Search Experience Optimization: Everything You Need to Know!

1. What does Search-Experience-Optimization (SXO) mean?
2. What's the difference between SEO and SXO?
3. What's important in Search-Experience-Optimization?
4. How can companies effectively combine SEO and SXO?
5. What resources do companies need to implement a successful SEO & SXO strategy?
6. Based on which KPIs can the success of SXO measures be measured?
7. What changes for SEOs due to Search-Experience-Optimization?
8. Conclusion
9. The appropriate tools that you can use for your SEO

The fact that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a part of a successful online marketing strategy is hardly up for debate. According to Statista, search engine marketing occupies the 3rd place among the most used online marketing channels in Germany. Only social media and email marketing are more popular.

Like so much in the online world, SEO is also constantly changing. In this article, you will learn from our guest author Maximilian Pawelzik, why Search-Experience-Optimization (SXO) is the more up-to-date term and how you can best use SXO for your online marketing strategy.

What does Search-Experience-Optimization (SXO) mean?

SXO Definition: Search-Experience-Optimization, short SXO, means the optimization of a website with regard to the search experience of users. SXO is a more up-to-date designation and extension of classical SEO. Instead of the search engine, SXO focuses more on the user.

Is Search-Experience-Optimization therefore a completely new concept?

The answer to this question can be a clear no. In fact, the origin of the term goes back much further than you might think.

It's the year 2008. In San Jose, California, the SES (Search Engine Strategies) conference is taking place, during which marketer Bryan Eisenberg is giving a lecture on Google Ads. In this, he redefines the term PPC. By describing that Pay-per-Conversion would be the better description than Pay-per-Click, because it's not about the click itself, but about making the clicking person a buyer, i.e., a conversion.

In the same breath, he mentions that SEO should be changed to Searcher-Experience-Optimization because only users with the best experience will convert in the end. The birth of SEO Experience.

Eisenberg was ahead of his time, because at that time users hardly received any attention when it came to optimizing a website. Until 2011, optimization was literally for the search engine. Only with the Panda update (2011) and the Penguin update (2012) did Google put a stop to Blackhat measures, web spam, Keyword stuffing and low-quality content.

What's the difference between SEO and SXO?

SEO and SXO differ in their respective focus, but you need to look a bit more closely here.

If we go strictly by the terminologies, the focus of SEO is on optimization for the search engine and the focus of SXO is on optimizing the search experience of users.

However, this distinction is not quite up to date. Because SEO does not mean that users do not receive attention. The problem rather lies in the fact that SEO has been continuously developing since the late 1990s, but the term has remained unchanged to this day.

Search-Experience-Optimization is therefore to be understood as an extension of Search-Engine-Optimization. Accordingly, SEO is always also a part of SXO marketing.

What components does SXO have?

Most sources use the following equation:

SEO + UX = SXO

Search engine optimization paired with User Experience.
Some authors extend the formula to include Conversion-Rate-Optimization (CRO).

SEO + UX + CRO = SXO

Others again use a whole list of components:

SEO + UX + Search Intent + Quality Content + User Interface (UI) = SXO

Which equation is the right one? All are right in their own way. Because what all equations have in common is that they try to define what optimization on search experience (Search Experience) looks like.

Why this is so important and what Search Experience actually means, you will find out in the next section in more detail.

What's important in Search-Experience-Optimization?

At the end of the day, everything in Search-Experience-Optimization comes down to the search experience. What the ideal search experience of your users looks like in practice can vary greatly depending on the topic and industry of your website. It also depends on whether you are located in e-commerce, B2B, in the service or local sector.

But to get the most out of this post for you, first let's define the term "search experience" and based on that, create a kind of blueprint that you can apply to your website.

What does search experience mean?

The search experience is the sum total of all points of contact of a person with a website during a search process.

If we break down a search process, we find the following points of contact that can be applied to almost all websites. Factors that can be influenced by classic SEO measures are marked with an [SEO].

