SEO Series: A Practical Guide to Improving your SEO and UX Design

SEO Series

Combining SEO and User Experience Design (UX) as we said in our first blog is like a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich – delicious together! You might love one more than the other, but they’re undeniably better together. Read our first blog in this series here.

Deluxe PB&J with bacon, banana, Top-Raman Noodle pack, and Giant Dill.

A user-defined PB&J. All ingredients were requested by a user.

To maximize traffic and provide an exceptional user experience, it’s essential to think holistically. This blog will walk you through the process, step-by-step, to show how SEO and UX can create a powerful synergy that not only attracts visitors but delights them.

SEO: More Than Just Keywords

It’s tempting to throw a bunch of keywords onto a webpage and hope for the best. You might even be thinking about using AI to generate a bunch of quick blog posts. Sure, this is a legitimate strategy, but is it really what’s best for your customers?

Let me be clear—getting great SEO. Results isn’t an overnight success story. It requires time, effort, and refinement. So, if you’re in this for the long haul and want to improve your rankings (or even if you’re thinking about outsourcing the task), it’s important to understand the fundamentals. At The Insight Studio, we live, eat, and breathe SEO and UX. We love transforming websites from being barely noticed to driving thousands of visitors using smart, sustainable strategies. Give us a call—we’d love to help you!

SEO Shortcuts: Beware of Content Overload

Here’s a cautionary tale: If every company churns out content purely to satisfy SEO goals, soon all websites in a given industry will look eerily similar. It’s the “monkey-see, monkey-do” of content marketing. But does this repetitive, formulaic content truly delight your customers? More importantly, does a 2,200-word blog (which is recommended for optimal SEO results) actually serve their needs?

Google has a safeguard for this: E-E-A-T Framework, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This framework ensures that search results highlight valuable content. Essentially, your content needs to tick several boxes:

• Experience – Does the author have hands-on knowledge? Are they a real human (not just AI)?
• Expertise – Is the content by a legitimate expert in the field?
• Authoritativeness – Is the person or company recognized as a credible source?
• Trustworthiness – Is this content reliable and helpful?

The key takeaway: while Google is warming up to AI-generated content, the human touch still plays a critical role in creating meaningful, valuable content. The goal is to deliver information that’s useful, desirable, and (dare I say) delightful.

StoryBrand: Making Your Customer the Hero

Now, let’s talk about StoryBrand, a concept we wholeheartedly embrace. If you’ve read content on various websites, you’ve probably noticed something ”they love talking about themselves. “We’re amazing, look at all we’ve done, we’re the best!” This is what we call “marketese,” and it’s pretty boring.

But what if, instead of making yourself the hero, you flipped the script and made your customer the hero? StoryBrand teaches you how to do just that. Rather than shouting about how great you are, focus on how your customers can succeed using your services or products. Want to dive deeper? Check our first blog in this series for more on this topic. 

The SEO and UX Game Plan

Step 1: Evaluating Your Keywords

Next week, we’ll focus on keywords—those magical little phrases that drive traffic to your site. We’ll use tools like Ubersuggest and SEMrush to find the best keywords for your website.

Hat-tip to Neil Patel, the SEO guru who developed this very helpful 7-week Action Plan to work through all of our SEO strategies in bite-size activities. We will cover each of these in our weekly SEO blog series, but Neil has videos and more information on each step. 

• How to evaluate keywords:
  • Does the keyword have high traffic potential”
  • Can you realistically rank for it?
  • Is it a “winnable” keyword based on competition?

Step 2: Conducting a Site Audit

A site audit is crucial for identifying errors that are dragging down your SEO. Think of it like a spring cleaning for your website—you’ll find all sorts of hidden messes that need tidying up.

• How to fix SEO errors:
  • Use Ubersuggest or SEMrush for site audits.
  • Identify the most harmful errors and prioritize them for quick fixes.
  • Optimize your on-page SEO for better rankings.

Step 3: Creating Shareable, Effective Content

Content is king, but not just any content. You need material that not only attracts visitors but also keeps them engaged.

• How to create delightful content:
  • Analyze what’s working for competitors.
  • Create unique content that sets you apart.
  • Decide whether hiring a professional writer is worth the investment.

Step 4: Advanced Tracking Strategies

Tracking your SEO progress is like checking your car’s speedometer. You need to know how fast (or slow) you’re going.

• How to improve tracking:
  • Set up advanced tracking using Google Analytics.
  • Use Google Search Console to monitor crawl to monitor crawl errors.
  • Investigate “dark traffic” to uncover hidden opportunities.

Step 5: Building High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are like the lifeblood of SEO. The more high-quality links pointing to your sites, the more authority you’ll gain in the eyes of search engines.

• How to build backlinks:
  • Identify reputable sites for backlinking opportunities.
  • Create a target list of sites to reach out to.
  • Develop an effective outreach strategy that gets results.

Step 6: Leveraging Branding and Experience

Your brand isn’t just a logo; it’s a story. By leveraging your branding and unique experience, you can produce memorable, effective content that delights your customers.

• How to use branding effectively:
  • Analyze your market and competitors.
  • Address customer needs that others may have overlooked.
  • Use testimonials to build trust and authority.

Step 7: Putting It All Together

Finally, you’ll learn how to combine all these strategies to build a robust link-building campaign and promote your content effectively.

The Endgame: Transforming Your Website Traffic

Over the next several weeks, I’ll walk you through each of these steps in detail. By the end, you’ll have a solid SEO game plan that doesn’t just drive traffic but also keeps your customers happy. Along the way, I’ll continue to emphasize the “Storybrand” concept—making your customers the hero of the story.

So buckle up, because with the right approach, you’ll go from “just another website” to a digital powerhouse that both Google and your customers will love.