engagement

Many businesses understand how important on page engagement on their website is to increase their search engine success- but what does this mean exactly? On page engagement is when visitors on your site click on your web page, stay on your site and interact with it. However, as search engines are so saturated, with different sites providing the same content and services, it can be hard for your website to stand out. We spoke to SEO expert, Lawrence Timmins from MNA Digital, who outlines how you can make an impression online by improving your on-page engagement

What is on-page engagement?

On page engagement can be achieved in several ways including visitor comments, reading content, watching videos, social shares and image views. However, someone browsing your website briefly for a few minutes and then clicking off is not meaningful, and user engagement goes much deeper than this. To be successful, you want to attract visitors to your site, and get them to stay by maximising their engagement via calls to action. These calls to actions can be anything from a ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ notification or directing them to another blog post. By maximising their engagement, you’ll begin to gain a loyal audience who are likely to become purchasing customers.

Why should we care?

92% of Google users don’t go past page one of search results as there is so much online competition. This means that the typical consumer has so many websites to choose from that their loyalty to your site has never been more important. Getting a visitor interested and engaged with your website can improve your business in many ways including:

  • Organically growing a customer base that is loyal to your brand, and improving your reputation as a company
  • Building your brand assets such as your mailing list or subscription services
  • Generating natural backlinks that improve search engine rankings and better your sites authority
  • Creating brand awareness for new, and existing clients

How can I improve my on-page engagement?

Now that you understand what on-page engagement is and why it is important, you are probably feeling ready to attract more customers to your web page- but how do you do this? Here are 5 ways you can boost your user engagement:

  • Make your website faster to load

There is nothing that will make a visitor click off more quickly than a slow website. All your web pages should load instantly, otherwise this can impact user experience and SEO performance. As well as loading quickly on desktop devices, your website should be mobile friendly, secure and easy to use too. One study found that 88% of consumers are unlikely to return if they had a bad experience with your site, so it is crucial for your success that you have a high website speed.

  • Display related content

To keep visitors on your site, it is important to display relevant pages and blog posts to them. This way, consumers can click on another landing page from your site for more information, rather than looking elsewhere. Essentially, this keeps their interest from swaying to competitors’ sites.

  • Optimise content for keyword intent

Naturally, if you are providing the visitor with the information they need, they are likely to stay on your site. So, how do you target the right type of consumers? By optimising your content to match your keyword intent. Make sure you have landing pages for your homepage, services and products and optimise each page by positioning keywords strategically. This could be in the page title, subheadings, and meta descriptions but if you are not an SEO- whizz, it would be smart to enlist the help of a digital marketing agency.

  • Use display advertising to target a wider or more specific audience

If you are targeting a consumer looking for information that relates to your brand, they are likely to stay and click through your site. Whilst you can use keywords to optimize the content on your landing pages, you can also target a wider or more specific audience via Paid Search (PPC). This generally refers to placements on search engine results pages in order to drive traffic to your site and can be achieved via text ads.

  • Use engagement metrics to keep track of what you are doing right

If you are doing all of the above and are still struggling to see positive business results, use Google Analytics to find out where you can improve. This useful feature will allow you to select the timeframe you’d like to view, and the engagement on your website during this period. Page views, return visits, average time on site, conversions and bounce rate can all be checked so you can analyse data for your business in one place, for free.

Lawrence Timmins is the SEO Manager for MNA Digital. Lawrence has a demonstrated history of working in the digital marketing and advertising sector, specialising in Search Engine Optimisation. Having joined the company in May 2019, Lawrence brings with him more than 8 years of experience of working with and implementing organic search strategies for a wide range of SME’s across a variety of industries.

Engagement stock photo by aShatilov/Shutterstock