With the sunsetting of Universal Analytics by Google and the introduction of GA4 analytics, a lot of things have changed in the website analytics landscape. It is true that digital marketers are still trying to get the hang of GA4.
One of the most importance metric that got an upgrade in GA4 is the engagement rate. In GA4 there is a lot more focus on engagement rate and engaged sessions. Though, bounce rate is not absent in GA4 and can be set up manually in the reporting section of GA4 (if you are still old school).
However, the focus on engagement makes sure that you are looking at the various actions taken by a user in your website. It gives you a more comprehensive idea on user behaviour than bounce rate in UA, which was more about the inactivity of the user.
GA4 support documentation gives a very specific definition to what they call an “engaged session”.
“An engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key events, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.”
GA4 will consider any session as an engaged session if it lasts more than 10 seconds. Here, it shows the importance of having engaging content on your website so that a user will keep engaged in your web page.
You can set up key events in GA4. Find the steps in setting up key events in GA4 from the Google documentation.
If the user takes an action in any of the key events, then that will also be considered as an engaged session.
GA4 will consider a session as engaged session if that session contains at least 2 pageviews or screenviews (in case of apps).
As mentioned above, bounce rate is about then inactivity of the user. When the bounce rate is high, the implication was that the content was not engaging enough and hence the user bounced out of the website without visiting another page.
At the same time, it could also mean that the user was able to find what she was looking for in the page and hence decided to leave the website without going to another page on the website.
The vagueness of the bounce rate metric could be the reason why Google decided to replace it with the engagement rate.
While bounce rate is about the action taken by a user on one page, engagement rate is about the actions users take on multiple pages. Thus the engagement rate as a metric, gives a more comprehensive account of the user behaviour than the bounce rate.
Engagement rate considers a lot of activities, including different interactions done on a page, additional content explored, videos watched, forms submitted, scrolls done to the different parts of the page, which all give a lot of insight into the user behaviour and user experience. It gives the website owner a good idea about how engaging the content of the website was to the user.
User engagement is considered as an SEO factor, because if the user is engaged with a piece of content, it means the user has found the content to be valuable.
Google and other search engines are looking at websites that give useful information to their users. When the engagement rate of a website is high, it shows the search engines that the website has useful information that engages the user.
Therefore, it is only natural that search engines give more value to websites with higher engagement rate. Hence it can be safely assumed that websites with higher engagement rate will have better search engine rankings.
Read more about How to create search engine friendly content.
Now that we know that higher engagement rate will give a website the needed SEO boost, how can we increase the engagement rate of a website and how to make your website content more engaging?
Here is how to create content that increases the engagement rate of your website.
1. Create valuable content that addresses the questions your website visitors are asking.
2. Enhance the page speed of your webpages. Slow pages can frustrate visitors leading them to leave your website, thereby reducing engagement.
3. Regularly update and refresh your content to keep your visitors engaged.
(You may like to read the blog post, Repurposing Old Content for Maximum SEO Value)
4. Improve your mobile user experience by removing intrusive ads
5. Include more visual elements like images and videos in your content to increase engagement.
Though it is true that a lot of things have changed in the SEO world, it is still important to give your website visitors useful information. It will never go out of fashion. Do everything to ensure your visitors are engaged with the content on your website.
If you want to know more about creating useful content or about how to improve your website’s engagement rate, contact me now.
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