User experience or UX is the second pillar of natural referencing. It is part of the 4 major SEO pillars to work on to have a website optimized for Google, the other 3 are:
Google has clearly indicated that user experience is still an important criterion for SEO in 2025. It is therefore important to look into the subject very early to have a website 100% optimized from the user experience point of view. Definition of user experience and advice to improve it, I cover the 3 major criteria of UX.
User Experience (UX): definition
User experience is quite simply defined as the quality of the experience that the user lives during their visit to a website. It is a set of emotions felt by the user. If we think about it, offering the best user experience is Google’s main objective. Google wants a user who uses its search engine to immediately find an acceptable answer. The user who uses the tool must live a very satisfying experience otherwise they will test another tool.
It’s the same for your website. If a prospect is not satisfied with their experience and navigation, they will leave to find a website capable of offering a better experience. The definition of user experience allows understanding better how Google works in referencing.
UX & website: the 2nd pillar of SEO
There are 4 major SEO pillars (technical SEO, UX, content, and netlinking). User experience is important and will be even more so in 2021 but UX alone is useless in a referencing optimization strategy. If you wish to reach the first page of search results on a multitude of qualitative queries, you must work on the 4 major pillars.
Keep in mind that Google relies on the quality of each page to judge the overall quality of the site. A qualitative page is a page optimized on the criteria of the 4 major pillars of natural referencing.
3 important criteria to improve user experience
- Loading time
- Responsive design
- Site usability
Loading speed
Loading speed has long been the very definition of user experience. It is one of Google’s criteria for judging the quality of a website. It seems that the weight given to speed will be even more important in 2021.
Loading speed plays a major role in a good user experience. If a page takes too long to load, the user will become impatient and leave for another website. This is catastrophic for your referencing. You must absolutely work on loading time to improve user experience. Good loading time is appreciated both on mobile and PC, most SEO consultants will tell you that each page must load in less than 3 seconds.
How to optimize loading speed on WordPress?
As an SEO consultant in Nice, I specialized in optimizing WordPress sites. To optimize loading time, you can act on:
- Image optimization: each image must be less than 100Kb and each page must contain less than 1000Kb of images. Avoid PNG format which is heavier than JPEG. You can optimize the weight of your images with online tools like Optimizilla or WordPress plugins like Imagify.
- WordPress plugins: the more plugins installed on a site, the slower it is to load. This can also create incompatibilities and bugs. It is therefore advised to limit the number of plugins installed on WordPress. Try to limit yourself to 20-25 plugins maximum. Generally speaking, delete all useless and unused elements from your site.
- Caching and code optimization: the premium Wp Rocket plugin is offered in my SEO & WordPress training. This allows pages to be cached and the site’s code weight to be optimized. It’s a big gain in terms of loading time, I explain in my training how to configure it. You can also install the Asset Clean Up plugin which will allow you to block the loading of unused codes on certain pages.
How to control your loading speed?
There are a multitude of freemium online tools to check the loading time of a site. Do not forget that loading time is appreciated both on mobile and PC (see on tablet). The advantage of these tools is that they give you advice on what is wrong with your site. Aim for a loading time of less than 5 seconds, ideally 3 seconds. Here is a list of efficient tools:
- Gt Metrix
- Dareboost
- Ubersuggest
- Dotcom-tools
- Varvy
- Google Page Speed Insight
- Test my site (mobile version only)
Responsive design
Responsive designWhat is user experience without mobile? Responsive design is the fact that a website adapts to the size of any screen. Since Google switched to a mobile-first index, it is even more important that a website adapts on mobile and tablet. Mobile First Index means that Google now sends its robots to analyze the mobile version of websites rather than the PC version. More than 50% of internet users are mobile users, so it is very important to have a responsive design website to improve user experience as best as possible.
How to make your website responsive design on WordPress?
