The ultimate aim of SEO is to drive potential customers to your website and invest in your business – whether that’s buying a product or using your services. A key element to achieving this is your SEO engagement rate.
As you will see below, this is the rate at which customers complete an action on your website. The aim is to turn passive website browsers into potential customers who take action – potentially leading to a sale or some positive outcome for your business.
Improving SEO engagement rate requires a broad approach with multiple techniques such as technical SEO audits, improvements to content, and interacting with your customers and this is what we explore below. You can also check out our Ultimate Free SEO Guide which delves into this topic in additional detail.
Understanding Engagement – What is it and Why Does it Matter?
An engaged customer is someone that takes action on any of your digital content. This contrasts directly with a passive user who simply browses your content but doesn’t do anything.
Two examples:
Customer 1 – Finds your business via an SERP and opens your website. They browse your service pages, read a complementary blog and send an email enquiry requesting a quote.
Customer 2 – Finds your business via a similar SERP and loads your website. They spend 10 seconds looking at your landing page but ultimately close your site and return to Google.
Customer 1 is what we want and this is an example of engagement. The customer did something – your website appearing on their SERP resulted in a positive action. Sure, Customer 2 gave us a click and some website traffic, but nothing else positive came from that interaction.
Your SEO engagement rate is important for Google and for your customers. Whilst engagement rate doesn’t have a direct impact on rankings, a higher your engagement rate does correlate to better rankings.
Additionally, the more engaging your digital content is, the more likely you are to get your desired results including more enquiries, sales, and ROI. We don’t want passive views – we want customers to be engaged and to take action.
8 Simple Methods to Boost SEO Engagement Rate
So, we can see that SEO engagement rate is important for your end results. Firstly, you show Google that your business is authoritative and provides useful info to your customers which in turn should help with SEO rankings. Secondly, you are increasing the chance of which passive users will be turned into customers. There are a range of hacks you can use to achieve this and I’ve listed 8 examples below.
1. Make Sure Your Website’s Page Speeds are Optimised
If I open a website and it takes an eternity to load, 90% of the time I’m going elsewhere. This is a common occurrence and most people feel this way – time is precious and no one wants to sit waiting for a website to load.
The faster your page speeds are, the better your SEO engagement is, as people will be more inclined to stay on your site to get the info they need.
I recommend using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to scan your website and check for page speeds. The tool gives your site a rating together with key areas for improvement. Common issues include poorly optimised images, unnecessary scripts, and poor caching techniques.
2. Complete a Technical SEO Audit and Remove Errors
While the quality of your content is important for your SEO engagement rate, the technical gubbins behind the scenes is also vital.
Search engine crawlers have to be able to access and index your content easily. Your web content also has to be accessible for your customers to allow them to engage. A complete technical SEO audit is the perfect way to sort this and it can assess the following features:
- Crawlability.
- Robots.txt file.
- XML sitemap.
- META tags.
- Image issues.
- Internal link structure.
- External links.
For example, the audit will check that your internal links structure allows every page on your site to be accessed. Additionally, it will make sure that search engine crawlers can access the content they need to via a crawlability check and optimising your Robots.txt file.
3. Interact with Your Audience
A simple thing you can do to boost SEO engagement is interact with your customers. Your website most likely has multiple outlets where customers can give their opinion or interact with your business. Don’t leave them hanging!
Instead, be proactive and take the time to reply to these engagements, examples include:
- Blog comments.
- Product reviews.
- Social media interactions.
- Emails.
- Reviews and content on third-party websites.
Interactions like this are a positive engagement indicator to Google, but also show your customers that you value their opinion.
4. Optimise Your Site for Mobile Use
Did you know it’s estimated that over 60% of website traffic is from smartphones?[1] Additionally, statistics show that over 92% of internet users browse the web using their mobiles. With this drastic shift away from desktop browsing, you MUST optimise your content for mobile use.
Mobile optimisation is key for your SEO engagement rate from a technical and usability perspective. Firstly, Google looks at mobile optimisation as a ranking factor. Secondly, if someone loads your website on their smartphone and they get a poorly optimised page, they are most likely going to go elsewhere.
5. Include Multiple Media Types in Your Content
Different people digest information in different ways. For example, one person might love reading blog articles and predominantly text-based content.
Alternatively, another person might prefer visual content such as videos and infographics. Try and cater to these differences and include multiple media types in your content, including:
- Embedded videos.
- Images.
- Infographics.
- Audio clips.
- Text.
6. Make Sure Your Content is Primarily Helpful to Your Customers
Google is making a big push and emphasis on the quality and usefulness of your content. We can see this in their EEAT guidelines and various articles on creating helpful content.
Long gone are the days where businesses can just spam content with the aim of boosting keyword usage. Instead, you now have to put the customer first and make sure everything you publish benefits them in some way.
When creating things like blog posts, think of your customer and what they might look for. For example, our blog and free webinars focus on useful SEO tips and digital marketing advice that we know clients can put to use in their own businesses.
Once you have created something helpful for your visitors you can then look at SEO inclusions. The more helpful, authoritative, and useful your content is, the higher your SEO engagement rate will be.
7. Work on Building Your Backlink Portfolio
Backlinks are a vital component of local and global SEO campaigns. They show Google that your business has authority and is a trusted source of information which ultimately helps your SEO engagement rate.
You should aim to create a diverse backlink portfolio with things like guest posts, journalistic articles, and reviews on reputable websites.
The key with backlinks is the quality and relevance and they should:
- Be placed on a high-authority site that is relevant to your brand/industry.
- The link should be relevant to the context of the article.
- The anchor text should be relevant to the surrounding text it’s placed within.
Don’t buy backlinks, and don’t get backlinks on poor-quality websites with a low authority rating.
8. Create Clear CTAs That are Appropriate for Your Sales Funnel
CTAs (Call to Action) are important as they tell your customers what to do and are a simple but effective way to drive SEO engagement. However, you have to use appropriate CTAs for the stage of the sales/acquirement funnel.
For example, would it be appropriate to have a “Buy now” or “Add to basket” CTA as the only option before the product or service has been described? Probably not. This can seem overly pushy. In this scenario, to drive engagement, a more appropriate CTA would be “Learn more” or “Explore the benefits of this product”.
Once the customer has the information they need and they are further down the funnel, you can then use a different set of CTAs encouraging a purchase.
Stand Out from Your Competition with These SEO Engagement Rate Hacks
I hope you now have a better understanding of SEO engagement rate including why it matters and how you can improve it. If you need assistance with this, please contact us as we have years of experience in this area and are happy to help.
To get started, you can also use the hacks I’ve provided such as mobile optimisation, audience interactivity, and page speed optimisation. These simple methods can boost your SEO engagement, show Google you mean business, and get your customers engaged with your web content.
[1] ExplodingTopics – Mobile Internet Traffic – Link
