How Interactive Content Increases your Search Engine Ranking

That coveted number one ranking—marketers work tirelessly for it, lose sleep over it and maybe even pray for it.

But why is it so important?

This ranking is the first thing researchers find when searching for specific keywords and questions. We all know that our attention span while searching online is minimal. It’s even been compared to that of a goldfish (we have a shorter one). That’s why it’s crucial to find a way to bring your business to the forefront for customers on this journey.

Think of search engines like malls—one big building housing hundreds of stores. As a marketer, you want to make sure those visiting the mall walk into your store. If they do, then they have a much greater chance of making a purchase.

In malls, the stores that get an increase in foot traffic usually have entrancing window displays. Similarly, landing pages that excel at search engine optimization (SEO) are the ones with engaging content, encouraging potential customers to come in and join them, have a look around, and make that purchase.

At malls, the more money a store makes from customers, the more money it can use to better pay employees (which increases their satisfaction and makes them better at their job), create more creative and elaborate window displays (encouraging even more foot traffic) and take the store to the next level. Once that wheel starts turning, it goes faster and faster.

The same goes for Google and SEO. Once you reach that first page with a keyword—and especially after that coveted number one ranking—more and more visitors will click into your website, increasing the potential they convert into customers. More customers mean more money, which means the ability to create more creative content and continually pushing to the next level as a business.

But with all the noise online, how can you stand out from the rest of the stores in the mall trying to attract customers and fighting for that number one spot?

» What Exactly Is Interactive Content?

Interactive content is a valuable tool for businesses trying to stand out from everyone else on the internet.

Let’s be honest, every business knows that it needs a blog on its website to get anywhere. Blogs aren’t the end all be all, but they do provide content that can act as a gateway for potential customers to jump onto a website. However, everyone is doing it.

That’s where interactive content comes into play.

I-on interactive defines it as “content that is created with the intention of capturing user attention and encouraging them to take action.” It’s content that does a little more and goes the extra mile.

› Insightful Assessments

Who doesn’t love learning more about themselves? As people and as businesses, we are our own biggest mysteries. What are we doing right or wrong? How do we measure up against others? In what areas can we make improvements?

It’s difficult to get a clear and distinct view of your performances, profile, or possible improvements. That’s where assessments come in handy. Assessments help people and businesses better understand themselves and provide detailed insights and roadmaps toward improvement.

Make sure you choose the right assessment tool. There are a lot of great assessment software platforms available, it’s just a question of finding a suitable solution for your industry, and for the particular challenge you are facing.

› Engaging Videos

Let's face it—we don’t have great attention spans as humans living in 2020. There is just so much to pay attention to at any time, so is it really our fault we can’t focus? That’s why videos have become a popular tool, especially to complement the written content. Well-produced videos are flashy, engaging, and visual. As far as content goes, videos don’t ask a lot from audiences. They don’t need to focus hard on reading paragraphs of text—they can watch a two-minute video and understand what they are seeking.

› Creative Calculators

Calculators have become an especially valuable piece of content for businesses, and they don’t simply need to calculate numbers. (Though, let's be honest, how many grown adults do any form of math without one?) For example, you could create an assessment that helps prospective customers measure their energy usage. In this case, participants didn’t input a bunch of numbers. Instead, the “calculations” are created as a sum of experiences, in order to share insight.

By helping their prospects calculate their energy usage, they not only provided them with valuable interactive content, but they also collected important data from them, such as their email address, to send the feedback report to.

› Interactive Content + SEO = Higher Rankings

So all of these examples are all great and whatnot, but how will they help your SEO strategy?

Link building.

Link building is an SEO strategy in which a website gains increases in relevancy, quality, and quantity scores in order to rank higher in the SERPS. While Google likes to keep its ranking secrets just that, it’s well known amongst SEO specialists that link building is a big part of the equation.

The norm is to build links to any form of content on the website—product pages, category pages, and especially blogs. But this is getting increasingly more challenging as more websites, marketers, and content enter the scene.

You need to make sure the coveted links are pointing at your website, meaning you need to capture the attention of those creating the content that you want your own content linking to.

As we explained above, interactive content is the next level. It’s unique, engaging, and attention-grabbing. Marketers with this type of content are absolutely going to see more links than those only pursuing text-focused content. Not to bash text-focused content—it is and always will be a large part of marketing. However, it alone is no longer enough to secure success.

› Getting Eyes on Your Interactive Content

As is the case with basically any content, your interactive content can be the coolest thing out there, but it’s not going to provide any value to you or your audience if you don’t work hard to get it “out there.”

• Help Them, Help You

Promoting your interactive content is a vital step, and there are several ways you can do this. One such way is to identify articles and blog posts that can be enhanced by adding your interactive content. Pitch the author of the article, explain what your interactive content achieves and how it could help add dimension and engagement to their article.

• Get Social

Another way to promote your interactive content is through social media. Make sure you are posting it on your business’s timeline, feed, etc. But make sure you are also searching for groups of like-minded individuals. LinkedIn houses groups focused around professionals. Facebook has groups centered around shared interests. Reddit is basically made of different groups.

• Engage Customers

It’s also important to maintain the relationships you build with customers and like-minded professionals that you find in these groups. A customer engagement platform can go a long way to help do this by consolidating all your digital interactions in one place. They also allow you to build a more complete digital profile of your customers and partners, allowing you to build a more tailored and engaging interactive experience in the future.

• Money Talks

Besides organic promotion across Social Media Marketing (SMM) platforms, you could also try boosting your posts with paid ads. The biggest plus of SMM advertising is that it allows you to promote your content to a specific group of users like, for instance, those who have previously read similar posts. The same can be done on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Even though technically, setting up ads on these platforms doesn't require special skills, advertising isn't always as easy as it sounds. If you want to save time and run SMM ads as efficiently as possible, then consider using something like one of these best-rated tools designed specifically for social media advertising.

Conclusion

SEO is essential in order to consistently gain traffic and conversions for your website, and content is key to boosting rankings. However, while traditional content such as blog posts still has its place, it’s simply not enough anymore.

Interactive content such as assessments, videos, and calculators will set you apart from the pack and increase your likelihood that others will link to your content, resulting in higher rankings. That’s how people and businesses will find you more easily, enabling you to increase your lead generation, and eventually also your conversion rate.

Which interactive content tactic would you like to try out? Or are you already actively using one? Let us know in the comments!