Look to Rank Higher on Google WITHOUT Building Another Backlink?
There’s one massive ranking factor that most tech startups ignore when designing their marketing strategy.
User experience design.
The search engines have made it abundantly clear that UX matters when it comes to search rankings. If you want your startup to consistently outrank your competitors, then crafting a great user experience has to be a top priority.
Better yet…
UX improvements are cheap to make, easy to track, and can lead to near immediate rankings gains.
What you’ll learn:
- Why UX Is Crucial to Tech Startup Marketing
- How Google Actually Measures UX
- 5 UX Factors That Directly Impact Rankings
- Quick Wins to Improve UX and SEO
Why UX Is Crucial to Tech Startup Marketing
Like any other startup internet marketer… you want to grow organic traffic. But far too many marketing teams focus solely on keywords and backlinks and pay ZERO attention to the actual experience users have when they visit their website.
There’s your problem right there.
Believe it or not, cities across the country are discovering how valuable great UX is to their tech startup marketing strategy. From expensive tech hubs in Mountain View to lesser known ecosystems, startups are realizing the value of UX and how Google is rewarding websites that provide great UX to their users.
Google has openly said that websites that provide an excellent user experience keep their visitors happy. If someone clicks onto your site from a Google search and immediately bounces back to the SERP… Google notices. They view it as your landing page not meeting the searchers intent.
Websites that have poor UX.
See that stat above? 88% of users won’t return to your site if they’ve experienced poor UX. Which means that not only are you losing that visit… but you’re losing that customer forever.
Worse yet for startups looking to gain any kind of foothold in competitive industries… approximately 75% of users determine credibility based on how a website looks. If your website looks dated and unprofessional… your users will assume that your startup product does too.
Google’s Mission Statement: Send Better Signals of Page Relevance to Rank WebsitesHigher
How Google Measures User Experience
Ok. So Google says UX is important. But how the heck do they measure it?
Google uses performance benchmarks called Core Web Vitals. They recently rolled out this ranking signal that evaluates each website based on real-world user experience metrics for each page.
These metrics include:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — measures how long it takes the dominant content element on your page to load. Ideally this should occur within 2.5 seconds.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — measures how long it takes a page to respond once a user interacts with it. Google wants this to be under 200 milliseconds.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — measures visual stability by gauging how much content shifts on page load. Lower values are better.
Google themselves confirmed Core Web Vitals will be used as a ranking signal going forward. Websites that meet Google’s Core Web Vitals will receive preferential treatment in Google’s SERPs. Pages that don’t? They’ll be penalized with lower rankings.
For startups that rely on ranking well for their organic traffic this should be music to your ears. Every single spot you lose in the Google Search rankings is a missed opportunity to grab a visitor, convert that visitor into a lead and accelerate your startups growth.
5x UX Factors That Directly Impact Rankings
Improving your website’s UX takes some time. But not all UX factors are created equal. Here are five that will have the biggest impact on your search rankings right now.
Page Speed
This should come as no surprise to anyone. Pages that take too long to load are pushed down in Google’s ranking algorithm. Your page speed is how long it takes your website to load on average and Google hates websites that take too long to load.
Mobile Responsive Design
Remember how I said Google uses mobile-first indexing when evaluating websites? If your website isn’t properly optimized for mobile your rankings are going to suffer… period.
Ease of Navigation
Can visitors find what they’re looking for in less than 3 seconds? If not… Google will start to notice. Ensuring your site has a simple, clean menu and your content is easy to find goes a long way in improving UX.
Structured Content
How your website content is structured plays a massive role in both UX and SEO. Breaking up content into manageable paragraphs using headings makes your website easy for users to digest. It also makes your content much easier for search engine crawlers to parse through and accurately index.
Good visuals + trust signals =$$$$. Click To Tweet
Let’s face it. Design isn’t just how your website looks. It directly correlates to how much trust someone has in your company once they land on your website.
Great user experience.
Increases conversions
Eliminates Bounce
Expedites the website page crawl rate
Accelerates indexing.
Source: Forrester
UX Quick Wins That Will Simultaneously Improve Your SEO
The good news is that a lot of quick UX fixes can also dramatically improve your SEO. Try implementing these SEO friendly UX fixes into your strategy.
Compress Images
One of the easiest ways to quickly improve your website speed is to compress all your images.
Keep Your Menu Simple
Having too many items in your website navigation can overwhelm your visitors. Make sure your website menu doesn’t exceed 5-7 items MAX.
Write with Short Paragraphs
Break up your content with paragraphs instead of large blocks of text. When in doubt, add an extra line of whitespace.
Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly
Again… Google is BIG on mobile friendly websites. Test EVERYTHING on mobile first. There’s nothing worse than a clickable button leading to a dead end on mobile.
Add Clear Calls-To-Action
You want your visitors to know EXACTLY what to do when they land on your website. Make sure you have a clear call-to-action on EVERY page of your website.
Wrapping Up
UX design and SEO are no longer two topics being discussed in separate meetings. Google has made it blatantly obvious that UX design plays an important role in your search rankings. If you want your tech startup’s marketing strategy to succeed through organic search traffic… then mastering UX design is where you should start.
Let’s Recap:
- Google uses Core Web Vitals to measure UX.
- Poor UX penalizes your rankings through increased bounce rates.
- Mobile responsiveness, site speed, and ease of navigation are three of the top UX metrics that directly impact rankings.
- There are a ton of small UX improvements you can make that provide noticeable SEO value.
- Great UX = Increased trust, lower bounce rates, and increased organic traffic.
Those tech startups that take the time to learn about UX and how to provide great UX to their users are going to leave the competition in the dust. The relationship between UX design and search rankings is only going to continue to strengthen.
The startups that take action and learn how to leverage that relationship will be the ones reaping the rewards.
Peyman Khosravani is a seasoned expert in blockchain, digital transformation, and emerging technologies, with a strong focus on innovation in finance, business, and marketing. With a robust background in blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi), Peyman has successfully guided global organizations in refining digital strategies and optimizing data-driven decision-making. His work emphasizes leveraging technology for societal impact, focusing on fairness, justice, and transparency. A passionate advocate for the transformative power of digital tools, Peyman’s expertise spans across helping startups and established businesses navigate digital landscapes, drive growth, and stay ahead of industry trends. His insights into analytics and communication empower companies to effectively connect with customers and harness data to fuel their success in an ever-evolving digital world.
