The world of online marketing is constantly evolving. Technology is constantly changing, as are users, their habits, expectations, and behaviors. New trends in website design are constantly emerging in response to user needs . Solutions created by marketers, UX specialists, web developers, and representatives of other related professions aim to attract potential customers to the website and refine the user experience to its fullest potential, ultimately resulting in increased conversions.
SXO – Search Experience Optimization
Among the relatively new terms (the concept itself has actually been around for about a decade, but is only now experiencing a renaissance of sorts) that should be considered when designing a company website, SXO, short for Search Experience Optimization, is at the forefront. SXO is a combination of the long-standing terms SEO (search engine optimization) and UX (user experience). In short, it's about not only effectively attracting search engine users and encouraging them to visit a given website, but also encouraging them to convert in a way that satisfies both parties.
A well-developed SXO will work for virtually any type of website. The most common conversion goals are:
- Online stores and the broadly defined e-commerce industry – main goal: increasing e-commerce conversion rate; additional goals include, for example, increasing the number of transactions, basket value, reducing basket abandonment, but also obtaining newsletter subscriptions or adding a product to the wish list,
- Service industry – main goal: increasing the number of leads, additional goal: for example, downloading a PDF guide or completing a survey,
- Content services – primary goal: increasing the user’s time on the site, clicking on related articles, secondary goal: for example, playing a video in the content.
Of course, primary and secondary goals can seamlessly interchange – it depends entirely on the industry and the website owner's goals. However, this doesn't change the fact that emphasizing SXO (Search Experience Optimization), when implemented correctly, will improve conversions – regardless of the specific goal.
(The rest of the article can be found below the form)
But let's start from the beginning. As mentioned above, SXO is a combination of two terms – SEO and UX. Let's look at them one by one:
SEO – website positioning
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of positioning a website in search engines. This process aims to ensure that a website appears at the top of search results for a specific phrase—or at least on the first page. Statistics show that few internet users, after entering keywords, visit websites outside the top 10 results, and the further they go, the lower this number decreases. If a website isn't at least in the top 50, it can be concluded that the website won't attract anyone other than a few internet users for that phrase, who are either very determined or "lost" in the search. Therefore, the goal of any website owner who wants to increase traffic in the long term at a relatively low cost (compared to, for example, social media advertising or systems like Google Ads ) should be proper optimization.
SEO is a complex process – over 200 different factors influence a website's position in the Google search engine. Some are officially published by the Mountain View-based company, but many are not publicly disclosed. For this reason, effective SEO requires significant knowledge and experience, but also requires constant experimentation and testing of new solutions. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Google frequently changes these factors through updates to its main SEO algorithm. In 2020 alone, these minor changes occurred almost daily, while major ones occurred every few months – the January 2020 Core Update, the Nofollow Update in March, the May 2020 Core Update, and the December 2020 Update. This means that without a large database, it's difficult to effectively optimize a website.
SEO activities are broadly divided into two branches. The first is called on-site SEO and involves adapting a website and its content to Google's requirements. This includes:
- speeding up the website (users often abandon their visit if the loading time is too long – after all, everyone cares about time),
- appropriate responsiveness, i.e. the ability of the website to be displayed correctly on various devices (including mobile devices – smartphones and tablets),
- Enriching the website's content with texts that are well-suited to the website type and industry, and are appropriately saturated with keywords—words for which the website should be displayed to users in search engines. It's important to remember that content guidelines for YMYL websites differ from those for websites featuring news, market information, or recipes, for example.
- Presenting content in a user-friendly form – dividing it into paragraphs, using headings (H1, H2, H3), appropriate use of graphics, internal linking.
The second branch of activity is off-site SEO, meaning activities conducted through other websites. Carefully selected links (and their structure on other websites) leading to the target website strengthen its "strength"—that is, they signal to the search engine algorithm that the site is valuable and should be ranked higher. The link parameter is crucial—a link can be designated as dofollow or nofollow—the former "invites" a Google bot to visit the site, which translates into SEO benefits. The nofollow parameter also allows users to click, but it will be ignored by crawlers, meaning it has no direct impact on SEO. However, for Google, it means healthy link diversity and is more authentic, which is called link pillowing and is also used in SEO.
A crucial factor in an external linking strategy is selecting the right techniques, pages, NAPs, backends, and linking schedule so that Google understands these activities as real, not "purchased." Otherwise, it may penalize your ranking, for example, if a large number of links suddenly appear, even from the best and largest websites.
Why does SEO matter?
It's worth remembering that SEO is the most cost-effective long-term option for generating website traffic. Both Google Ads and social media advertising systems, in the hands of specialists, can be effective marketing tools. When using these solutions, if the campaign is disabled, the traffic immediately disappears. SEO effects last much longer, resulting in noticeably lower customer acquisition costs in the long run. By investing in SEO, you ensure your company is always where your potential customer is.
We have written about positioning many times on our blog – we encourage you to read sample articles that thoroughly present selected aspects related to SEO.
