You can only create the perfect SEO content if you have your website visitors, i.e. your customers, in mind. Corresponding connections have already been explained at various points in this series. Specific challenges or needs of your customers, which you can help to solve with your goods or services, must be addressed as comprehensively as possible in your – necessarily value-adding – content. With a target group- and customer magazine-oriented, holistic approach, you not only create the best SEO conditions. Your expert status on the net and your branding are also pushed enormously, which in the best case leads to strong, long-term business relationships.
As has become clear in the previous chapters, the user experience in terms of SEO today can certainly be described as a comprehensive and thus highly relevant factor. Therefore, we devote special attention to this and more precisely to the associated central visitor signals at the end of the series. Read, among other things, why visitor signals are so important and which ones you should pay particular attention to in order to generate the perfect SEO content.
Warum sind Besucher Signale heute so wichtig?
Visitor or user signals, in English “user signals”, are characteristics that users of websites send to search engines by using the content they find there. These are actually considered one of Google’s most important ranking factors today. It is generally assumed that the type and especially the quality of user signals can have a significant influence on the ranking of a website. The search engine leader itself has given SEOs numerous pointers to the high relevance of user signals over the years. The central user signals include the time spent on the page and the bounce rate.
In addition, so-called social signals in connection with SEO and user signals are receiving more and more attention in view of the steadily growing importance of social networks in online marketing. How important user signals really are for SEO is still controversially discussed in relevant circles. De facto, the quality of user signals cannot always be clearly derived from the consideration of bounce rate, dwell time and other KPIs. This fact will be explained in more detail below using the descriptions of dwell time and bounce rate.
Nevertheless, it is clear that such data give search engines clues as to how web presences are perceived – i.e. whether they offer a positive or negative user experience. For example, a short dwell time on the page may well communicate content or technical deficits. Google and Co. then use other metrics to determine which variant is the most likely. Since search engines collect incredibly large amounts of data, one can assume that this information can be evaluated in a very differentiated way. Otherwise, it would hardly be possible to deal with it efficiently. It is therefore very likely that these services are able to clearly differentiate between content-related or technical deficiencies.
Dwell time
The dwell time (or time on site) indicates how long your visitors stay on a page of your website or domain. Depending on the system, different methods are used to determine this value. For example, you can examine the dwell time on certain sub-pages of your company website or on the entire domain. Sometimes an average analysis of both is also made.
Since Google and Co. generally rate longer usage times more positively than shorter ones, it is of course important to increase the dwell time as much as possible. Dwell time can be seen as a direct indication of the quality of your content. The longer users stay on each page, the more relevant the content seems to be. However, this interpretation should be taken with caution – it cannot be considered universally valid. Because a long dwell time is sometimes also the result of poor usability or technical problems. On the other hand, a short average time spent on the website may simply mean that users find what they are looking for quickly.
This would mean that despite a short duration of use, the content is designed in a particularly beneficial way and provides a very good user experience. Therefore, dwell time – like any other KPI, by the way – cannot be used alone for meaningful insights. You should therefore never optimise solely on dwell time. Search engines are also able to make corresponding interpretations. As an online marketing driver, you must therefore always aim for a holistic SEO approach for maximum success. With optimally target group-specific information, user-friendly structures, a good content mix and strategically clever internal linking, you can especially promote dwell time.
Bounce rate
The bounce rate indicates how many visitors leave your website without having accessed other sub-pages of a domain’s page structure. A high bounce rate tends to be seen as a negative factor for ranking. This view is based on the conclusion that the website or the individual pages and their content have obviously not succeeded in getting the user to call up further pages, i.e. they are not of sufficient quality for search engines. Here, however, the interpretation is factually just as unclear as with the dwell time. Since a large proportion of search engine users ask clear questions or have a concrete problem/need, many users also leave pages that offer very targeted content relatively quickly once the question has been answered or the problem/need has been solved.
High double-digit bounce rates are therefore not uncommon, depending on the industry. Perhaps this is also the reason why this visitor signal is explicitly not a ranking factor, as Google employees have confirmed several times. Nevertheless, as numerous studies have shown, the bounce rate plays a not insignificant role in the big SEO picture. A high bounce rate in combination with a very short dwell time can certainly be interpreted as a clear indication of various deficits.
In principle, the lowest possible bounce rate should always be aimed for in order to achieve maximum SEO success. This can be achieved in particular through internal links to further topics and their optimal visual embedding. Internal links must therefore always be clearly separated from other content at the base. You can achieve this, for example, by using different colours or an eye-catching design. Furthermore, it is sometimes extremely advantageous to embed internal links to corresponding information in videos, images, sliders or pop-ups.
Social Signals
Social signals are a special form of visitor signals. Basically, shares and likes in social media represent a genre of their own, but can certainly be associated with user signals. After all, these are also characteristics that allow conclusions to be drawn about the way in which online content is used. However, these are presented in an active, communicative, informative form. Information about social interactions, social emotions, social relationships and/or social behaviour is conveyed directly or indirectly.
Social signals are a special form of visitor signals. Basically, shares and likes in social media represent a genre of their own, but can certainly be associated with user signals. After all, these are also characteristics that allow conclusions to be drawn about the way in which online content is used. However, these are presented in an active, communicative, informative form. Information about social interactions, social emotions, social relationships and/or social behaviour is conveyed directly or indirectly.
In practice, SEOs disagree on how great the influence of visitor signals in social media on search engine rankings actually is. Google and Co. are also – as usual – largely silent about the significance. Nevertheless, the influence of social signals and their relevance in some respects is beyond question.
Social signals can come from social media as well as from blog posts or other forms of content on the web. In principle, they are now considered an integral part of the marketing mix in online marketing. They should definitely be taken into account because – apart from a possible direct positive effect on the ranking – they are also significant in terms of the pure reach of a brand and thus offer extended SEO potential. Likes and shares make it possible to make new and interesting content accessible to an immense number of customers within a few minutes. Since these are, among others, followers or fans, more precisely people from the same business field and those who generally have a genuine interest in the activities of the company playing out, the probability increases that corresponding content with outstanding information content will be shared on their websites. This in turn creates backlinks, which are indeed still among the most important ranking factors of all.
Social Signals and SEO
Quite independently of their classification as ranking factors or SEO promoters on another level, social signals can give search engines a good indication of how relevant a website or individual pages and their content are. In addition, likes and shares are considered indicators of current topics and search trends. In this context, it is very interesting that important messages from social networks appear in the Google search results. In addition, it is possible with Google Analytics to look specifically at traffic via social media. It is therefore obvious that Google indirectly evaluates user data via social signals – such as the dwell time or the bounce rate – and assesses the quality of the content of a target page on the basis of this data.
Here, too, the creation of social signals is favoured by playing out added-value content that is as specific as possible to the target group – for example, within a company blog. Furthermore, it must be as easy as possible to associate this content with social signals. For this purpose, it is essential to implement corresponding buttons for likes/shares directly on relevant websites outside the social web.