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UX is important

In order to understand why the bad old days were so bad, it is essential to understand a bit about how Google works and how it determines which pages will rank best when users make a query.

Google uses an algorithm that combines a huge number of factors (at least 200 of them) to decide how relevant a certain page is for a certain search query. From its earliest days, Google was never too forthcoming about what factors play the most important role in order to keep people from artificially boosting search engine positions.

As a result, SEO people have traditionally spent a huge portion of their time using various trial and error tactics to try and figure it out.

In the bad old days, keywords were found to be one of the most important factors. Google’s algorithm was still in its early days and, together with inbound links, keywords were the most straightforward factor that could be easily checked and ranked automatically.

As a result, the SEO community, or at least a significant portion of it, indulged in practices which resulted in churned-out, empty content packed with tons of keywords to start with. Then, spectacularly spammy meta descriptions and titles, URL slugs, and image alt tags were added. The most “resourceful” SEO people even ‘cloaked’ keywords in non-text elements on web pages.

This went beyond just on-page content as SEO people built links on personal network blogs and other article-dumpsters, artificially boosting the values of their pages.

Of course, the UX people and everyone else with half a brain (including some SEO people) saw this as a bad thing. And it really was.

It was a mess of colossal proportions.

It didn’t take too long for the people from Google to notice this and start working on remedying it. In all probability, they had been aware of the vulnerability of their early algorithm and they probably expected that this might happen from the very start, but just didn’t have a cost-effective way of dealing with it.

As time went by, this changed and Google started penalizing this ridiculous behavior and the websites that indulged in it.

More importantly, Google started shifting its algorithm more towards the quality of content and actual user experience. Through the aforementioned process of trial and error, the SEO community noticed that Google has been assigning more and more value to factors that would be best described as UX factors:

  • Bounce rate (the most obvious indicator of landing page experience)
  • Page loading speed
  • Mobile usability
  • Page layout
  • User-friendly navigation

All of this was accompanied by reducing the value of keyword-related factors, especially in the old-timey, exact-matchy, spammy way. In fact, focusing too much on keywords is more likely to land you in hot water.

This is an ongoing process but it is already clear that Google will continue to put visitors’ experience first and make sure people get value from the pages they are sent to from the search engine.

Due to these changes to the Google algorithm and a more vocal approach that Google’s people have been taking more recently, the majority of SEO people have adopted a new, more UX-friendly approach to their work.

In other words, the best SEO practices nowadays are far more interested in what they serve to the visitors of the website.

For a start, if you want to do smart SEO these days, you move away from overstuffing your content with keywords just for the sake of them. Natural, valuable content will (in the vast majority of cases) provide more than enough context for Google’s algorithm to understand what the content is about.

UX is important