UX - User Experience
User Experience (UX) is the overall experience experienced by a website visitor. UX is a multifaceted field, encompassing not only technical aspects but also psychology, cognitive science, and other disciplines.
A crucial component of the user experience is the UI, or user interface. The UI can be defined as the way a user issues commands to a program—for example, a content management system (CMS) on a website. A UI element can be considered any part of a page that, when clicked, causes the page to perform a specific command. The interface, or more precisely, its graphical representation (GUI – Graphical User Interface), is incredibly important—it's responsible for the ease of navigation and intuitiveness of the site, as well as various visual aspects. On some pages, color combinations, fonts, or even borders make using the site a pleasant experience, while on others—very similar—they can be irritating or cause a certain amount of anxiety. Color psychology, typography, compositional solutions, and many, many more—all of these elements must be considered when designing a website from an interface perspective.
User interface is an important element of UX, but user experience is a much broader concept. A UX specialist considers, among other things, the user profile—their digital skills, demographics, and brand personas. It also involves in-depth analysis of competitive websites. The most important aspect of a UX specialist's work on an existing website is analyzing users and their behavior on the site, their roadblocks and motivations, bottlenecks, and reasons for cart abandonment. Equally important is the construction of effective user flow paths and the optimization of purchase funnels. This is often accomplished through extensive testing and experiments based on things like recording user sessions, generating heat maps, A/B testing, and even testing the purchase journey and payment gateways across dozens of devices, resolutions, and browsers.
UX, and in a broader perspective also SXO, takes into account three perspectives:
- the user (who wants the website to be simple, hassle-free and pleasant to use),
- website owner (emphasizing valuable traffic and high conversion rates),
- web bots (analyzing the website in various respects, which translates into a specific result in search results).
Why does UX matter?
A well-designed user experience can completely transform a website's statistics. Forrester research from a few years ago showed that simply redesigning the user interface can increase conversion rates by 200%, and changing the user experience by as much as 400%. These results can certainly be considered a business game-changer. Of course, this is an extreme case, and in the vast majority of cases, the results of a website redesign won't be as spectacular (it also depends on the starting point). However, it's undeniable that in a business context, any positive change can herald the survival or dynamic growth of a company. A UX audit is therefore the first step towards improving the effectiveness of your website.
SXO – the future of web development
Search Experience Optimization is an evolutionary approach to web development that combines the benefits of SEO and UX design , while simultaneously focusing on maximizing conversions. According to SXO, simply navigating to a page from search results doesn't mean anything – it must be complemented with a highly personalized experience, based on a range of variables.
SXO FAQs
SXO (short for Search Experience Optimization) is a modern marketing strategy that combines classic positioning (SEO) with attention to website usability (UX – User Experience) and conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Traditional SEO focuses primarily on search engine algorithms and robots—its goal is to generate as much traffic as possible and rank high in Google. SXO goes a step further. It focuses on the user, ensuring that upon entering the website, they have a positive experience, navigate smoothly, and ultimately achieve a business goal (e.g., make a purchase, call the company, or fill out a form).
Effective SXO is a multi-pronged website optimization process that primarily includes:
- Speed and reliability: optimized page load time (Core Web Vitals) and flawless operation on mobile devices (Mobile First compliance).
- Navigation and architecture: designing an intuitive menu, a clear category structure, and simplifying the shopping path (removing bottlenecks).
- Content quality and usability: delivering substantive, clearly formatted texts that accurately and quickly respond to the user's search intent.
- Clear messaging: using clear and engaging calls to action (CTAs).
Google's primary goal is to provide internet users with the most useful and user-friendly results possible. Algorithms (such as RankBrain) carefully analyze behavioral signals. If a user enters your site from search results and then quickly leaves in frustration (known as the pogo-sticking phenomenon), Google will receive a signal that your site is of little value or unreadable. In the long run, this will lead to a decline in your ranking.
This solution is absolutely crucial when your website is well-positioned and generating significant organic traffic, but it's not translating into real business profits. If you're receiving thousands of visits, but your e-commerce store sales are stagnating, customers are abandoning their carts en masse, and contact forms are empty – it's a clear sign that your website requires an audit and the implementation of an SXO strategy.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- SXO (Search Experience Optimization) is a combination of SEO and UX, which involves attracting users from a search engine and refining their experience so that they convert in a way that satisfies both parties, which works well in e-commerce, the service industry and content websites.
- Positioning (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website to appear at the top of search results, including on-site SEO (page speed, responsiveness, content with keywords) and off-site SEO (external linking), which generates the lowest customer acquisition costs in the long term.
- User Experience (UX) is the entire user experience on a website, encompassing the interface (UI), color psychology, typography, analysis of user behavior, their blocks and motivations, and optimization of purchase funnels, which combines the perspectives of the user, the website owner, and web bots.
- SXO is considered the future of web development because it combines the advantages of SEO and UX design, focusing on maximizing conversions through a personalized user experience, where the transition to the website itself must be complemented by an optimal path leading to the goal.
