90 Digital CEO Nick Garner talks about Engagement Rank in this edition of CalvinAyre.com’s SEO Tip of the Week.
Summary: Engagement Rank is a term used to describe the effect of engagement on search results and the rise or fall in rankings of websites. The principle behind engagement Rank is fairly simple: there is an expected click through rate per search position. If a search result gets
- less click through rate than expected for that position, it goes down in rankings.
- More click through rate than expected for that position, it goes up in rankings
- an expected click through rate for the position, it stays level
Of course, there are other factors like the volume of links going into a particular webpage and the authority and trust of a website.
A good way of thinking about engagement Rank is the auditioning process. A website gets links, Google says it’s noteworthy therefore let’s audition it in the search results. If the site gets a suitable amount of engagement, it will either rise up the rankings or hold its position.
If the site fails its audition, i.e. it doesn’t get any engagement then it’s a lot harder to get back up the rankings the next time you get a large number of links.
Tip: crawl your website using a tool like beamusup, Xenu link sleuth, or screaming frog and have a look at your title tags and description tags. Are they ‘clickable’? Would you want to click on a search result that said; ‘whatever your title tags say’, if so great, if not it’s time to start thinking about doing some title tag and description tag rewriting.
