If you are wondering how to improve the quality and ranking of your site on search engines, it’s time you take a look at some of the most relevant engagement metrics.
There are ways to prove to search engines that your site is posting valuable content and that you deserve to rank higher in searches when people are looking for information on your area of expertise.
Examining some of the top engagement metrics is a good place to begin if your goal is to boost your SEO and rank higher on search engines.
Below, we give you five engagement metrics to consider when working to improve the quality of your site and therefore rank higher.
1. Site Traffic: One of the Most Important Engagement Metrics
Your site traffic is a general term covering things like how many people are visiting your site, including both total visits and direct visits. This is one of the biggest factors playing into your ranking on search engines.
Having a high amount of site traffic suggests that you have some great content that really appeals to a wide range of people. Search engines want to show helpful, relevant content to as many people as possible.
If people are helped find what they’re looking for when they use a search engine, it will keep them coming back. Thus, sites with high traffic are sites that search engines are eager to direct their users to.
If hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands are visiting a site, chances are that other people looking for information on a similar subject will want to see it too.
2. Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate is a percentage that is calculated by your site visitors’ behavior patterns. To break this down in more simple terms, if people come to your site and then immediately bounce, you’ll have a high bounce rate.
Think of it like a house party. If people show up and then immediately bounce because they don’t like what they say, the rating of your house party is going to go down. You have a high percentage of people bouncing because they aren’t immediately impressed.
On the other hand, if you attract people to your house party and they park their car, come inside, stay a while and check it out, you can trust that you’re throwing a good party.
When people stay, move through a couple rooms, and then leave after taking a full tour, you have thrown a successful party.
It works the same way for websites. The lower the bounce rate, the better. If people come to your site and visit only one page before clicking away, this suggests that your site is boring or unappealing.
If your site does not appeal to the visitors who arrive there, it will not do well in search engine rankings.
3. Time on Site
This is another one of the engagement metrics you have to look at if you want to improve your search rankings. If people spend a very short amount of time on your site, this suggests that they are not finding anything worth keeping them there.
If your site visitors show Google from their behavior that your site is not worth their time, Google will take the hint. On the contrary, if they spend a lot of time there, Google will assume you have some high-quality content to offer.
If your site is difficult to use or navigate — or if it takes way too long to load — people will skip. Having a site that is well built and user-friendly — keeping your visitors’ attention — will help them spend more time on your site.
Since this is one of the engagement metrics that seems to play into search engine rankings, you’d be wise to take a look at it and come up with some creative strategies to draw people to spend more time on your site.
It could be your content or the overall look, feel, and design of your site, but whatever is holding people back, you should address it as quickly as possible.
4. Page Views
Page views is another important metric to look at. You should not only look at the total number of page views across your site’s pages but also which pages are getting the most traffic and where that traffic is coming from.
Understanding which pages are the most successful or drawing the most attention is really useful information. If you know what does well, you can do more of it.
If your audience responds really well to certain kinds of posts, like listicles or information guides, you can create more of them.
Having a high number of page views with people clicking around through several of your pages and taking the time to actually read what you’ve written and published is very good for your traffic.
It shows that many people are interested in what you have published and that you must be providing valuable information because people are scrolling through many of your pages and taking time to read them.
5. Comments and Shares
Lastly, one of the engagement metrics that search engines look at is how people are engaging with your content and site.
Are people commenting, discussing, and joining in a conversation? Are they spreading the word by sharing your articles and showing others that your site is worth checking out?
This shows search engines a form of social proof. It proves to them that website visitors have found something worthy of sharing on your site.
The same goes for social media sites. As more and more people interact with a piece of content and respond to it, it will be shown to more and more people so that everyone can join in the conversation.
This makes sense: if something is really admirable or interesting, platforms want to show it to as many of their users as possible. It gives them a great metric to reference when it comes to knowing what people will enjoy seeing in their search results or social media feeds.
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