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You would probably be sporting a huge grin when you check your website’s statistics and see that you’ve had over a hundred visitors. That is a good sign as it shows you were able to attract visitors. The question though is this, “how many of those guests actually interacted with your portal?”
If you’re wondering why this matter needs careful consideration, let us take a step back and look at the importance of user engagement. 
Image credit: 123rf – Confused woman working on a laptop computer Ð isolated over white
Now, if you own a business website, you would want it to rank high when someone does a search on Bing, Google, or Yahoo. One of the factors that help your site get there is an engaged audience. This is why it is extremely vital to keep readers interested if you want increased visibility for your venture.
If you are puzzled with how to achieve this, here are some points to consider:
1 Provide diverse and high-quality content
Normally, you will find text-based articles on plenty of Web sites. These are great, especially when aiming for online presence and a high position in search engines. However, some readers tend to skip lengthy posts.
How do you solve that dilemma?
One really good idea is to provide a variety of content. You can choose from various media types out there, including photos, videos, audio files, and infographics.
Providing these types of content helps keep your target audience interested. What is even more interesting is that these mediums may just put your site on the top spot in search engine results pages. That is, if you optimize your pages correctly.
Apart from diversifying your content, you can change the way you present your posts. First, you can publish a text-only article. After that, you can provide one that mixes both words and other media types. Furthermore, you can go for question-and-answer articles. For this type, you can provide replies to the enquiries posted or sent to your website.
Speaking of writing content, it also pays to feature posts that are easy to read. There are lots of ways to do this, and here are a few of them:
- Divide a write-up into sections by using headings to emphasize different points.
- Use bullets when enumerating items to break long content.
- Utilize numerical lists as another way of presenting a different point.
Aside from ensuring that your articles are readable, it is extremely important to publish topics plenty of visitors want to read. How exactly do you get ideas for posts like these?
- Use Google Analytics (GA). Use this tool to find out which posts on your site are getting a lot of hits. You can then create content based on the results you found.
- Check social media sites. Find out what most people in your industry are talking about and then, you can compose articles (based on such topics) that you know are useful for your readers.
Whatever it is you do, make sure there is a proper mixture of highly informative text and visual content that entices a visitor to stay longer on your website.
2 Include social media buttons and search features
Image credit: 123rf – social network structure
One of the best features on a website is the availability of a search bar. This helps people find topics, which they are interested in, faster.
In addition, it helps to provide:
- articles that have been recently published
- write-ups organized by categories
- posts with a lot of comments
Providing these makes it easier for your readers to find what they are looking for. Plus, this is not hard to do because there are available widgets that automatically do the job for you.
Other valuable elements on a portal are social media buttons for following and sharing. The former type is ideally placed in your homepage, while the latter works best if attached at the end of posts.
Sharing through social media is a great way to make your content available to different platforms and drive traffic to your site.
3 Allow readers to leave comments
Nothing spells user engagement better than allowing Web visitors to share their thoughts. This is why it is highly encouraged to provide a comments section after every post.
Doing so prompts a user to share what they have in mind. This leads to conversation, wherein more than one reader can participate in. This is great for you site in terms of engaging an audience and getting a good placement in search engines.
4 Ask questions or opinions
This is one of the best ways to incite a response from your readers. There are a couple ways to do this, but here are two of them:
Prompt the reader to share their thoughts
At the end of your articles, give the floor over to the audience. Ask them what they think about the post or if they have anything else to share. It doesn’t matter whether they give positive or negative feedback, the important thing is that you were able to get them to speak.
Publish a post that asks a question
One of the main goals of keeping a website is making sure your audience is satisfied. If you want to know if you are doing a good job, you can ask your readers. Doing so keeps you informed on things you need to improve upon.
5 Link to other pages within your site
Image credit: 123rf – Closeup of a few links of a chrome chain with very shallow depth of field
Another good way to keep readers on your site longer is to refer them to your previous posts. If you have an article that has the same subject matter as your current one, do not hesitate to link back to this.
Not only does this keep your readers entertained, it is also good for your link profile. In short, it is a major factor in getting your portal to rank high in search engine results.
Final thoughts
User engagement is one of the most important elements you should consider for your website. It not only keeps a visitor in your domain for a long period, but it also increases the visibility of your business on the Internet. Since being seen online is a vital component to success, it pays to implement methods that drive plenty of users to interact with your content.
Over to you, what do you think? Is there anything else you would like to add? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
About the Author
Jonny Lis is a Digital Marketing Specialist for Smart Traffic, a UK-based company specializing in SEO strategies that help clients get high results and rankings. He oversees more than 300 campaigns for the company.
About Guest Author
I enjoyed reading this article. User engagement is the first thing I look for when I visit a new blog. If there are obvious signs of a community or a group of other bloggers, then that tells me that the blog has some value to offer.
I have to agree with user engagement. But I do find a lot of great sites full of content, that really do not have a lot of user engagement. Thanks for stopping by Larry.
Nice tips here for increasing engagement, but providing unique content, including social sharing buttons and encouraging comments from readers have become so well-known that it can be hard to stand out. Any specific tips for getting your site to rise to the top when your users are also stopping by dozens of other blogs that do all of these things too?