On WordPress, 99% of premium templates are responsive design. So there isn’t anything very technical to do. You mainly need to think about working on mobile ergonomics. Most of the time, entrepreneurs who build their own website themselves forget to check that the PC version adapts well on mobile. This is often the case but sometimes there are bugs and a few errors. You must therefore have good knowledge of your template to work on the PC design but also mobile. In my WordPress & SEO Mooc, I recommend the Salient premium template.
How to check responsive design?
The best way to see if your website is clean on mobile is to go there from your smartphone. Ask yourself, is the user experience good?
Visually, you will be able to see if there are errors. But that’s not all, you must verify that the mobile version is indeed accessible for the user but also for Google. Here are some tools to check responsive design:
- Google Search Console – Enhancements – Mobile Usability
- Am I Responsive?
Ergonomics and navigation = usability
Usability is defined as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use”. Understand, the definition of user experience and usability are the same in referencing. Your goal is therefore to offer the user:
- Effectiveness: clear and concise navigation allows the user to easily find what they are looking for
- Efficiency: the user finds what they are looking for quickly without any effort. Each page must be accessible in less than 3 clicks.
- Satisfaction: The user enjoys browsing your website. They stay longer and navigate through several pages.
How to optimize the usability of a website?
Good ergonomics, good user navigation requires a good knowledge of your marketing persona and common sense. Many entrepreneurs build their website with their own vision of their theme whereas it must be built with the user’s vision. Good knowledge of the user allows building a simple tree structure that gets straight to the point. To optimize usability, prefer:
- A simple and concise menu: 5 items are enough and don’t add too many submenus. To lighten a menu, you can use a second menu.
- A depth limited to 3 clicks: each page must be accessible in less than 3 clicks, as users rarely go beyond.
- Avoid intrusive elements: pop-ups and intrusive ads are not good for user experience, especially on the mobile version.
- HTTPS: a secure site offers more confidence to the user and it’s also a plus for your natural referencing. Discover my tutorial to switch to HTTPS.
- Quality content: offer high-value content to satisfy the user.
- Highlighted content: undigested quality content is useless. You have to make the user want to read. Air out your content and prefer block page construction. Each page must respect about fifty UX criteria. Discover them in my online SEO & WordPress training.
How to control usability?
It is very complicated to calculate the usability of a website, nevertheless, some tools and indicators allow us to have feedback and advice on user experience:
- Bounce rate: this indicator is visible in Google Analytics, bounce rate allows seeing the percentage of users who visited only one page on your website. Either they found the information they were looking for or they were disappointed with their visit (low quality content or loading time too long for example). In any case, it is interesting to keep the user on the website, internal linking is a good solution. A good bounce rate is less than 30%.
- User testing: it is the best way to know everything happening on your website. Tools like HotJar allow you to film user sessions, you can then view the videos and analyze the user journey. HotJar also allows you to create a HeatMap, a map of hot and cold spots on your pages.
Example of Heat Map on my SEO & WordPress training
What about SXO (Search Experience Optimization)?
SXO is a combo between SEO and UX. People increasingly talk about SXO as the successor to SEO by putting user experience at the heart of web strategy. For my part, I have already integrated UX into the triptych: Technical, content, backlinks. SEO & SXO, it’s the same thing on my side, I always talk about the 4 major pillars of referencing:
- Technical SEO
- User Experience
- Content
- Recommendations
Is this a new trendy term? We’ll know more in 2021. Whatever happens, you know that UX is very important in referencing.
Conclusion: how to improve user experience
We have seen that the definition of user experience translates to the quality of the experience that the user lives during their visit to a website. UX is a future major criterion of natural referencing. Already integrated into my SEO audits since 2018, offering a good user experience is actually common sense and it goes beyond the boundaries of natural referencing. If you want to improve user experience, you must have:
- Fast loading time: less than 3 seconds on PC and mobile
- A responsive site: that adapts on PC, tablet and mobile
- Very good usability: a simple menu and easy navigation
You can learn more about user experience in my advanced SEO & WordPress training. Also discover how to optimize the 3 other pillars of natural referencing: technical SEO, content, recommendations.
