How To Leverage Engagement Metrics In Your SEO Strategy

Digital marketing has become more competitive than ever and engaging your audience is important to your business’ success. Between algorithm updates and the increased presence of AI-driven content in search results, understanding and improving how users engage with your website can be the key to success.

What Is Engagement And Why Does it Matter to SEO?

In marketing, engagement refers to the level of interaction between users and your brand. Engagement can happen on your website, app, social media channels, and anywhere else your users can interact with you.

Engagement is an important part of your digital strategy for several reasons. Better engagement creates a better audience who positively interacts with your brand and is more likely to convert and become returning users. An engaged audience is also expected to help promote and improve the perception of your brand.

Engagement isn’t just important to your audience and brand, but also for search engine algorithms themselves. We’ve recently learned from the Google API leak that Google uses behavioral metrics (specifically, clicks) in its NavBoost system. NavBoost helps Google determine which sites are relevant enough to rank for a given keyword, therefore less engagement could turn into less visibility and traffic from searches.

Clicks have become increasingly difficult to earn in modern search, with Sparktoro’s recent study indicating that only about 36% of Google searches result in clicks to the “open web” and Contentsquare’s 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarking Report reporting that 55% of all websites received less traffic last year. With that in mind, we want to ensure that every single hard-earned click results in an engaged visit.

How To Find and Track Engagement Metrics for SEO

In Google Analytics 4 (GA4) terms, an “engaged session” is defined by any of the following criteria:

• Two or more pages/screens viewed

• More than 10 seconds were spent on the website

• Completion of a key event

GA4 measures several metrics that can help you understand how well your site engages your users:

• Engagement Rate

• User Stickiness

• New vs. Returning Users

• Session Duration

• Pages or Screens per Session

• Bounce Rate

These metrics help you assess how effectively your content resonates with your audience and can identify opportunities to improve engagement on your website.

Why Do Sites Underperform for Engagement Metrics?

If users leave your site without engaging, identifying the reason is the first step in improving. Common causes of low website engagement include poor user experience and other sources of frustration. Slow page load times, errors, cluttered design, unclear navigation, and irrelevant content are among the top reasons users bounce from a site before interacting.

How To Improve Engagement Metrics

Improving engagement requires a strategic approach. First, identify the reason your users don’t engage with your content. From there, it’s time to consider how engagement can be improved.

Reduce "Back" Button Clicks:

Though GA4 doesn’t measure “bounce rate” the same way as Universal Analytics, when users click “back” to the search results before taking action, the result is low engagement. Some ways to help reduce bounce rate include using clear and descriptive headings so users know right away where they can find what they are searching for.

Eliminating clutter and visual noise can be another tactic to improve user engagement on your site. A 2017 study by EyeQuant revealed that up to a third of a user's decision to stay on or leave a page is made within a split second, and that snap judgment can be made based on whether or not a page looks too cluttered.

Keep Your Content Fresh:

When users land on a blog page, one of the first things they might see is the published date. This can act as a double-edged sword. An older published date might instill more confidence or skepticism depending on the topic, and no date at all can have the same impact

If your content is evergreen, it might not need to be dated, but if you have old content that has fallen in engagement, you can look for opportunities to refresh the content and make it clear to users that the piece has been recently updated.

Enhance Page Load Times:

Another common reason users leave a website before engaging is slow loading speeds. According to Contentsquare’s 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarking Report, poor Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) increases bounce rates by +3.9%, while poor Interaction to Next Paint (INP) reduces engagement by -11.7%.

Auditing your Core Web Vitals and addressing any elements that slow down load times can help. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test and look for common causes of slow load speeds like unoptimized images and JavaScript to discover the best opportunities for you to improve your site speed.

Increase Time-On-Page:

Keeping users on your page longer is another way to improve engagement. Adding depth to your content and detailed explanations can help, but you also want to consider elements that make it easier for users to read and scroll. Using videos, charts, and images at various scroll depths and keeping paragraphs short with clear headings can help keep your users’ attention.

Boost Click-Through to Additional Pages:

What content performs well on your site? What pages drive users to take action? Identify high-performers and point your users there with a solid navigational and internal linking structure using compelling anchor text and calls to action.

Other Tips For Improving User Engagement and SEO On Your Site

Making sure you are reaching the right audience is imperative when it comes to engagement. Review the queries and keywords driving visibility to your site in Google Search Console and Google Ads and consider the searcher intent for those terms. Is your site relevant to these searches?

Identify what works for other channels. Social media marketing is largely driven by creating engagement with an audience and can be a goldmine of strategies. Some ideas that can translate well from social marketing might include:

• Using Visual and Interactive Content like polls, surveys, quizzes, forms, and search tools.

• Being Consistent with your content themes and pillars along with your frequency of publishing content.

• Building a Community by interacting with your audience and being part of the conversations. Demonstrate that you are more than just a broadcaster, but an active and genuine voice in the community.

There are various other methods and tools, like CRO testing and heat mapping that can help you identify areas of your site that users gravitate towards or are more likely to see.

Engagement is more important than ever in a search landscape where clicks are increasingly difficult to earn. Identifying potential engagement barriers and implementing strategies to keep users engaged can improve your site's performance in search results and help build a stronger connection between your brand and audience.