5 Engagement Tips for SEO and Social Media

1. Give your website a checkup.

A health checkup, that is. If a visitor gets a 404 error or a “not found” message when he clicks on one of your links, he is far more likely to leave your site. Make sure all your links are working, especially if your site is showing a high bounce rate. Poor website “health” just might be the reason. Also, change any duplicate page titles and/or duplicate content. These are also symptoms of a “sick” website.

2. Link to your own content.

Speaking of links, your website should be full of them. It may not seem like it, but links are an engagement tool because they keep users on the site longer (that’s right; they keep them engaged.) So, go through your site and find posts on the same topic; then, link those pages. Don’t link every single word; two or three per post is more than enough.

3. Embrace social sharing.

Social buttons and icons are an easy way to encourage engagement. Showing the number of comments, tweets, likes, etc. tells your audience, “Hey, people are talking about this and you should too.” Twitter buttons are probably the most effective social media sharing tool. They also make it easy for users to share your content with others – and that kind of sharing is engagement (it also improves your SEO because it gives your site more authority).

4. Ask readers what they want.

You can guess at what your readers want to see, or you can stop wasting time and ask them directly. Find out what posts they liked in the past and what they’d like to see more of in the future. Giving them what they want may help improve the time they spend on your site, and it may be a reflection of what your prospective users want, too.

5. Add recommended articles to keep people reading.

Have you ever seen something like “people who bought this/read this/viewed this also liked…” on a web page? Doing this with your web pages can work, too. Add a recommended articles list at the bottom of blog posts and website articles to engage readers and keep them on the site.

Any good SEO or social media marketing agency will tell you: engagement can help your SEO by giving your site more authority, and it can help your social media efforts as you build a reputation for engaging readers. Keep engaging, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.