Understanding Engagement Signals and How Google Uses it For Ranking
Every business has different objectives when it comes to website and digital marketing plans. Some objectives are increasing brand awareness, generating brand loyalty, or boosting conversions. While these objectives may seem easy to achieve, they depend on two things – Google rankings and engagement.
Both engagement and ranking are critical factors in determining the success of your website. Without monitoring, you won’t be able to keep track of your marketing efforts. Moreover, both engagement and rankings are closely linked to each other.
Why Is Google Ranking So Important For Online Businesses?
Google is the largest search engine in the world, catering to 92%of the world’s online searches. Google runs 40,000 search queries in a second and million in a day. Google is built on user search query is the pinnacle of digital marketing, and businesses need to rank on their first page to accomplish their business objectives.
Aside from improved sales, better conversions, and brand awareness, webmasters of websites on Google’s first page feel a sense of achievement about their digital marketing efforts being fruitful.
The way Google’s search engine algorithm works in a straightforward way as far as its concept goes. Internet users run a search query on Google and, Google combs the entire internet within seconds and presents millions of results in response to the query. Every business wants to be on the first page of their most profitable search query (keywords). For example, a website that sells “shoes” would turn up huge sales if it ranks on Google’s first page against the keyword “best shoes in (State).”
The SERP delivers what Google deems fit in response to a particular search query. While users have the option to go through various websites, most internet users don’t seem to go beyond the first page of Google. That is why the quest to rank on the first page of Google is always on, and businesses aim to hold the position during the peak sale months.
Why Is Website Engagement So Important?
Website engagement is one of the most crucial factors for ranking on the first page of Google. It doesn’t matter how much traffic your website has; engagement is still an important factor in ranking on Google. If your website receives thousands of visitors every day, but they don’t engage with your website, Google will pull your website down from higher ranks automatically. When users engage with a website, Google determines that particular site to be relevant. However, if there are hundreds of people visiting a website and none of them is engaging with the website, it raises red flags for Google’s algorithm. Having your content viewed is also a form of engagement, and it helps a page rank on Google. However, if web visitors are quickly navigating away from the particular page, it means that result is irrelevant in response to the search query.
By creating engaging content and easy-to-understand websites, you help users stay on your platform and reduce bounce rates. Bounce rate is a measuring metric used by Google to determine how relevant your website is in response to a particular keyword. A high bounce rate means that web traffic is not interested in viewing your content, and a low bounce rate means our website is relevant in response to a particular search query. The more time people spend on your website, the better are your chances of capturing sales. So, make sure your web content is engaging and easy to understand.
Measuring Website Engagement
Measuring the engagement levels of your website is crucial to developing a marketing plan and improving online sales. Measuring web engagements goes far beyond just web traffic. It accounts for clicks and scrolls web users have made on your website.
Time spent on the website also accounts for engagement. All of this information assists in making website adjustments and marketing plans. Web engagement metrics are calculated in comparison with competitor websites. However, sometimes engagement levels help understand different webpages’ performance and determine what is working and what isn’t. Some common website engagement measurement metrics include:
- New Visitors
- Returning Visitors
- Time spent on a web page
- Average session duration
- Number of comments
- Number of shares
- Conversions
How do Engagement Signals Affect Google Ranking?
Google’s primary goal is to serve the most relevant and accurate information against search queries. Besides using bots that crawl several million websites to identify the subject matter in relation to the query searched, Google has several other signaling factors that help in page ranking. These signaling factors include user experience, website load time, and backlinks. Google has advanced enough to determine the quality of a webpage based on its engagement signals.
What Is An Engagement Signal?
Engagement signals are any signals that indicate a user’s engagement with a website and its content. For instance, like, share, and comment is the engagement signals of social media. Similarly, websites have a share button on their blogs which serves as an engagement signal. However, websites without share options for their blog posts have other engagement signals that Google uses to determine a webpage’s quality.
Keep in mind that Google has never released what engagement signals it uses to influence a website’s ranking. However, webmasters need to focus on delivering an amazing user experience, followed by engaging content and useful information. Below are some of the most prominent engagement signals that play a critical role in a website’s ranking.
1. Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate is the most crucial engagement signal for Google to determine a website’s ranking. If users don’t click on your website when it appears of SERP’s, you need to check your meta title and meta description. These two metadata should match with the keyword you are ranking for and have an engaging message that attracts users to click on your link. If your click-through rate drops, Google will believe that your website is no longer relevant against the keyword it is ranking for. Therefore, your ranking will drop, and you will be replaced by another website. The best way to stay relevant is to revamp your content and flip some information here and there to make Google think you are active. Moreover, you should keep adding blogs and articles to your site so that Google knows your website is active.
2. Average Time Spent
Believe it or not, the average time users spend on your website also plays a crucial role in determining your website ranking. The longer your web traffic stays on your website, the better. Google believes that the information you have shared is relevant and important for the reader. On the other hand, the more time a user spends on your website, the higher the chances of making a sale. You can gradually show pop-ups about your product or sale to capture your web visitors’ attention and find the best opportunity to make a sale. Some websites use chat systems to start a conversation with their web traffic, ask for their contact number, and then make sales on call.
3. Returning Visitors
Returning visitors is always a good sign for businesses. For Google, it means that you are selling the right product/service to the right people. Moreover, a returning visitor is like a returning sale. The customer has already tried your product; now, they must be looking for something else on your website. Since the customer has already experienced your product or service, it will be easier to push another sale. However, returning customers have an important role in SEO. According to Brian Dean of Backlinko, Google considers returning visitors in its algorithm. You can check the number of website visitors and returning visitors through Google Analytics. Knowing the percentage of returning visitors can help you decide whether you need to improve the number of returning visitors number or not.
The Role of Backlinking In Improving A Website’s Rank
On the surface, the Google search engine is easy to understand. It crawls different websites, finds relevant links, and presents them against a particular search query. However, the Google search algorithm is far more complicated than it seems.
To determine where a website should rank on Google, its algorithm calculates the number and quality of backlinks as well. The idea for backlinks came when Google was born. As Larry and Sergey were submitting their college assignments, they always had to cite relevant study material to add more credibility to their work. This issue with college assignments led to the idea of backlinks; to the founders of Google, your website is an information source and backlinks act as citations.
However, “the more, the merrier” is not the case anymore with backlinks. Instead, Google has turned its focus from the number of backlinks and moved to their quality. Moreover, Google appreciates websites with links from within their industry.
For instance, a clothing brand with backlinks from a blog that writes about fashion is a wonderful fit, according to Google. Additionally, one good-quality link is better than 100 low-quality ones. Therefore, marketers have started focusing on generating relevant and good-quality backlinks.
How Search Engine Rankings Were Manipulated
Back when Google was still figuring out how to rank websites, many businesses were trying to manipulate rankings and promote their services over other competitors. Although these manipulations weren’t directly attacking Google, they were merely making ways from loopholes in Google’s ranking algorithm. Below are some ways how engagement signals were manipulated.
- Purchasing Backlinks
When backlinks became increasingly popular, many services started to sell them for profit. Websites that had high domain and page authority were selling their backlinks to other websites. Selling backlinks became a popular business, and many websites were set up just to give links to other sites. This jeopardized Google’s ranking system, and many websites were awarded links that didn’t have any relevant service or product to offer. That is why Google updated its algorithm and focused more on “relevant backlinks” from the same industry.
- Participating in Link Farm
Backlinking became a crucial engagement factor, and business owners focused on getting as many backlinks as they can. This led to the formation of a link farm where websites would come together to share links with each other. Participating in a link farm is against Google’s policies, and websites that have any connection to a link farm are penalized through de-ranking.
- Spamming Links in Blog Comment Section
The blog began to grow in popularity around the same time as Google was launched. People would fill the comment section of blogs with their web addresses. This is because posting a link in the comment section counted as a backlink.
- Linking From Private Blog Network
Private blog networks are individual websites owned by a business to promote its main site. These websites serve as backlink support for the main web and transfer link juice to the main site. This tactic involves buying high domain authority and page authority expired domains at cheap rates and adding content to them. Once these expired domains are live again, they serve as backlink platforms for the main website.
Concluding Thoughts
Engagement signals are crucial for determining a website’s rank on Google because engagement is an important metric for ranking. Website engagement tells Google that a particular page is serving adequate, engaging, and complete information regarding a particular search query. Due to this reason, Google prefers engagement signals above all ranking metrics.
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