The user experience trend is getting stronger

Kristina says: "We need to start thinking more about user experience and stop thinking that we need to create SEO content. There is no SEO content - there is content that helps people and is also optimised for search engines.

User experience has been an important trend for a long time, but now it's getting even more significant, especially with the introduction of Core Web Vitals. Now, you need to be useful, and not just create content for the sake of creating content. Also - answer the users' questions matching their intent. If you see your users are struggling to find the information about something related to your services, create content about this - even though this content might initially not have a lot of search volume. There will still be users who will be searching for this. I've seen many situations where you create content with zero search, but later end up getting so many impressions, clicks, and visits through these keywords.

Technical SEO should still be a priority if something is going on with your website, especially if you're using some fancy JavaScript framework. You need to make sure that your Core Web Vitals are good, and your pages are accessible and indexable."

How do search engines actually measure user experience?

"Take a holistic approach to user experience. You need to match user intent with your content, and SEO is part of user experience. I'm not just talking about the design and having the right colours, typography, etc. It's about making sure that your content is accessible, and using your website is not hard.

One of the ways Google estimates user experience is through Core Web Vitals and looking at the content - such as interstitials and pop-ups that can be annoying. They also obviously consider user intent. Additionally, you do need to think about semantic SEO. It's much better to answer a question using 50 words if this will be an exact answer to the question. You don't need to beat around the bush and write 500 words answering questions just to get optimised. Google has direct and indirect ways to measure user experience."

Are there any software tools you use to track what users are doing on your website?

"Yes. I sometimes use Yandex.Metrica (Yandex is a Russian search engine), which is very similar to Google Analytics. It's free, maps user clicks, and you can record sessions and watch them afterwards to see how people are looking at your page."

What are the biggest mistakes that web designers or SEOs are making from a UX perspective nowadays?

"Using headings just for styling, instead of properly marking the content. I see designers or SEOs only using H1 tags, where H2 or H3 tags would be more appropriate to create the right structure for your content.

When it comes to getting feedback from session recordings, what's interesting for me is that often people don't actually read the content. You need to have the content in chunks, and make sure the headings are relevant. If you have a page, and people only read the headings, what would they get from this page? What will they understand?"

How do SEOs educate UX people, and make them more knowledgeable and passionate about SEO?

"When I do training for designers, there are two important elements. Firstly, understanding that headings are not for design only - they are also for marking out the content correctly. And the second thing - which is huge - is speed. It would be amazing if designers understood these two themes.

Designers are usually accountable for images and visual content, so they want everything to be really clear and amazing - which makes total sense because they care about their job. However, at some point, it may become counterproductive because uploading the images doesn't help page speed. For example, I've seen websites where only a part of a huge image was used. The page would always load this enormous image - which was something like 4000 by 4000 pixels - and only part of this image will be used. Think about how much bandwidth is used to load this."

How does writing headings with the user in mind impact keywords? Is it still important to incorporate keywords in headings, and all the other traditional places?

"Yes, definitely - keywords are not going anywhere. They're just becoming more sophisticated because you're using semantics, synonyms and variations for these keywords.

For example, if you wanted to rank for 'SEO consultant in Toronto', you could have it as an H1, and use an even wider keyword such as 'I help people with their digital marketing' for your H2. I would still follow the web standards of using H1 for the most important thing you're trying to convey on the website. So 'SEO consultant' rather than 'digital marketing'. Still include keywords - but it's so much easier to do this when you think about semantics, variations, and synonyms."

What does the greater importance of good user experience mean for the SEO role moving forward? Will the SEO in the future be less technical and more creative?

"When I was starting, there was just SEO. There were backlinks, some on-page, and the technical elements. Now, there's so much more, such as international SEO and news SEO. Going forward, the variety in our roles will become even bigger.

There are already signs that SEOs are becoming more specialist. Some are dedicated to the technical parts, and others are obsessed about on-page. If SEOs want to get more creative, they can move into a more content-based role. If you want to migrate pages, or undertake other technical projects, not every single SEO should be an expert in taking on these tasks. You're going to have different people with different skills. Thinking about content and creative - even from an SEO perspective - requires different skills compared to technical SEO. These roles are going to be even more separated in the future."

What's one thing an SEO might be spending a lot of effort on that they should probably stop doing to spend more time focusing on user experience?

"Stop obsessing about keyword rankings. I know it's easy to report on, but it's not the main goal. It can be measured in addition to the main goals, like revenue and important traffic - not just traffic for the sake of traffic. You can also ditch keyword rankings for good, because it's not the main factor to show that your SEO campaign is successful."

Kristina Azarenko is SEO Consultant & Founder at MarketingSyrup.com.