SEO, or website positioning, has been a well-known term for many years. Organic user acquisition from search engines is crucial for virtually every business connected to the digital world. Next to SEO is UX (User Experience), which is the area of user experience that ensures a website's user experience is simple, enjoyable, and intuitive, ultimately facilitating conversions. A popular combination of both terms is SXO, which combines SEO and UX elements. In this post, we'll take a closer look at what an SXO audit is and what it includes.
SXO Audit = SEO + UX Audit
Today, an effective website must effectively combine these two areas. It's crucial to not only attract potential customers but also encourage them to make a purchase, leave a contact request, watch a webinar, or take another action planned and planned to achieve a business goal. SXO – Search Experience Optimization – comes to the rescue, a concept that comprehensively integrates SEO with UX, data analytics, and conversion optimization. This means that thinking about SEO should occur simultaneously with building a positive user experience based on web analytics to optimize website conversions.
The first step in implementing best SXO practices is to conduct a comprehensive SXO audit of your website or store. A professionally conducted SXO audit will highlight all the areas worth examining to potentially improve your website's performance.
Let's start with a brief introduction to what exactly user experience and website positioning are.
(The rest of the article can be found below the form)
[You can find more about SXO in the separate article " SXO – what is it? " on our blog.]
UX Audit
UX, or user experience, is the overall experience a user experiences while browsing a website. It's undeniable that even similarly designed pages can evoke different impressions. UX addresses how to refine a website to make browsing easier and more enjoyable, while also increasing conversion rates. Due to its multifaceted nature, user experience is, in fact, a blend of many disciplines—from psychology and its derivatives, through web testing, to issues related to technical website optimization.
A component of UX is the UI – User Interface. It encompasses all the elements of a website or application, along with their arrangement, through which the user communicates with the program. In this context, we most often refer to the GUI – Graphic User Interface, the graphical representation of this communication.
When analyzing and designing UX, the user comes first – their needs, skills, habits, and digital skills. A website aimed at teenagers will look and function differently than one aimed at seniors – both in terms of the interface (color combinations, font selection, graphics) and in terms of the user journey and purchase funnel design.
[You can find more about UX audit in a separate article " UX audit – basic UX mistakes on websites " on our blog.]
SEO audit
Website positioning activities aim to make a website appear higher in the search results of Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines.
When we enter a specific phrase into a search engine, we expect to quickly find what we're looking for. Whether we're looking for a specific product (ideally at the lowest available price), a service, information, contact details, or a meme from years past, we want to achieve our goals as quickly as possible. Recently, Google has become fixated on ensuring its search engine "precisely meets user intent," meaning that its SEO algorithm prioritizes delivering high-quality results. This stems from the fact that over 60% of internet users don't find the answer to their question after first accessing a search engine. Clickbait only makes matters worse, and Google combats this with almost daily algorithm updates.
A website owner hopes that users will visit their website and then make purchases (e-commerce), leave leads (services), or read the materials contained therein (content websites). Good website positioning can significantly improve sales results. Often, the profitability of a business depends on search engine visibility. Users hope for quick access to relevant content, search engines hope for the ability to provide this, and the website owner hopes that their site will be found and visited.
Search engine results aren't randomly generated – the rankings are determined by a constantly improving algorithm. It considers approximately 200 factors during a comprehensive analysis of a website and its links. How does this work?
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On-site SEO
Google places a strong emphasis on content and its presentation. On-site SEO involves changes that can be implemented directly on the website being positioned. These can be roughly divided into two categories: content modifications and technical modifications.
As mentioned above, Google wants pages ranked high in search results to meet user needs. Ideally, the content on the page should be well-optimized and contain specific keywords surrounded by intermediate keywords—long-tail and LSI. However, this isn't about a random selection of phrases, but about substantive and structured text on a desired topic. To properly present a given topic, the content on the subpage must be properly organized—including being divided into paragraphs and supplemented with headings (H1, H2, H3).
The way text is displayed and how quickly a page loads are also crucial. Most users, if they have to wait more than a few seconds, will simply return to the search results and select another page. Therefore, website loading time is invaluable. The algorithm also takes this into account and specifically checks against Core Web Vitals guidelines.
