
As a marketer, I am a firm believer in transparency and integrity. I will tell you exactly how I do what I do and why.
Even if you looked around on this site you will notice when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) we focus on the engagement analytics, and we share this without hesitation.
We encourage our clients to share tips, tricks, and even steps to home repair as well. Let’s be honest, it’s probably already on YouTube (and yes you should absolutely create videos). I know I can find videos on how to replace a toilet but that doesn’t mean I am going to do it.
Creating useful content on a consistent basis will improve engagement analytics. Before I explain how to let me explain what engagement analytics are.
Your site should be added to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. From these two free tools, you can determine how well your website does on the internet. There are tons of analytics that you can review and utilize to determine what is working and what is not.
Engagement Analytics point to how website visitors (your audience) behave on your site. They include:
- Bounce Rate – how many people leave your site after visiting one page versus visiting a second page, measured in percentage. A bounce rate of 60% is considered good. This means 4 out of 10 visitors will navigate to a second page on your site when visiting. A good bounce rate will vary depending on your industry and your site layout/purpose.
- Pages Per Session – how many pages visitors to your site view per visit.
- Average Session Duration – how much time visitors spend on your site per session.
- Returning Visitors – visitors that return to your site at a later time.
- Social Shares – shares of your content to social media.
- Comments – Comments on blog posts and other content.
Why Are Engagement Analytics Important?
The short answer is Google determines your website’s relevancy by engagement analytics. For example, if Google sees that your content is shared often this is a signal to Google that your content is relevant, and people find it useful.
This is why having Social Share icons on your website is so important.
The longer answer:
When you search Google for something Google returns results. You likely skim the results to look for one that matches your intended question. Google tries to determine your intent when you use its search engine.
If you click on a result and then close that page quickly, without interacting or engaging (think reading, clicking, commenting, sharing) then that sends a signal to Google that the result you clicked on was not relevant to your search query. This is not the desired result for your website.
Now you click on a second result and it matches what you intended to search for. You spend 10 minutes on the site, click a few links and share some of the content.
Google views the second site as relevant to your search query.
If this happens repeatedly Google will move the second site up in the search results while pushing the first site down in the results.
This is done using an algorithm. The Google Core Algorithm changes all the time, multiple times per day. For this reason, it is important to pay attention to what Google suggests regarding content on its search engine.
Whenever Google releases a broad core update or another major update to their algorithm site owners and SEOs panic that their search rankings and traffic will drop. As long as you’re following Google’s guidelines you should never have a problem with rankings and traffic after a major update.
Google also uses Machine Learning (RankBrain) to do a lot of the work.
If you’re creating content that draws people in, is relevant to what you do and how you do it and encourages your audience to engage with it then Google views your site as relevant. If you continue to do this then overtime Google also views you as the authority and expert on the subject.
What Are Other SEOs and Marketers Focused On?
There are lots of theories in the SEO world. A lot of SEOs focus a lot of energy and time on backlinks. A lot of SEOs focus all their energy towards on-page SEO (this is the technical part of SEO).
The best SEOs will tell you to focus on content, usually in the form of a blog. Good content that is high quality and relevant to the website is going to naturally increase engagement. It will also encourage backlinks naturally.
I am not suggesting you ignore backlinks and technical SEO. You absolutely should put some energy into these things. Google views backlinks (of high quality) as an indication that you are an authority/expert. Without on-page SEO Google will probably not index your site (at least not properly).
I don’t hear or read about a lot of SEOs working to improve engagement metrics. All aspects of SEO ultimately work to drive engagement.
Look at it this way. I’ve been saying for many years now that SSL certificates are a ranking factor. Google has over 200 ranking factors. Some are common knowledge, some are not. SSL is one that is not known for sure but there are indications that it does impact rank.
Let’s look at it from your audience’s perspective. If you use Google Chrome or Firefox, you now receive a warning if a site is not secured with an SSL certificate. This will undoubtedly scare some website visitors off and decrease your engagement. Yet a high percentage of business websites do not have an SSL certificate.
As of the 3rd quarter of 2018 51.8% of the one million most visited websites worldwide now actively redirect to HTTPS. But that means 48.2% do not.
The number of unsecured websites increases as you go below the world’s most visited websites.
If Google believes having a secured site is important and is warning you when a website is not, then it’s safe to say their audience (searchers) is important to them.
Google owns somewhere between 80 and 90% of all search traffic. They’re not alone in the search engine world though. They want to continue to hold that mark because they make a ton of money with advertising. If they don’t return the results a searcher is expecting, then the searcher might go somewhere else. That’s why engagement matters to Google.
That’s why focusing on engagement is our focus on client websites.
You did an excellent job breaking down the importance of SEO and Google Analytics. I’m personally still learning how to best implement SEO.
So much goes into SEO and ranking. I never realized that it was that huge.
This is really interesting to read, I have to admit my SEO knowledge isn’t great and is something I really need to work on more. So I will have to take these techniques into account.
What a great read! I learned everything I know about SEO from other blogs, so this is incredibly helpful!
This is quite insightful! I had no idea engagement matters that much for SEO. Thanks a lot for the article, bookmarking it.
The one metric I have never understood is new vs returning visitors. While obviously it is good to have returning visitors, isn’t it new visitors that account for my growth? So what is the optimal percentate?
This is my first time learning on Engagement Analytics. Thanks for the easy to understand breakdown!
Annie
I am loving this blog. Thank you so much for sharing this information.
SEO and I are not very good friends. Loved reading these techniques and will put them to practuce.
Learning about SEO is a constant journey for me. I found this useful and informative. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for explaining some of the terminology! It was very informative.
I personally use Google Analytics to sort out my statistics and to do a follow up check to see how the blog is doing on a monthly basis
SEO is so important, and no less so for blue collar businesses. It can take some work to master SEO but it is something that i think everyone with a website needs to know.
SEO is something that I’m still working with for my blog. It IS very important and I’m glad to read this. I’m also glad that I got my blog changed to https.
I know I’m pretty good in SEO and rankings but sometimes it’s difficult to drive traffic to my website! I like how you explained the terms better and easier.
Such a very interesting and informative article to read. I am not fully knowledgeable how SEO really works but today I was able to learn something about it by reading this article.
You really did a great job of breaking this down. I didn’t know so much went into SEO ranking. Thanks for the info.
This is so useful for me as I am still finding the way to nail my seo on my website. Glad that you also include some case studies of your own here.
SEO can be so confusing and frustrating, but it is so important in the gran scheme of things!
Great article. This is a topic I know I need to learn more about and you really helped me understand some good ways. Thank you.
This is such an informative post, very helpful! I have been blogging for about 4 years and just recently I have added my site to Google analytics and search console 🙁
Great tips. I am struggling with traffic which is mostly due to SEO. I need to save this post.
This is a great source of how and what to do with enhancing skills and knowledge about SEO. I admit that I still having problems in understanding it but continuously learning is the key.
You are doing a great job by sharing the SEO secrets and help bloggers to get more visitors to their websites.
I am self taught and SEO was the one thing that took me ages to get my head around. You have explained it brilliantly
Thanks for sharing this very informative post. I am struggling with my SEO so that my blog can get some more views. Yes learning social media every day.
Oooo so much great advice here!!! SEO is definitely an area I struggle with.
Great information and it goes outside the typical realm of in-blog SEO which is mostly what you see posts about. I’ll be remembering this for my own website.