What exactly is SXO?

So you’ve seen it bandied about here and there, and, after initially discounting it as a typo, you’ve asked yourself what exactly is SXO? Another one of Elon’s offspring you ask? No, SXO is SEO and UX combined. Their love child if you will.

If you’ve already switched off through acroynm-overkill, I’m completely with you on that. I remember going to a meeting when I first started working where every third word was in industry-speak acroynms and I didn’t have a clue what everyone was talking about. The meeting was for an entire afternoon and the ABSOLUTE FEAR that someone was going to ask me a question about what they’d just been discussing.

Back to SXO.. Ever tried to perfect your search phrase to bring up the exact job, product or course you’re looking for? That’s SEO in a nutshell. SEO, or search engine optimisation, focuses on user intent within an industry niche, then uses the resulting considered and tested keywords within key areas of your site; in order to help those users quickly find your business. Then there’s internal linking and back links from external sources, running site health checks and more on top and I provide a user friendly guide to SEO here if you’re interested.

And onto UX.. Ever had to Google to find something on a website as you were unable to find it actually on the website? That’s where UX, or user experience, comes in. Good UX focuses on ensuring that that doesn’t happen. It makes a website user friendly and easy to navigate, accessible and one that meets user needs, behaviours and motivations. Basically, creating a positive, all-round experience. See UX in practice via examples on our Website page.

So what is SXO then? SXO itself is search experience optimisation that combines both SEO and UX. The SEO part enables potential customers to find your site through the keywords they use, whilst UX then makes the website easy to use and paves the way to seal the deal. It’s a more holistic and comprehensive service; the big brother of the other two. Why look at the other two areas in isolation when it makes sense to improve both? Well thought through SXO results in longer dwell time. Dwell time is basically a key metric that tells you how long a customer stays on a page on your site and tells Google, if it is good, that the page is high-quality content and raises it in its ranking algorithm.

Acronyms aside, it’s your job as business owner to understand what your target audience is searching for exactly and then to make it easy and stress-free to find on your website, via all touchpoints along the way. From the initial search, to key pages on your site to the final conversion.

There are many ways to improve SXO. Two areas that I look at here, are studying your Google Analytics data more closely and user testing. Both will provide invaluable feedback from your intended audience.

Google Analytics data will tell you what your customer looks at and what they don’t, what they look at/engage with the most and which search terms and search engines they use to find you. And it’s not just about search engines now, an ever-increasing sizable audience are using social platforms to look services and products up. Depending on the demographic of your audience, and your product or service, this could be YouTube or Instagram. Gen Z heavily rely on TikTok. Putting some time into researching search traffic on both the usual channels AND social will help you refine your content and also use of keywords accordingly.

User testing, at its most basic, could be your friends and family. Or, a step up from that is using testing platforms purposely set up for this. There are free trials on usability testing sites available. See UX experts Userbrain’s website for some sites. They all have paid plans too, should you find any of them useful. Hubspot also provides a free kit to help you undertake testing. These tests are invaluable to help you understand the user behaviour of your audience.

The question is, if SXO is the love child of SEO and UX, what would SXO look like? I’m thinking stylish but practical shoes..

If you need to bring in a professional to help with any of these areas, get in touch for a chat.