1. Metadata (Title & Description) [SEO]
2. Domain / Company name
3. Loading time [SEO]
4. Cookie banners and interstitials
5. User Interface (UI)
6. Usability
7. Headline [SEO]
8. Main Content [SEO]
9. Conversion

1. Metadata

The metadata is the first thing users see in the search results from you or your website. This is the first point of contact.

Search experience: Is what's stated in the metadata relevant to solving my problem? (keyword search intent)

Here, it's often already decided about click or no click and whether the search experience continues or not. Optimizing metadata is essential from both an SEO and SXO point of view.

2. Domain / Company Name

Not to be underestimated, and thus the second contact point, is the domain.

Search experience: Who is the website or the company that promises me a solution and can I trust them?

For users, it makes a difference whether your domain is a known brand, has a serious name, or whether you're shop.xn-123.cc.
Since the Site-Name-Update from Google in October 2022, the site name has become even more important as it is now more prominently displayed in the SERPs.

3. Loading Time

Loading time is a classic when it comes to user experience.

Search experience: Can I get to the solution to my problem as quickly as possible?

If the page takes too long to load, the users will leave and possibly find their way to the competition.

4. Cookie Banners and Interstitials

This also has an impact on the search experience of users. Because when the website has loaded, this is the first thing they see and have to interact with.

Search experience: Can I get to the solution of my problem with minimal obstacles?

If more than one click is necessary to accept the cookie policy, some people have already reached a limit. If you are now still being insistently asked to sign up for a newsletter, your search experience could already be suffering.

5. User Interface (UI)

If you have made it up to here, you can actually take a good look at the website for the first time. First impressions count.

Search experience: How good does the user interface look, is everything intuitive and user-friendly?

UI includes things like: Colors, font, font size, arrangement and size of buttons, clean and minimalist design, overall layout.

6. Usability

Usability is the term used to refer to the usability of a website.

Search experience: Can I interact efficiently and satisfactorily with the site?

In reality, good usability often goes unnoticed, while poor usability is immediately noticeable. Poor usability interferes with the way we want to use a website or are used to using it.

7. Headline

The headline must validate what was promised in the metadata.

Search experience: Before I spend more time on this website, is it really about solving my problem here?

The first headline (H1) is a very important aspect, both from an SEO perspective and for users.

8. Main Content

The main content of a website is the core of the search experience. The point here is to really solve the existing problem.

Search experience: Is my problem being solved here, yes or no?

The main content doesn't have to be text-based. What exactly the main content is, depends heavily on the search intent. The most common content formats are guide texts, shop category pages, product detail pages, videos, infographics, or a combination of these. The important thing is that the main content really represents a satisfactory solution for the users.

9. Conversion

In general, every type of website also provides for a certain type of conversion. All previous points of contact are building up to the conversion.

Search experience: Can I carry out my/a desired action?

While the conversions for an online shop (Sale), on a B2B website (Lead), or for a newspaper (click on the ad) are relatively easy to determine, this is not the case for magazine, blog, or guide content. Rather, these serve as an intermediate stage to draw interested users' attention to the actual products and services and to sensitize them.

As you can see, potential users have up to nine points of contact with your website in a typical search process. Only four of these can be influenced by classic SEO work. If an optimization is carried out with regard to the mentioned nine points of contact, we speak of Search-Experience-Optimization.

By optimizing for the search experience, the attempt is made to take a short, medium and long term place in the minds of the users as the best choice. As Bryan Eisenberg already said: Only users with the best experience will convert in the end.

How can companies effectively combine SEO and SXO?

Just as SXO is an expansion of SEO, an SXO strategy expands an SEO strategy. A good SEO strategy is therefore a prerequisite for successful implementation.

What your SEO strategy looks like depends again on the topic, industry, competition, objectives, and the starting situation. In this article, Katharina Korbelius explains how to set up an SEO strategy in 6 steps.

If you are already following an SEO strategy, then check in the next step which of the nine points of contact are already actively covered in it. Anything that is not yet part of your strategy, you add in order to create a balance between optimization for the search engine and optimization on the search experience.

An important part of an SXO strategy is also to check your own assumptions regarding the search experience. Assumptions and claims about what the best search experience for your target group looks like are good, but only when they are validated by tests and feedback should they be finally implemented.

