6 Ways in Which Interactive Content Impacts SEO

Looking for a new effective way to improve your SEO strategy? Try interactive content.

The SEO landscape is forever evolving, requiring webmasters to be more creative and authentic. Since user experience has become an important page ranking factor for Google, creating and sharing content without encouraging user reaction isn’t useful anymore.

Interactivity is a powerful tool for driving up your engagement rates and improving your overall user experience. By presenting information in an exciting way your visitors will not only be more likely to read it and stay on your site longer, but they will have a more enjoyable and customized experience.

Additionally, interactive content helps you to learn when and how users interact with you, thus generating richer data for your content marketing and SEO strategy. When users land on your website, they should enjoy the visit. By incorporating interactive content your prospects will be more likely to achieve the goals you’ve set for them and get closer to closing a deal.

In this blog post, we will be sharing with you six ways in which interactive content impacts SEO. We will give you more details on the how and why, and show you some ideas to help you make it work for your business.

What Do We Mean by Interactive Content?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s first define what interactive content is.

Essentially, interactive is a type of digital content that a user engages with by performing an action. Compared to watching a video or reading an article, to see the full information of the interactive content people have to click, drag, or slide.

You have probably come across interactive content plenty of times, maybe even without knowing it. Some of the most common types of this content format include: polls, quizzes, games, animated charts, infographics, calculators, configurators, 360-degree video and more.

Read also: Nine Website Elements to Drive User Engagement

According to DemandGenReport, 93% of marketers state that interactive content is an effective way to educate buyers, compared to 70% for static content. Hence, implementing it into your content strategy won’t just make the user experience more entertaining, but it will help them engage with your content more effectively.

Let’s see how this happens exactly.

1. Improves User Engagement and Experience

Engagement is very important both for your brand and your SEO strategy, and it’s also one of the main challenges digital marketers have to deal with. So, when an engagement strategy is executed well your search engine ranking gets a boost.

One of the best ways to generate interaction with your audience is to have materials which encourage the exchange of information. This will not only incentivize users to stay on your site longer, but it will also increase the likelihood of them sharing some of their personal information with you like email, social media profile, interests, etc.

Additionally, it’s not only about the information you provide, but also the way you provide it. For example, with an animated infographic you can give your visitors the chance to set up their own filters to find specific information they are curious about. This will increase their interest in your content as well as the tendency to share it with their peers.

The following article is a great example of value adding and informational interactive content: How to Choose Between the Push and Pull Strategy in Marketing

A very important note: Make sure your interactive content is adaptable to different devices and especially mobile. Actions in this direction will earn you valuable points with Google and improve your page ranking.

In fact, Google itself has found that 90% of companies that allocate resources to create a customized experience for users experience a significant increase in profits. Quite nice, right?

2. Generates More Backlinks

Backlinks play a key important role in generating traffic to your website and creating a good SEO strategy. By definition, backlinks are links strategically placed within a piece of content (blog post, landing page, newsletters, etc.) to direct a user to another page. The goal of using these is to provide additional relevant information and generate quality traffic.

Generally, backlinks can be used to connect pages within the same website to increase the time spent there by users. However, getting external links to your website is where the magic happens. They help strengthen the authority of your website and improve your position in SERPs.

You must keep in mind that Google pays a lot of attention to your backlinks, in particular how they are obtained and how relevant the information at the destination is to yours. Hence, unless the external links pointing to your website are obtained organically, they won’t help your SEO as much.

The best way to get valuable backlinks is to create interactive web content that catches the attention of readers and that creates a memorable experience. Standard static content cannot provide the same level of brand awareness and engagement. However, a well-thought-out interactive experience can generate a great amount of authority to both your domain and your brand. So, by offering SEO optimized content that is so great and unique people will want to link back to it.

3. Improves Social Media Presence

In addition to backlinks, a big part of improving your brand awareness and making your website popular are social media mentions and shares. If you want to reach people you have never reached before and have your brand be seen and recognized by more users than those using search engines, social media is your friend.

