SEO and customer experience: Understanding the connection

How to improve CX by investing in SEO ?

Note: This article originally appeared on the Stratosphere Networks website as part of the company’s CMO Insights blog series.?

SEO, UX, CX. You might find yourself feeling fatigued by the barrage of letters. However, to position your company for success, it’s vital to not only understand each of these concepts individually but also comprehend how they’re all connected. ??

If you’re working on search engine optimization (SEO), you’re also working on customer experience (CX), and vice versa. As you seek to deliver excellent experiences and boost sales, here’s everything you should know about how these pursuits relate to each other.?

Why a great CX starts with stellar SEO?

Think back to the last time you interacted with a company. Was it in person, on the phone, or online? It’s typical these days for these kinds of communications to take place virtually. On average worldwide, digital customer interactions went from accounting for 20 percent of the total in June 2017 to nearly 60 percent in July 2020, according to Statista. ?

As of this year, 72 percent of customer interactions are digital, according to MuleSoft’s 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report. That means the user experience (UX) you deliver via digital channels like your website significantly influences overall CX. If your site is slow, not optimized for mobile, or hard to navigate, that sub-par digital experience will drive away prospective and current customers. As a result, it’s vital to invest in your UX and optimize your website.?

While fine-tuning your site for humans might seem like its own endeavor compared to catering to search engines, SEO involves doing both. While Google focuses on identifying pages with the most relevant and highest-quality content in response to an end user’s query, page experience also affects rankings. Subsequently, SEO connects to UX, which ties into CX.????????? ?

4 SEO tips to improve customer experiences?

If you want to optimize your site’s page experience, Google Search Central recommends concentrating on the following criteria. Note: Google has stated intentions to update page experience signals yearly.?

1. Optimize your site for mobile devices. Google has provided a Mobile-Friendly Test to streamline your assessment.?
2. Serve your site via HTTPS. No one wants to visit and make purchases from a website that doesn’t seem secure.?
3. Improve your Core Web Vitals. These page performance metrics include the following:??

• Largest contentful paint (LCP), or the amount of time it takes to load the largest content visible.?
• First input delay (FID), or the time that passes between when a user first interacts with your site and when the browser responds to that interaction.?
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS): This reflects the combination of all layout shift scores for every unexpected shift that happens during the lifespan of the web page. ?

4. Ensure your site doesn’t have any “intrusive interstitials.” Google defines these as overlays that stop users from viewing or interacting with the site content.????

These are only some of the factors involved in SEO, and optimizing your site for search (just like working to maintain a great CX) is an ongoing process. Check out Google Search Central for more information on improving your website.?? ?

Our trusted technology advisors are available to assist you if you’d like to learn more about SEO and customer experience and how to enhance CX overall. With our extensive IT solution experience, partner network, and access to advanced tools, we can identify technologies that will improve CX and help you achieve your organizational objectives.??????? ?

Explore our advisory process today by calling 877-599-3999 or emailing [email protected]. ?

Lori Leonardo is the chief marketing officer (CMO) of Stratosphere Networks, which helps businesses bypass the traditional sales process and quickly find leading Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), customer experience (CX), digital transformation, business process outsourcing (BPO), managed IT and cybersecurity solutions. Leveraging advanced tools and in-depth knowledge of the technology landscape, our team identifies products and services that position our clients for lasting success. Visit www.stratospherenetworks.com for more information.?