What is the Difference Between SEO and SXO?

We all know SEO by now, but it seems like there are new three-letter acronyms for various elements of marketing popping up every few days. I usually ignore them until they prove that they're sticking around, since most of the time, whatever underlying marketing technique is something I'm already doing under a different name.

SXO is one of those new acronyms for old techniques. It's not really anything new, but it IS a new way of looking at things, sort of like Entity-based marketing. I would say that SXO has passed the sniff test, for now, so it's worth talking about.

What is SXO?

SXO stands for Search Experience Optimization.

Before you immediately jump into comparisons to AIO and other AI-based marketing terms, despite the word "experience", it's actually not referring to the Search Generative Experience or any of the other LLM-based search alternatives.

In this case, the "experience" goes back to a different kind of experience: the user experience.

SXO is a totality-based view of marketing that encompasses the entire user journey, their sum experience from the moment they decide to search for a piece of information, to the moment they convert.

Despite the term SXO only starting to show up around the middle of 2024, the concept is nothing new. In fact, Google has been harping on about user experience for a decade now, and many of its changes in SEO policies have been aimed at improving elements of the user experience.

In short, it's the change of view from targeting the algorithm to targeting users with a good, effective experience.

Broadly, you can divide SXO into three components: what happens before a user clicks on your site, what happens while they're on your site, and what happens after they leave your site. This is distinct from SEO, which is primarily concerned with just what happens before a user clicks on your site.

SXO Phase 1: Before Reaching Your Site

SXO begins when a user decides they want to search for something.

When a user wants to search for something, there's a reason behind it. They might just want to get directions to the nearest grocery store, answer a trivia question to win an argument, or do deep research into how to fix their car. We call that the intent behind their search.

They will then decide how they're going to look up this information. There are a lot of ways to look up something that don't involve you. If a user wants to replace their car tires, you don't have much of a say if they go directly to Discount Tire's website instead of Google. Direct-to-website visits are one portion of possible traffic.

Other ways a user might search can include the basic Google search, non-Google search engines, LLM searches like ChatGPT or Perplexity, and even accessing information via voice searching.

All of these have slightly different ways of looking for information. SEO is all about targeting these channels, but you do need to have some idea of what channels are going to be most used.

After that, you need to think about how your site is presented in the results of those various channels, and how to optimize for it. That can mean optimizing elements of SEO like meta descriptions and Schema usage. It can mean working on AI-SEO techniques to show up as a citation in ChatGPT and Perplexity. It can mean working on back-end SEO elements like link building that help you rank highly for your topics.

Your goal in the first stage is to be at or near the top of the results. This is mostly pure SEO, but with an eye for what the user's experience using search is like these days.

There's a secondary element here, too. A lot of people these days don't trust Google and will use a secondary kind of search to filter information. The half-meme about people just appending "site:reddit.com" to every Google search is less of a joke than you might think.

A secondary way you can attract people to your site is to target these better sites. You might not be able to rank #1 in a discussion of general SEO, but if you come up frequently in Reddit threads discussing it, people can follow the thread from Google to Reddit to you.

SXO Phase 2: On Your Site

The second phase of SXO is the user experience when they're on your site.

This isn't just about the quality of your content, though that's part of it. It can also include a lot of other elements.

• Their ability to skim your content and pull out salient information.
• Their ability to search or filter products on your store.
• Their confidence that what your Phase 1 presentation leads them to find is actually what they'll find.
• Technical elements of the user experience, like fast loading times, minimal layout shift, and as little obstruction as possible.

SXO for your website is all about fixing and optimizing these technical elements of your user experience.

Users want as frictionless an experience as possible. They don't want to have to close three pop-ups before they can see your content. They don't want to wait 45 seconds for the page to load. They don't want to have to zoom and pan around to read your content without a microscope. They especially don't want to feel like they hit a bait-and-switch when the subject they thought they were reading about turns out to be barely related to what your page is actually about.

There are other aspects of the user experience that can be important as well.

Your branding is a big one. People aren't necessarily going to be paying much attention to your branding the first time they show up on your site. But the second, the third, the fourth? They'll start to recognize things like your layout and your color scheme. As long as those things don't stand out in a bad way, they will linger in their minds.