A good social media strategy is essential for putting your brand name out there, improving brand awareness and building your reputation. When prospects can find links to your website through your social media profiles and see for themselves the interactions others have had with your brand, they feel more comfortable to put their trust in your products/services.

Additionally, good social media presence helps showcase your business’ unique characteristics and strengths so you can set you apart from the competition. When your brand is well-known your website will benefit in two ways.

On the one hand, people will be more likely to open your page when searching, even if it’s not in the top SERPs. On the other hand, it will help drive up the number of navigational searches to your site, which is a direct ranking factor.

4. Collects Data Intelligently

When optimizing your website searchability, you’re essentially making sure that you’re supplying potential customers with the information they’re looking for. However, to provide prospects with valuable information you need to understand user behaviour and whereabouts.

Interactive content allows you to display information in chunks so as to get honest and impartial feedback from your users. This way, when a person is interested in learning more they can click on an option, scroll down, and get more details about their query.

Polls and surveys, for example, are very useful here. More often than not people are willing to partake in a survey, or a questionnaire, so that their voice is heard. This allows marketers to obtain valuable data about the preferences of their target audience, which can be used for designing better campaigns and developing products with improved and relevant features.

5. Helps with Content Personalization

Content personalization has been a growing necessity for marketers over the years. According to RockContent, consumers now expect personalized options of products and services to be available almost everywhere. This trend has been growing steadily especially when it comes to interactive content. In fact, 74% of customers feel frustrated if a site’s content is not personalized.

Today’s customers are also presented with a huge amount of content from various organizations on a daily basis. As such, they all want for this content to be personally relevant to them, which is why you should create interactive web content.

Personalization can mean many things, but at its core, it’s about creating a more individual experience, tailored to the needs of individuals by using the information you have learned about them. This also means that a single piece of content can include a few slightly different takes on a topic so it’s relevant to multiple audiences.

You can leverage interactive content for personalization in a few different ways. For instance, you can pull the user’s name from a lead form and place it onto your copy – using conditional text. Alternatively, you can also track the visitor’s behaviour and change the content they see – using custom dialogue.

Regardless of the method used, personalization incentivizes users to interact with a piece of content and rewards them by adjusting their experience to make it more engaging and relevant as they move through the stages of their journey.

5. Improves Key On-page SEO Metrics

Quality SEO optimized content that can answer the searcher’s intent is the second most important ranking factor for your website alongside backlinks. And when you have achieved this goal, you can use a few metrics to check how your audience is reacting to it.

The three key SEO metrics to keep track of include:

• Pages Per Visit. When a visitor likes one of your site’s pages they will be more likely to browse more of them. Interactive content works great at grabbing a user’s attention and making their experience more enjoyable.
• Time on Page. This metric can tell us a lot about content quality. If, for example, you have a 1500-word blog post, but on average users spend only 30 seconds on it, then there are opportunities for improvement. By including interactive content you can persuade users to hang around longer, which will send good signals to search engines.
• Bounce Rate. This metric is another indicator of content quality. When you create interactive web content you can keep your readers interested so that they continue their journey on your site. It will encourage them to type in, click on, or scroll through a particular section so the whole experience is completed.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR). The more value you can provide to your visitors with your content the more they will be willing to engage with it. So, instead of trying to increase your CTR by adding a call to action (CTA) at the end of your blog post, why not add that CTA to an interactive piece of content like a quiz, poll, survey, real-time chat, etc.

When these metrics are positive, it means that your visitors are having a good experience on your website. Consequently, they might decide to link back to your content further improving your SEO strategy.

Wrapping Up

No matter the nature of your business and website, if you want your digital marketing and SEO strategy to be successful you will need to attract as many visitors as possible and ensure that they stay interested in your content. You can achieve this with the help of interactive content.

Since this type of content is really effective at grabbing your audience’s attention, it can also compel them to stay on your site longer and browse through more of its pages. It can also encourage satisfied users to link back to your site and even to return to it. Not to mention, it’s perfect for improving your brand’s reach, awareness and overall online presence.

If you have decided to leverage interactive content for your marketing success, we would love to hear more about your experience in the comments below.