ABSTRACT
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and visual design are essential aspects of a successful UX strategy. For this reason, the purpose of this paper is to explore the parallels between SEOs and design when formulating a UX strategy when building websites. Search Engine Optimization is a concept that is not clearly communicated to designers. As a consequence, these differences can create conflicts between the SEO strategy and well-designed websites, which usually are poorly optimized for SEOs. These could be because designers do not have technical communications that are required to optimize content. Hence, technical communications are part of the structural elements of a website. In some cases, designers are not entirely aware of these elements, which are vital to a comprehensive strategy.
KEYWORDS
SEO, HCI, Visual Design, UX strategy
INTRODUCTION
UX practitioners can develop strategies that require the understanding of theoretical and practical factors, and create theories that can maximize the delivery of content or services by collaborating with different levels of an organization [1]. Moreover, UX strategies can support the development of multiple teams by examining how to create products from a human-centric design point of view [2]. For these reasons, it is essential to explore how UX designers can help build bridges between SEOs and designers to generate meaningful sites that can communicate properly to search engines and people.
For example, a designer with technical communication skills can recognize poor choices such as color, theme, hierarchy, low-resolution images, broken links, and written content. There are also other elements such as on-site (strategies relate to content and structure of the code) and off-site techniques (strategies related to in-links to the site from other pages and social media) [3]. These are some of the essential elements that need to be taken into consideration when working on a website. Knowing how to merge SEO strategies in web design development is vital. The lack of proper SEOs on sites can destroy the website’s visibility in a search engine. This is why this paper’s aim is to find similarities between SEOs & design and identify the importance of the overall UX strategy.
SMART GOALS
SMART Goals help build a cohesive strategy that communicates the vision of an organization. By holding a centralized approach, teams can focus on their contribution to the ultimate goal. A goal should not be a simple forecast of what is about to happen; a goal should be the intentional result of an intervention [17]. SMART is the acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based [17]. There are two additions to SMART that are optional, for this reason this paper focus on the first five. This technique was borrowed from clinical rehabilitation, which has seven articles examining various aspects of goal settings with patients. Later on, this technique was utilized for management and employee performance. By applying SMART goals, a UX strategy can help create the vision for both SEOs and design teams.
DESIGN MOBILE FIRST
Since the most popular search engine is Google, the best practice is to stay up to date with their changes. Google is continually changing their rules due to social fraud techniques that mislead users by influencing the search snippets [5]. Therefore, part of the UX strategy is to stay updated. One example of these changes can be explained when Google stated in their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide that indexing mobile websites take first priority [18]. Consequently, changes like these can affect the design of the entire site, suggesting that from now on, rules have changed, and websites need to focus on usability [18]. As a designer, this means shifting towards consistent designs with high-quality elements that can be viewed from multiple devices. Hence, designers need to be concerned with flexible text and images, breakpoints for design changes depending on the screen size, and fluid grids that support proportions. For the UX strategy, this means that mobile design takes priority over the website.
Creating strategic content for smaller screens
Content needs to be responsive in the same way as the design, and the best way to approach this is by knowing more about the user’s preferences [5]. For example, by analyzing user’s opinions about scroll websites, and the use of visual aspects such as animated gifs, infographics, or even videos that can replace the use of text [6]. Information can be displayed in multiple ways that can be easily be converted to mobile-friendly designs [9]. These practices help the visual representation of diverse elements in the website, with also aiding the cognitive absorption of users by engaging them in multiple states around the site [17]. Designers can create numerous actions to engage users such as commitment, intent, participation, attention, immersion, and motivation [7]. By considering the user’s engagements, designers can determine the best visual aspect of the content. At the same time, diverse use of elements of content can create multiple links helping the SEO of the website.
CONTENT STRUCTURE
Typically, SEOs and designers need to think about content organization and accessibility for the search engine, to establish a meaningful content organization that helps direct the path of the search engine to follow [9]. However, designers usually work with comprehensive content hierarchies that can be used for accessibility, but they share some differences with SEO practitioners [12]. For example, SEO focused mostly on the content for H1 and H3, while designers focus on accessibility on all the different H levels, all the way to H6. Another example is the use of a single H1 tag per page in the website, but some designers use multiple H1 tags in a single page. These methods could cause some issues because the hierarchy is not clearly stated in a page. The job of SEO experts and web designers is to examine all the content structures, by exposing all the headings’ importance to the page. These practices can generate understandable queries that Google can use for snippets results [8].
User Intent
Google aims to mimic human behaviors to predict and evaluate better results [11]. Therefore, search engines have changed from “keywords” and now are looking to predict the intent behind the search of users [6]. Because User intent is more important, the role of keywords is now intertwined with UX approaches. The reason for this is because people’s queries have more meaning for the search engine. To accomplish this type of search, Google created Micro-moments that defined intent outlines that can obtain information through search results [7]. Some of these micro-moments are:
- I want to know. Users usually looking for inspiration because users don’t know a particular topic or solution.
- I want to go. This could be a local intent like searching for a local restaurant.
- I want to do. Users searching for manuals or tutorials to perform a specific task.
- I want to buy. Users looking for deals or reviews to make a decision [1].
Another UX strategy that can be utilized to measure intent is the HEART framework. The acronym means Happiness: it helps measure attitudes; Engagement: the intensity or interest of the user; Adoption: the selection of new features; Retention: the number of users returning to the site; and Task Success: actions that have been completed successfully. The design and implementation of user intent can help search engines determine the value of the website.
The use of images
Another crucial aspect of SEOs are the indexation of images. However, it is crucial to consider that most websites are “text-centric,” and they have many tools to improve SEOs because of the amount of diverse content. While other websites focus on images like photographers and e-commerce sites, these websites are “image-centric” because the content revolves around images. Consequently, the use of SEOs are different; the essential attribute for an image-centric webpage is the use of ALT text and file names. In this case, the use of keywords become crucial for the naming convention [12]. The search engine crawler is going to use the ALT text to index images, and base on the information it receives, the search engine determines the best image for a query result [13].
Another important aspect for SEOs and designers to take under consideration is file size. Depending on the size, it can impact the loading speed of the website. As a result, it can affect the use of SEOs and the user experience of the site, because large images can increase the loading time of a website significantly [14]. For these reasons, designers need to pay attention to file compression such as lossy and lossless. When using Lossy, designers can delete data from the images without damaging the file, and it is all about quality and size while lossless compression focuses on removing metadata from the files, usually on JPEG and PNG files [19]. The use of proper ALT is essential for accessibility, which at the same time, helps with the SEOs’ best practices [16]. Therefore, having a clear plan on how to manage image size is an important aspect when working with both design and SEO teams.
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE STUDIES
The UX strategy mission is to bring one vision to the organization and build a comprehensive plan with diverse teams and skills to cooperate and accomplish an ultimate goal, ones that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-based. SEOs and visual designers should build bonds for better collaboration across for efficiency. The purpose of this paper was to find how these teams’ responsibilities interwind between each other, by observing this relationship, designers and SEO practitioners can become more efficient by formulating better methods to improve the process when enhancing the visibility of a website. It is essential to conduct more research on the processes that can enhance the relationship between SEOs and designers. Better collaboration can go a long way by saving money and time when making changes or building websites.
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