You might have read a lot about SEO factors and might be working like crazy towards utilizing them on your website. You might have read about writing great content, including the best keywords, optimizing images, writing a perfect title, having a compelling meta description, etc. Definitely, all these factors do affect SEO but, what if you are unsuccessful at getting traffic on your site and what if you get enough amount of traffic but, are unable to keep the visitors connected with you?
Who are you building your website for? The users, right? So, the most important thing is that you succeed in bringing target audience to your site and have them satisfied. If you have lots of happy users on your site, you are definitely going to boost your SEO. Although, Google has never clearly stated that user behaviour influences ranking and SEO but, company executives have been mentioning this over time. So, you must optimize your website for better user behaviour. Here are the most important metrics you must optimize for.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Obviously, there is no perfect rate that can be said to be the right number of CTRs for a search but, Google has some expectations from websites regarding the same. It has set up particular CTR ranges for different types of queries, that your website must fall in to get it ranked. If you fall within or above the range that you fit in, Google will rank your site higher but, if you fail to do so, you will be down-ranked. In order to have an improved CTR, you must take care of the following –
- Write unique effective page titles that tell the users what they can expect on your page. Keep them clear and concise. Eliminate duplicate titles. Include keywords.
- Write relevant and compelling meta descriptions describing clearly what is on your page by using the right keywords. Include a strong call-to-action, which speaks directly to the searchers and shows them the advantage of visiting your page.
- Have clear and understandable URLs. Even your URLs should represent what you have on your page. Try using the best descriptive words in the shortest form. Don’t use random elements like punctuation marks and numbers.
- Google Analytics webmaster tools can help you find which pages of your site have lower CTRs as compared to what Google expects. Identify them and focus on improving them first.
Dwell time
Dwell time means the amount of time spent by users on your page. This starts from the time they land on your page from search results and ends when they go back to the SERPs. If they stay there for longer, you can be sure that you have provided valuable information to them, which highly affects Google. If you find that you have a very low dwell time of customers on your site and you want to increase this time span, you must –
- Improve the quality of your content. The most important thing that users connect with is the content on your page. Make it unique and useful for them. They have read your title and meta description to decide on coming to your page. Make sure you provide them what they expect.
- Check for broken links on your site and take steps to remove or repair them. You can use the Website Auditor to search for broken links.
- You can compel searchers to stay on your site by providing them links for additional information, which lead to other pages on your site. Offer them the option of related articles at the bottom of your page.
Pogo-sticking
Pogo-sticking is when searchers hop back to the SERPs after landing on your page in a very short while. This will let Google think that your page does not provide relevant or quality information, which will lead the search engine to down-rank your page. So, just like you need to increase the dwell time of your users, you need to decrease pogo-sticking. Here is how you can do so –
- Improve the page loading time. If your page takes more than 5 to 8 seconds to load, the visitors will get frustrated and immediately push the ‘Back’ button. They won’t wait long for you page to load.
- Have a minimum of pop-ups and ads on your page. 2 to 3 ads are enough for a page. Excessive use of ads will only distract the users.
Jain Technosoft is the best SEO Company in Bangalore that can help build up such a site for you that can impress the users and have them stay on your page for longer; thus, improving your SEO. So, for any kind of assistance, you can rely on us to provide you the best services.
