How UX Signals Influence Google’s Rankings

SEO + UX

SEO and UX go hand in hand, as search engines focus on providing users with relevant and accurate results. Positive user experience correlates with:

• High engagement rates
• Increased dwell time
• Lower bounce rates
• Return visits

All this signals search engines that your website is a valuable source of information and deserves a higher ranking. As a result, when you optimise for UX, you can improve online visibility and organic website traffic.

Getting to Grips with UX Signals

UX signals can be categorised into different types, based on user interaction:

Behavioural

• Pages per session
• Average session duration 
• Scroll depth

Technical

• Mobile friendliness
• Page loading times
• HTTPS security

Content

• Relevance
• Readability
• Multimedia user

UX signals offer valuable insights into how your website visitors interact with your website, while helping search engines assess the quality and relevance of your content. This directly influences your ranking.

Engagement Metrics

When it comes to your engagement and time on site metrics, you are focusing on how long users spend interacting with your content. The more time they spend on your site, the higher your engagement levels and content relevance. Search engines see this is as a positive UX signal, helping to improve your ranking in search results.

So how do you improve engagement metrics?

• Create high quality, valuable, and in-depth content
• Use internal links to link relevant pages for further exploration
• Use multimedia, such as infographics and videos to capture your visitors attention

Bounce Rate Metrics

Bounce rates measure the number of visitors that abandon your website after viewing the first page only. High bounce rates suggest a poor UX or irrelevant content, and in turn, this can negatively impact your ranking.

So how do you reduce bounce rates?

• Provide fast loading pages
• Optimise content for relevance and readability
• Provide intuitive navigation with internal links to explore further

Click Through Rate (CTR) Metrics

Click through rate measures the number of users clicking on your search result link. This is shown on search engine results pages (SERPs) as a blue hyperlink. High CTR shows your listing attracts your users attention, while meeting search intent.

So how do you improve your CTR?

• Create attention-grabbing meta data 
• Use structured data
• Target your relevant keywords ensuring they align with user intent 

Conclusion

As you can see, user experience (UX) signals have a major influence on Google rankings. Remember, Google prioritises user experience, focusing on providing its users with the most relevant and accurate results, based on their search query. When you focus on user experience signals, making adjustments to constantly improve them, it can have a direct impact on your Google ranking. Contact Genie Crawl today if you are struggling with the UX signals on your website.