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Key SEO & User Experience Terms Every Business Owner Should Know
We provide a guide to the most important SEO & User Experience terms you should know as a business owner.
In today’s overcrowded digital space, standing out as a business owner is harder than ever, even if you have a website.
As we discussed in a previous article, a successful website needs to be well-designed with the user in mind and optimized for search engines.
This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and User Experience (UX) come into play.
As a business owner or marketer, understanding and implementing these concepts can help you attract more visitors, keep them on your site, and convert them into customers.
But how can you sift through the multitude of technical terms and jargon you will come across when working with SEO & UX experts?
In this article, we will provide a guide to the most important SEO & User Experience terms you should know as a business owner.
Our goal is to help you better communicate with your SEO & UX/UI partner, and to make better decisions for your website and business.
What is SEO & User Experience (UX)?
In short, SEO is a set of techniques user to improve a website’s visibility on search engines, helping more people discover your site organically.
It involves strategies like using the right keywords, improving site speed, and earning backlinks to help your site rank higher in search results (see below).
UX, on the other hand, focuses on the quality of the experience your web visitors have with your website, e.g. how easy it is to use.
To ensure a good user experience, a website has to offer clear navigation, fast loading times, and be optimized for different devices.
Good UX, in turn, increases the likelihood that the user will take a key action on your site, such a making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter or contacting you.
The concepts of SEO and UX are interlinked, as websites that ensure a good user experience will also be preferred by search engine algorithms.
You can read more about this in this article by Webflow.
Ensuring that your website is optimized for both users and search engines is important for driving traffic to your website.
A study by Backlinko found that only 0.44% of users go to the second page of Google’s search results.
Another study by Smart Insights found that the top search result on Google is more than twice as likely to result in a click than the second result.
These studies underscore the importance of ranking higher on search engine results pages and the value of the techniques used to achieve it.
Key SEO & User Experience (UX) Terms
In the following sections, we will explain some of the main terms you are likely to come across in relation to SEO and UX.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
A Search Engine Results Page, or SERP, is the list of web pages displayed after a user performs a search query in a search engine, e.g. Google.
Famously, Google’s SERP contains 10 blue links. As discussed above, ranking higher in search results increases visibility and the likelihood that a user visits your website.
Keywords
Keywords are words and phrases people type into search engines, e.g. “affordable web design services” or “best web agencies for small businesses”.
Search engines then look for the best match between what the user is looking for and the content of web pages.
Therefore, using the right keywords in your website content, blog posts, and product descriptions can increase your chances of appearing in relevant search results and attracting visitors.
Keywords vary in terms of the amount of search traffic they attract and how much competition there is by site owners to use them.
As a business owner, choosing highly relevant and less competitive keywords (more niched ones) can help you stand out in search rankings.
This is a part of what “keyword research” entails.
Title Tag
A title tag is the headline of a webpage that appears in a search engine’s results (e.g. Google) and at the top of a browser tab.
This is a basic SEO setting that allows you as the website owner to clearly state what the page is about.
It also gives you the opportunity to include relevant keywords in the title.
The title should not be too long or too short and should be appealing for users to read.
Meta Description
Similar to the title tag, the meta description of a web page is a short summary of its content that appears in search results.
This is another basic SEO setting that allows you to provide additional relevant information about the page and to include more keywords.
A well-crafted meta description can increase the likelihood that users visit your website.
Once again, the meta description should not be too long or too short.
Alt Text (Alternative Text)
The alt text is a brief description added to an image, helping visually impaired users and search engines understand the image’s content.
The alt text can be read out loud by screen readers, helping your web page become accessible and inclusive.
In addition, the alt text will be displayed if the image fails to load when the page is visited.
Ideally, every image on your website should have an alt text, except when the image is purely decorative, e.g. a drop-down arrow.
In that case, the image can be marked as decorative.
The alt text of the image should simply describe what it contains, for example, “A smiling person”.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites pointing to your site. High-quality backlinks can boost search engine rankings.
When considering the quality of a backlink, search engines evaluate the trustworthiness of the source. The more trustworthy the source, the higher the backlink quality.
Highly trustworthy sources include websites of universities, colleges and government institutions.
One strategy you can implement for quality backlinks is to write articles for highly trustworthy institutions that link to your website.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate may indicate poor user experience.
Page Speed
Page speed is the time it takes for a webpage to load. The faster the load time, the better the user experience.
Mobile Optimization
Ensuring your website functions well on mobile devices by adjusting layout, speed, and usability.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is a form of structured data added to web pages to help search engines display more informative results, such as answers to questions.
This is an advanced and powerful SEO technique, which requires specific code snippets to be added to your page.
With schema markup, you can mark content on your page, for example, as an article, a product, a review, etc.
When typing a question on Google, for example, “What is SEO?”, you are likely to see featured answers generated using schema markup, such as the following:
You can read more about schema markup in this article.
301 Redirect
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another, ensuring users and search engines find the correct page.
If a user tries to access a page that no longer exists, they will receive an error 404, a “page not found” error.
This should be avoided from a UX and SEO point of view, as it can lead to a decreased ranking in search engines.
To avoid this error, as a website owner, you can set up 301 redirects to “forward” the traffic from the non-existing page to another page.
301 redirects are also a key tool when you’re moving to a new domain, making significant changes to your website, or are rebranding.
Canonical URL
A canonical URL is a preferred version of a webpage used to prevent duplicate content issues and consolidate search rankings.
For example, if you’re using a www and non-www version of a domain, (e.g. www.goforth.eu and goforth.eu), search engines can treat these as separate, duplicate pages.
This can lead to both versions of your page competing for ranking, diminishing your site’s position in the search results.
To avoid this, as a website owner, you can set a canonical URL to indicate which of the two versions is the main one.
Local SEO
Local SEO includes optimization strategies aimed at improving search rankings for location-based searches, helping businesses attract local customers.
There are a number of approaches to local SEO, including:
- Claiming and optimizing a Google Business Profile or similar listing
- Using local keywords (e.g. “best web agency is London”)
- Collecting customer review and ratings on relevant platforms
- Providing an address, phone number, and accurate business hours information
Click-Through Rate
Click-Through rate measures the percentage of people who clicked on a link after seeing it, in the context of SEO, your link as it appeared in search results.
A higher click-through rate is interpreted by search engines like Google to mean higher user engagement, which results in a higher ranking.
Different search terms are associated with a different click-through rate.
For example, your website can appear in search results for completely unrelated queries, in which case you should expect to see a lower click-through rate.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate measures the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
The conversion rate can then be tracked over time, measuring the relative effectiveness of marketing campaigns and changes in content.
The conversion rate can also be benchmarked against averages for the industry, your geographic location, and the type of action you want your users to take.