What resources do companies need to implement a successful SEO & SXO strategy?

If we first look at the SEO strategy, you already know that an SEO manager designs this strategy and also implements many parts of it himself. In addition, a copywriter is needed who creates SEO content according to specified criteria. A third component often still requires a web developer who can modify a website according to SEO best practices. So far, the three pillars of a classic SEO strategy.

In order to expand from SEO to SXO, companies need one or more experts from the fields of UX/UI and usability as well as from the CRO area. If it is not possible to cover this in-house, experts can also be hired as freelancers.

Based on which KPIs can the success of SXO measures be measured?

Conversions

The decisive KPI for SXO measures is the conversion rate, no matter what form the conversion looks like at the end of the day. In order to be able to determine success or failure, it is significant to know the conversion rates before implementing SXO measures.

The raw conversion numbers are not meaningful in themselves, but must always be put in relation to traffic.

Example:

• Month 1: Traffic 10,000 / Conversions 500 = CR 5%
• 
  Month 6: Traffic 30,000 / Conversions 600 = CR 2%

Even though in month 6 the absolute conversions were 100 higher than in month 1, the ratio between visitors to converted visitors has dropped by 3%.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic can also be a sensible KPI. This is because the implementation of SXO measures not only leads to optimization based on keywords, but also to optimization in terms of click rate in the SERPs, loading speed, user signals such as back-to-SERP rate or dwell time.

An increase in organic traffic needs to be determined at the URL level and not at the domain level. This means that only the URLs that have actually implemented SXO measures are evaluated. Because an increase in organic traffic of a domain can also be caused by other factors. For example, that blog articles start getting a lot of traffic through link building measures.

Dwell Time

A third KPI is the dwell time. The assumption behind this is that satisfied users will also take the time to consume the content that has been intentionally created for them (and not extra for the search engine). And this in turn indicates a good search experience.

What changes for SEOs due to Search-Experience-Optimization?

Due to Search-Experience-Optimization, the focus for SEOs changes, which is now more on the users.

Why has the user focus become so important?

If we look at the search engine business from the perspective of a search engine, it finances itself through ads. The more people click on ads, the better for the search engine. But for many people to click on ads, correspondingly many people have to use a search engine. But many people will only use a search engine if the quality of the search results is right and the people find the best solution for their problems there.

In a nutshell: happy users with a great search experience will use a search engine more often than unhappy users. That's why search engine operators attach so much importance to advancing the quality of search results as well as the search experience.

At the end of the day, however, it is the website operators who are the only ones who can adapt their websites. So why should website operators go to all the trouble and optimize their website with regard to quality, UX, UI, content etc. (9 contact points)? Because in return they are rewarded by the search engine with better rankings.

So there has to be a kind of barter trade for Google to remain number 1 in the search engine market. Good quality against good rankings.

Convergence of Search Results

SEO is neither witchcraft nor magic. Everything there is to know has been documented over the years and is available to the world in blogs, videos, courses, and books. The average level of optimization of a website is now very high. Plugins and CMS systems have also contributed to this.

How should a search engine algorithmically find out which website is the most relevant to a search query when all are optimized at a very similarly good level?

The one with the highest quality? The one with the most relevant content? The one that makes users the happiest and best meets their needs? If we ask ourselves this question, it quickly becomes apparent that optimization for user experience and user experience is not a trend, but a reality and the future.

Conclusion

If you want to do business, you have to put on the user glasses. Something like this is preached by marketing gurus. In search engine marketing, this has long since become a reality. How can you stand out from the crowd and how can you create the best possible search experience for your users? These are just two questions you can ask yourself in relation to SXO. To get started, make sure you start with an SEO strategy and gradually build an SXO strategy on the basis of the nine points of contact.

The appropriate tools that you can use for your SEO

On OMR Reviews you can inform yourself about a range of SEO tools. Based on the verified customer reviews, the following tools are particularly popular in our community:

Seobility

Sistrix

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Google Search Console

Ahrefs

SE Ranking

Semrush