In a recent Google office hours session, John Mueller answered a question concerning the possible SEO impact of changing user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). Mueller says that early preparation is essential since resolving issues created by failed SEO might take time.
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ToggleThe User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)
UI and UX are crucial components of a website, influencing user happiness and their ability to complete their tasks on the site. Navigation, input forms, and informative symbols are all features in a user interface that influence how users interact with a website. Accessibility, design consistency, mobile responsiveness, readability, site speed, and usability are examples of UX components.
The UI and UX are critical website components that influence seamless experience for users to achieve their goals, eventually impacting user satisfaction.
User experience aspects encompass a broader range of factors such as accessibility, design consistency, mobile responsiveness, readability, site speed, usability, and many more elements that, when well designed, have a positive influence on user pleasure.
This can impact SEO ranking for different reasons, including technical concerns with how Google crawls the page and on-page ranking considerations such as how the material is displayed and interpreted on a website.
Making site-wide modifications to the UI and UX and adding new web pages is a significant task that should not be taken lightly.
Plan before any website Modifications
As Mueller suggests, it is prudent to devise a strategy for implementing the changes. It is also significant to document the website’s status before making any modifications and to maintain a backup and staging environment.
Mueller emphasized the necessity of having a comprehensive knowledge of any modifications to the website, proposing that they be documented. It is also critical to be mindful of the possible SEO consequences of these adjustments. Mueller recommends hiring assistance from experienced specialists, as mistakes in a website redesign or relocation might have serious SEO effects.
It is advisable to have a clear strategy for the implementation of changes. Crawling the website before and after modifications to discover and resolve any possible issues, generating multiple backups of the website, and testing the new website in a different environment for review are all essential measures to take.
The crawl data may be used to reveal various potential issues that can be resolved before the site goes online.
Things that can be checked before relaunch:
- Missing pages
- Misconfigured links
- Missing meta and title components
- Changes to linking patterns
- 404 errors
- Suitable 301 redirects
The article underlines the necessity of staging the website, which enables development and quality assurance testing before changes are made to the live site. This allows us to discover and solve any issues or technical flaws before they affect the live version of the website.
Overall, the essay emphasizes the importance of careful preparation and execution when implementing UI and UX improvements to a website, especially given the possible influence on SEO. It also includes helpful information for managing successful website migrations and preventing common pitfalls along the way.