User engagement

We believe that there is a possibility that a new form of ranking signal now exists within the search engine optimisation profession, we believe that this is user engagement. This spans mobile devices and desktop.

What is the user engagement, and how will this be measured in terms of Seo signals?

At Pack Digital SEO we think that user engagement now is a form of ranking signal.

We believe that the major search engines are using metrics, to determine how long a user is spending visiting your website.

We also believe that the major search engines may be monitoring the bounce rate, to your website in terms of if it satisfies and users query, or whether they go back to the search results to look at a competitor’s page after looking at your website.

We believe that if a visitor to your website immediately jumps back to the search results, this could be a form of “negative” or “undesirable ranking signal” for your website.

We welcome here at Pack Digital your thoughts and views on this.

What do you think is being monitored and how can we develop Seo strategies around this?

We know that the Google Hummingbird update looks at “user intent” and presenting better quality search results for the searcher.

We think that user engagement is now being tied into the Knowledge Graph and Google Hummingbird as well.

We think that the major search engines are learning from commonly entered phrases and search terms and the websites which end up in the results or SERPS, are later monitored to see if they satisfy the uses query.

We therefore think that if a user was to bounce back off your website for commonly entered search term’s and this happens in mass volume then we believe this could form a negative ranking signal in the future.

We also think that through commonly entered search terms it will be assessed and monitored how long users are spending on site whether they are bouncing straight back into the search results or not.

How would you create an Online Marketing strategy around this?

There is no simple straightforward answer to this. We believe that you must simply create a better user experience on site, to make your website more “sticky” so that users spend longer on your website. Therefore you need to understand exactly what the searcher is looking to achieve through the search terms and better answer their questions.

We think that in 2015 websites that are going to win are the ones which hold a better user experience through being different.

We believe that by presenting answers in large chunks of text may be is somewhat outdated approach. We believe that more innovative practices need to come into the fold, such as using info-graphics or video marketing to address the searches questions head-on.

Have you any proof that user engagement is a ranking signal?

As with all ranking signals they are quite secretive to disclose whether they are in use or not, but it would make sense that the longer users spend on your website the more they are engaged and therefore the search engine is doing a good job in answering the queries presented to it.

With that said we believe that this is common sense and through the major search engines now developing artificial intelligence it could be viewed as a natural step for the major search engines to take in the future.

How should businesses better develop their Online Marketing strategies to cope with this change?

We think that marketing strategists and marketing professionals within companies should steer away from approaches which just focus on keywords through content marketing.

We believe that the search engines have got a lot more sophisticated and clever in understanding search terms and presenting answers.

We therefore now see the future of search engine optimisation as a blend of Seo and a lot more creative skills coming into play.

Therefore if you can create creative content marketing that is different and holds a good user experience we believe these are the forms of content marketing which are going to win in the future.

We believe that the long content laced with keywords is a thing of the past and that instead you must now think about how to engage your end user so that they do not jump off your site onto another competitor’s website.

So you believe that this goes back to the basics of Seo such as preventing people from pogo sticking onto a competitor’s webpage?

We believe that it is very important to return back to the basics of Seo and that is to prevent your bounce rate from increasing and also make sure that you are satisfying your users queries.

This can be achieved through looking at your website and if it is “content thin” addressing such problems by adding quality content that will answer the search terms that the searcher is entering.

We think that the beautiful thing about this form of content marketing is that it need not be expensive, you can come up with cost-effective strategies that addresses a searchers queries and better answers the questions they have, without spending a fortune on advanced marketing practices.

You do not need nothing flash, or sophisticated in terms of on-site optimisation, just a clear layout and an explanation of how you are going to go about answering the questions presented to the search engine.

Those who better answer a searches queries while presenting this in an interesting format on the website we believe are going to be the search engine optimisation winners of 2015.