For a brand to fully understand how SEO can transform the user experience, it first needs to understand exactly how the user experience is defined.

Originally, the term described how easy or accessible a tool was for a user – an easily understandable software interface, a particularly pleasant website, or a wonderfully intuitive app. Now this definition has expanded to include the length and breadth of the experience a customer has with a brand from the first engagement online to the final purchase of the product.

How to play the game

So how does SEO even begin to play a part in this game?

The answer lies in presence. SEO is a process, a slow and steady keyword-driven slide upwards along the rankings scale that puts the brand in front of the customer when they’re looking for it. No brand can afford to dodge website optimisation. This optimisation is where the glory of SEO and keywords lie by ensuring that the brand is using the right keywords that relate to its services and business and mapping these back to how users experience the website when they finally arrive there.

The more a consumer likes the site and finds what they want in a quick and easy way, the more they will return. And the more they will use those keywords to locate your services and solutions. It’s a win-win online circle of life that can create customer engagement from the first moment they are looking online to the moment they hand their money over to your brand.

Website should be keyword optimised

To create richer user experiences through SEO and keywords, a website should be keyword optimised. This isn’t just throwing a pile of keywords at some digital paper and hoping they’ll stick. It’s the right keywords with good monthly searches and laid out in phrases, not single words. Alongside the words should be the layout. To encourage more customer time on the site, the website should be attractive and follow basic search engine guidelines. Good navigation, clearly laid out menus, footers with contact information, pages that link to one another, mobile optimised layout – these are just some of the most important elements a website should contain.

It sounds basic, yet so many companies have neglected their websites and as customers become increasingly digital savvy, these first impressions are not building trust or engagement. Sites with layouts from the 1990s, heavy content, poor navigation, no price lists, zero contact information and impossible to read on a mobile device are going to lose customers the moment they land. Make the website beautiful and easy to understand and people will stay on your site.

These two factors together should then create higher conversion rates and this will improve traffic and that will improve ranking. This domino effect of SEO success will put the business in front of eyes that matter, and keep them there. This is how SEO can build user experiences and it's as simple as the right keywords in the right places.