In recent years, Internet business has been attracting attention, and many people have probably heard of the word “SEO” at least once.
SEO
is actively implemented by many companies and marketers, and now plays an important role in the Internet business market.
In this article, we will start with the basics of “What is SEO?” and introduce the benefits, the important relationship between SEO and UX, and ways to improve UX.
What is “SEO”?
“SEO” is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Translated into Japanese, it means “search engine optimization.”
I think there are many people who don’t quite understand the term search engine optimization, so I’d like to briefly explain SEO.
Search engines
are among the services provided by companies such as Google, which boasts the world’s top market share. Nowadays, the use of search engines in our daily lives has become commonplace, and they provide convenient and quick results when searching for clues or answers to problems. SEO refers to optimizing websites operated by companies and marketers, and the phrase “SEO measures” has become pervasive in the web market.
Now let’s consider an example.
For example, let’s say that after you start operating your website, you use the blog function as part of your content and post a daily diary. The content and title of the blog are the diary of the author, so the main contents of the blog are thoughts about daily events and experiences. In such cases, it is understandable that the information provided by the poster is self-centered and does not meet the needs of users who use search engines to search for the information they want to know. Masu.
Therefore, the content of blog posts makes it difficult for search engines such as Google, which display search results, to interact with the information that users who use search engines to search for want to know.
SEO can be said to be the process of optimizing blogs like this so that they can be understood by search engines.
Also, if you look at it in a broad sense, SEO is a type of “SEM (Search Engine Marketing)” and can be thought of as one of the marketing methods that utilize the Web. It is also important to understand that marketing that utilizes the web is a part of
digital marketing
, and digital marketing is a part of
content marketing
.
Benefits of SEO
There are several benefits you can get from SEO. We will briefly introduce some of the most important benefits.
[SEO benefits]
- Increased search traffic for websites run by companies and marketers
-
Improving
branding
for businesses and services developed by companies and marketers - Leads to asset acquisition for companies and marketers
Increased search traffic for websites run by companies and marketers
After all, the biggest benefit of SEO is that it increases search traffic. This is different from listing advertisements, which invest money to obtain higher search rankings and increase the number of search inflows, but this means that the number of search inflows increases due to users’ natural search behavior called organic search.
For example, we create corporate content by taking into account the search
needs
of users who actually search for products and services offered by companies and marketers. We will increase the content that incorporates as many possible user needs as possible and improve the quality of the websites we operate. By continuing to implement these measures, your website will grow so that it is evaluated by Google. The expectation is that when search actions are taken with related keywords, the ranking will increase, or that being indexed for more keywords will increase exposure in search results and increase contact points with users. It will also increase.
Additionally, your website may be actively displayed in the featured snippets provided as an extension, improving your click-through rate, which may result in an increase in the number of search traffic.
If the number of search traffic increases, your online customer attraction activities will naturally become more active. By accelerating the speed of customer acquisition, you can guide potential customers to your website. In addition, if you can lead potential customers to an effective landing page by implementing ”
LPO
(Landing Page Optimization),” you can expect to achieve the target
, and the synergistic effect will increase sales. It is also possible to lead to improvement.
Improving branding for businesses and services developed by companies and marketers
Another benefit of SEO is that it can be expected to improve the branding of businesses and services developed by companies and marketers.
For example, let’s say you’ve started SEO efforts for the blog content of a company’s owned
media
. As mentioned above, instead of just posting articles that are tailored to the mood and situation of the moment, we create content that reflects the search needs of users who are searching for the products and services we offer. . In such cases, exposure when searched tends to increase as a result.
By doing so, you increase the chances that your website and related content will be seen by users in search results, and the probability of clicks will also increase significantly. Furthermore, among web users, the number and frequency of searches by directly entering site names is expected to increase. As a result, the website itself operated by the company will be recognized by many users, which will ultimately lead to branding.
In addition, in recent years, content that makes full use of videos has gained popularity and spread rapidly, so we have implemented “video SEO” that utilizes video-specific content such as YouTube to expand the range of exposure. Initiatives aimed at improving branding are also attracting increasing attention.
Leads to asset acquisition for companies and marketers
The third benefit is that it leads to the acquisition of assets for companies and marketers.
