One of the most important factors Google takes into account when determining search rank is the usefulness of a website’s content to users. In order for users to find a website helpful, it must be navigable and accessible. Sometimes WordPress can be difficult to optimize for UX, but there are several plugins content creators can download to provide a better user experience.
I read a SEMrush blog post recommending six plugins for users to improve the UX of their sites. Here are the three I found most useful for the purposes of this class:
Content Aware Sidebars
Content Aware Sidebars is a plugin that allows content creators to customize what the sidebar looks like depending on what content a user is currently using. According to SEMrush, the sidebars can be extended or altered depending on what content a user is looking at. This makes a website much more quickly navigable for users and individualized for each user. This means content is much more useful and efficient for users which might help your website get boosted in the SERP by Google.
WP AI Assistant
Word Press’s AI Assistant plug in can help reduce the bounce rate of a webpage. SEMrush suggests that oftentimes when a user cannot find what they need from a site, they just leave the page or the site altogether. WP AI Assistant helps users find what they are looking for so that they do not “bounce” off the site. The plugin asks the user a few questions and then suggests content according to their answers. This plugin is $25, so you would want to talk to your client and consider your budget before adding it to a site.
SumoMe Content Analytics
This plugin provides a heat map to content creators that shows them the number of users that reach certain page depths on a webpage. This can be helpful to admins because it could reveal places on a webpage that are potentially causing users to “bounce” from the page. Admins can then change these portions of a page to make them more useful to users and in turn improve their SERP ranking.
It’s important to consider UX when designing a webpage. UX not only impacts your target audience, it also helps Google determine a website’s ranking. To increase website traffic, content creators should be sure to stay aware of their users’ experiences on their site.
7 Responses
These are some great plugins that will for sure help webmasters design and optimize sites that focus on UX! I will definitely have to check some of these out!
Thanks for taking the time to filter through and find the good ones!
Understanding what Google wants from a website is important, and understanding how to best optimize is even better.
I like this topic. It is interesting how AI is expanding and is being used even in word press.
The power of AI is amazing, I know Salesforce is incorporating it into their software to create Agent Force. Interesting stuff.
This is a really helpful blog post and tools to add on to a WordPress site. I love the idea of having a heat map to visually see where users are leaving the site and then being able to optimize that content to improve it. The WordPress AI plug in was super interesting because, I think if I clicked on a site and then had to answer questions about what I was looking for, I would leave the site immediately. I like to find what I’m looking for instead of having AI find it for me, but that might just be me.
Thank you for writing this post! There are so many WordPress plugins and it can be hard to find ones that create a polished, user-friendly site. I think it’s great that semrush covers this topic and I’ll have to look into some of these!