That can be potent for brand recognition later. Eventually, they think, "oh, this site comes up a lot, it's usually pretty good." They'll make note of your site name and maybe even bookmark it, or share it with friends. It's about credibility.

This is also where your sales funnel and the overall concept of conversion rate optimization come in. You want to make it as frictionless as possible for a user to take that one next step, whatever the one next step may be.

It's also worth paying attention to formatting and presentation for your content. Everything from your font size to your use of color and bold/italics/underlines to your use of lists to break things up can be important.

The overall goal here is to hook users as quickly as possible with relevant coverage of your topic with as few roadblocks as possible. Direct alignment with your presentation in search results, easy extraction of relevant information, and a frictionless experience are critical.

SXO Phase 3: After Leaving Your Site

Believe it or not, SXO doesn't end when the customer leaves your site. You don't build a powerhouse of a website with visitors who are universally one-and-done.

This third phase of SXO is about brand recognition, memorability, and retention.

Some of it is implicit. Your choice of layout, of color, of branding, even of your tone of voice and writing style can all influence how memorable your website is.

I'm guilty myself of letting a lot of websites blur together. Part of it is the fact that I'm constantly researching new topics for my clients, but it can take me a surprisingly long time to learn the name of a site I've visited as a resource repeatedly. I know I'm not the only one, either.

Another part of this third phase is saturating the internet. You want to come up as often as possible in discussions of your topic. That means the volume of content you produce needs to be high, and the breadth of topics you cover needs to be wide. But it also means using secondary channels like Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever else. You want people to get used to seeing you around.

All of this builds your reputation and helps you stick in the minds of your users, so when they see you in the future, they associate you with relevant answers and a good experience in getting them.

How to Refine Your SXO

The good news is, a lot of SXO is already built into SEO and marketing best practices, into what Google tells everyone they should be doing, and into what is just common knowledge for marketing.

Learn your audience and know their attributes and general intent in searching. This is all part of figuring out how to position yourself as the resource people look for. Is your audience primarily looking for DIY instructions and tutorials? Do they want to buy products to solve their problems? Are they just looking for information they can use in later purchase decisions?

This can be the difference between whether your site focuses on product reviews with affiliate links and ads, an informative site with courses and eBooks, or a more traditional e-commerce site. Some of you out there may be due for a pivot, sorry to say.

Assign a relevant search intent to each keyword and topic pairing you decide to cover. Obviously, traditional keyword research is still a part of this entire process. Beyond that, though, you need to be deliberate with how you target specific keywords, according to what intent the user has in searching for them.

A mismatch here means that either users won't click on your content because it doesn't present itself in the right light, or they'll bounce off it if they thought it was one thing but found another. If someone is looking for DIY instructions and you try to sell them a replacement, they aren't going to be interested unless you're very good at convincing them why DIY isn't possible.

Build a smooth, fast, frictionless user experience for both web and mobile. From technical SEO to core web vitals to a solid presentation that avoids the pitfalls of an overly-marketed site, you want users not to be frustrated trying to even read your content. I can't tell you how many sites might have had good information, but drove me away because I had to close three windows before I could read it.

Use Schema and other tools to help you appear in search results and the SGE. More traditional SEO here; you want to use any tools you have at your disposal to appear in the search results, in any form they might take.

That means the traditional SERPs, yes. But it also means the Search Generative Experience. It also means the LLM searches. It means rich results and knowledge panels. It means featured snippets and excerpts quoted in the People Also Ask boxes.

A lot of this is about using bite-sized bits of information. The rest is technical solutions like Schema. It's all important.

Build a presence outside of your own website, on social media and other industry sites. The core of SXO is about targeting people, not algorithms. That means there are a lot of tricks you can use, psychologically speaking, to build up in their memories. Just getting your name, face, and brand out there everywhere you can is a great first step.

If you've read through this list and thought, "yeah, that's all just part of good marketing", congratulations. You're on the right track. SXO is nothing new; it's just a new way of thinking about all of the interconnected aspects of people-first marketing.