For example, we will increase the amount of high-quality corporate content over the long term and build a high-quality website. In addition, we do not only publish websites that have reached a mature stage, but also continue to maintain and manage them. By firmly establishing a routine for this series of steps, you will be able to keep the weapon of high quality websites forever, which will become an extremely valuable lifelong asset for your company, which will later lead directly to profits. In other words, it becomes an asset that can be used.
When implementing SEO using
WordPress
, a typical
CMS
(Contents Management System), it is a good idea to back up your website itself in case something goes wrong. Keep in mind that by taking this measure, even in the unlikely event that your data is lost, the company content you worked on with SEO will remain in your possession, so you can continue to keep it as an asset.
Relationship between “SEO” and “UX”
When talking about SEO, the existence of “UX” is mentioned as something that builds an important relationship. UX is said to have an impact on SEO and is gaining recognition in the web market.
From here, we will introduce the relationship between “SEO” and “UX”.
What is UX?
“UX” is an acronym for “User Experience”, and when translated into Japanese it means “user experience”. To put it simply, it refers to the experience that can be obtained through a service.
There is also a word similar to UX called UI (user interface). It is best to understand that this is something that focuses on design and functionality, and expresses the experience and satisfaction that can be gained from them. By continually improving the UX, web users will perceive your site as convenient and easy to use. For this reason, it can be said that it plays an essential and important element in running a website.
The importance of UX in SEO
In recent years, awareness of SEO has expanded, so some people may have actually seen it, but there is a thing called “Google’s 10 Facts” published by Google. I will.
When you open the lid, you’ll find some interesting content, including the phrase, “If you focus on the user, everything else will follow.” This thinking can be applied to UX itself.
There are indicators called “exit rate, bounce rate, and time spent on site” that indicate user satisfaction and affect SEO. UX can have some influence on improving the numbers of these metrics related to SEO.
Although it is unclear how direct involvement of UX affects Google’s evaluation criteria, it is a feature that continuous improvement of UX also improves various factors related to SEO. There is. For this reason, there are some opinions in the web market that UX will ultimately have a considerable impact on SEO.
How to improve UX for SEO measures
As mentioned above, UX is likely to have a considerable impact on SEO, but what specific measures will be effective?
From here, we will introduce how to improve UX for SEO measures.
Build pages that prioritize user viewing behavior
An important point to consider when improving UX is the design of the page structure. In order to convey the important theme of a page to web users and search engines, by distinguishing the theme of the heading according to the “h tag”, which is a heading tag marked up in
HTML
, it is possible to tell which information the user actually sees. It plays an important role in determining and understanding what is happening. It is also important to ensure that the user does not feel stressed while viewing the page by appropriately selecting the font, size, line spacing, and color of the text to be displayed.
If the page is full of text, users may feel uncomfortable and may even stop viewing the page. In order to avoid this, it is important to keep in mind the effective placement of creative images and videos.
Ease of handling pages
When improving UX, we tend to focus on design, but we also need to focus on improving site functionality. To put it simply, it means “ease of use of the page”. If you are thinking about improving the UX, please consider whether there is room for improvement in “ease of use” as well.
For example, by incorporating guidance such as “Table of Contents, Return to TOP Page, List of Categories,” web users can easily navigate to the desired content without stress. In addition, incorporating link pages for “related articles” in places considered to be highly relevant within the actual page will be effective in improving usefulness.
By doing this, it not only contributes to the ease of handling the page, but also extends the time users spend on the site, which is directly linked to SEO measures.
Improving page loading speed
Improving page loading speed is more of an SEO area, but it is also a way to improve UX. Nowadays, when internet connections are stable, there are many web users who feel stressed and may leave the site if they notice that the page loading speed is even slightly slow. It will become stronger. Things like this have a direct negative impact on SEO.
When incorporating images and videos, which are said to easily affect page loading speed, be sure to compress the data.
summary
In this article, we have introduced the basics of “What is SEO?”, the benefits, the relationship between SEO and UX, and ways to improve UX.
Some people may have thought that UX improvement measures were mixed with SEO measures.
UX and SEO continue to receive increasing attention, but the purpose of both is the same: “creating content that benefits users.” Why not deepen your understanding of both SEO and UX and work on creating effective content?