If you have a blog then you understand the importance of driving traffic to it. You can have the best content in the world but if you don’t have traffic and user engagement then your blog will not succeed.

You know the power of user engagement, what you may not know is how to drive it. Driving user engagement is all about following certain strategic steps. Here is a look at some of the best ways to increase user engagement on your website.

Increase Site Speed

The speed at which a website loads is one of the key factors in determining whether or not users will remain engaged. Things are different than they were before the internet became very popular. 

People are impatient; they don’t want to waste their time waiting for a page to load. If they have to wait too long they will exit your website quickly. This will cause a high bounce rate.

The best thing you can do is to check your site speed with free tools that are available on the internet.

Internal Linking

Internal linking will help the users of your website navigate it a lot better. In addition, there is more and more evidence that Google actually gives credence to internal linking as it signals the importance of the page to your website. 

If you do internal linking to high-ranking pages Google also seems to favor this and will give you a boost in rankings. Always make sure your internal links have a descriptive anchor text.

Show Related Content

Showing related content and is one of the best ways to help users stay on your website. If someone is reading an article about a particular topic it is likely that they will be interested in reading more about a similar topic. Make it easy for them by suggesting these pages at the end of the current page that they are reading.

You can add these related posts manually or you can use a plug-in to do it for you. Whichever way you choose, just ensure that you do so, since it can make a huge difference in keeping visitors on your website a lot longer.

Make Navigation Easy

One of the easiest ways to keep people on your website is to ensure that navigation is made easy. If a visitor cannot find something on your website they become very frustrated and leave.

When you create your website, make sure that your navigation links are clear and easily accessible. The last thing you want is for your visitors to leave prematurely. One way to make navigating your site easy is to place a search box on your website. If you are not sure how to go about updating your site, click to view these tutorials.

Your visitors will be able to go into the search box to find what they want simply by putting in a keyword. This is a simple step but it is one that many websites still need to do. 

There are too many sites on the internet without a search box. Keep your visitors as many avenues as possible to explore your website. A search box is one of the easiest and most obvious ways to do this aside from using the general navigation menu.

Categorize your website properly. Make sure that all the important links on your website are curated based on specific topics. You need to ensure that you do this because it also helps visitors to stay longer on your site by introducing them to related content. This increases time on page and signals to Google that you have valuable content. Another way is to do synthetic transaction monitoring which allows you to see an in-depth view of how your visitors’ are navigating through your website.

What’s Your Writing Style?

Your writing style can have a huge impact on how engaged your visitors are on your website. Is the tone formal, friendly, or conversational? You will need to take all these things into consideration if you are going to have a successful website.

The tone on your website should be dependent on the niche as well as the topics that you are writing about. However, if you find that a certain writing style connects with your audience more than another this is really what you should use to gauge the best writing style for your content.

Responsive Theme

The theme that you use for your website should be very responsive especially to mobile visitors. The majority of searches are now done on mobile phones.

If you think about it you will see why. Phones are constantly connected to the internet and people can easily carry them around. It is easy to look for information that you need on your phone.

If your users become frustrated with their experience on mobile they won’t even bother to go to your desktop website either. If you are the one who is designing and updating your website you need to always check how the website looks on a mobile device even though you will probably work on the website on your laptop.

Leverage Social Media

Social media is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. People who follow your social media are interested in what you have to say. When you are promoting your content on social media, you should also make sure that you send signals to people to go to your website as well.

This could mean giving people a teaser of the content that you have written on your blog and then directing them to your website. You need to make use of a wide variety of platforms. This includes Pinterest. 

Pinterest is often seen as a place where moms and crafters go to find ideas for their latest projects. While this is true it is not the whole story about Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest is more of a search engine than it is a social media site. 

It offers a valuable and free way for you to drive traffic to your website on a consistent basis. Whenever you have a new blog post on your website do not just depend on Google to pick it up in their search engines. Make sure that you also pin it on Pinterest as well.

It is perfectly okay to create more than one pin for a particular blog post on Pinterest just make sure that you do not pin them all at the same time. Wait a few days in between each post.

Use Chatbots

If you are not using chatbots on your website then you are leaving a valuable interactive tool on the table. If you surf the web a lot you will notice that there are many websites that now use a chatbot. 

You have probably interacted with a chatbot. If you go to many websites you will see bots welcoming you to the website and asking you if they can assist you with navigation or your purchase. 

If you are not yet using website chat software then you need to. This is because it helps you to interact with your customers even at those times when regular business hours have passed. You can program your chatbot to answer specific questions that users may have about using your website.

Use Their Email List

You should use your email is to drive traffic to your website. People who have already interacted with your website and are on your email list are usually very interested in your content. 

Every time you post a new blog post inform your email list that you have done so and invite them to interact with your content. The quicker you can do this after you have published a blog post the more signals you will send to Google that your post is important and worthy of being ranked in their search engine.

Use Video

There is no denying that video marketing is huge. People like to watch videos and they are consuming video content at an alarming rate. One of the greatest ways to keep people on your website is to embed videos into your blog post.

Embedding a video in your blog post means that your visitors will stay longer on your website to watch the video. Again, this sends signals to Google that your content is valuable and worthy of ranking.

Enhance Your Website

You have been given a lot of valuable tips and many of them are easily implemented in order to increase the engagement on your website. Remember that the user experience is the most valuable thing when you are creating content. Your audience needs to be satisfied if they are to keep coming back to your website.

The better the experience on your website, the more traffic you will get from search engines, and the higher your conversion rate will be on your website. These two factors alone make it worth your time to try to increase website engagement as much as possible.