• Minimize the size of the images on your site and never neglect it.

• Help Google robots by dividing your page content into paragraphs.

• Make sure to use H tags in the content and do it sequentially, like H1-H2-H3, etc.

• Choose lighter tones for a good User experience.

If you pay attention to the issues I have mentioned and do the necessary optimization studies on them, you will see with your own eyes the effect of a change in traffic flow on your site and a rise in Google rankings.