Gone are the days when the internet was browsed exclusively on computers. Today, web developers must cope with thousands of different devices, technologies, designs, and resolutions. A website must look good on every device, be error-free, and ensure the correct display of numerous fonts and graphics. Google's algorithm can detect errors in presentation, so proper responsiveness is one of the keys to SEO.
Internal linking, or placing links to other subpages on a given website, is also crucial. When done correctly, it not only increases user engagement by encouraging them to click, but also significantly simplifies navigation for web crawlers. Another important aspect is canonical links, which ensure that even though the actual URLs differ (for example, in online stores), Google's crawlers see them as a single variant. This prevents duplicate subpages.
Off-site SEO
Extensive, comprehensive on-site content and technical perfection are crucial, but they're not enough to rank a website for more popular, frequently searched phrases. The algorithm assumes that if a website has many links, it's valuable to users – after all, when we come across interesting content, we sometimes share the link with friends. Off-site SEO involves collecting numerous links from other websites deemed strong by Google. It's crucial that the link structure is appropriately diversified – alongside dofollow links containing keywords, there should also be links without keywords and sometimes with the nofollow parameter. Diversifying the link profile is sometimes called link pillowing.
SXO audit – what is it?
The first step to improving your SXO is to conduct a comprehensive SXO audit. Specialists will thoroughly analyze various aspects related to SEO and UX, draw conclusions, and propose necessary changes to your website. Many of the nearly 200 ranking factors in Google's SEO algorithm directly relate to on-site UX—for example, pop-up design.
SXO audit – what does it analyze? The scope of activities includes:
SEO audit and recommendations
- domain history
- performance and site structure
- keywords and their potential
- visibility compared to the competition
- link profile
- current SEO status on the website
- website mobility and usability
- Core Web Vitals parameters
- on-site SEO content
- meta tags, snippets
- Google My Business card
- crawl budget
- search engine, filter and sorting analysis
- And others!
Analytics and GSC Audit
- correct basic configuration
- the impact of organic traffic on conversion
- traffic quality, click-through rate
SEO – action recommendations depending on the type of website and industry
- Meta tags (title & description)
- On-site and off-site linking
- Content SEO (including headlines)
- Rich snippets
- Google business card positioning
- Website optimization
- Monitoring and optimization of activities
- Keyword research with potential
- And others!
UX and CRO Audit – Activities
- Analysis of the purchase path and basket from the listing
to complete the order - Contact form analysis
- UI & UX analysis of main subpages
- Widget and pop-up analysis
- Click and scroll depth heatmaps
- Payment system tests
- Support for the SEO department in designing changes
See also audit price lists and descriptions:
The post was co-authored by Anna Tratnerska – senior manager of the Business Development department and an extremely experienced specialist in the area of UX and UI.
SXO Audit FAQs
SXO (Search Experience Optimization) is a modern approach that combines SEO (positioning) and UX (User Experience). An SXO audit is a comprehensive website analysis that checks not only whether a website is visible in Google but, above all, whether it is user-friendly and convenient.
A classic SEO audit focuses primarily on algorithms and driving traffic to a website (visibility, technical parameters for search engine crawlers). An SXO audit goes a step further – it analyzes the behavior of already acquired users and examines the conversion path, seeking answers to the question of why (despite good traffic) customers are not purchasing or submitting inquiries.
Both technical aspects (page load time, Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness) and interface usability are verified. Analysts examine factors such as intuitive navigation, the clarity of the purchase path, the readability of contact forms, and the quality and placement of call-to-action (CTA) buttons.
This solution is essential when your website is receiving high-quality traffic from organic results (or paid campaigns), but your conversion rate is drastically low (so-called "empty entries"). It's also a great step before redesigning your current website or implementing a completely new online store.
The main goal and effect is to increase sales or lead generation without having to increase the budget for acquiring new traffic. Furthermore, users spend more time on a user-friendly website, and the bounce rate decreases. Google algorithms treat this as a strong quality signal, which in turn further boosts search results (the so-called snowball effect).
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- SXO audit assumptions as an integration of SEO, UX, analytics and conversion optimization activities,
- what areas does an SXO audit cover and how does it affect website visibility, website usability and conversion efficiency.
