Want to stand out in a sea of static content, boost your SEO, and grow your brand? Here’s why you should invest in interactive content.

This post was sponsored by Rock Content. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

What comes to your mind when you think about your SEO strategy?

Link building? Backlinks? Keywords?

Well, although these are great pillars of an SEO strategy, they are also what everybody else is focusing their attention on.

And you don’t want to use the same tactics as the competition, right?

You want to invest your time and money in something new yet effective – like interactive content.

Yep, this may seem like a weird idea at first.

You might not believe this, but interactivity is a crucial element to increase engagement and improve the overall experience of a reader with a piece of content.

This means that interactive content can better respond to a user’s intent, therefore favoring your SEO strategy.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s start with the basics first.

What Is Interactive Content?

In the simplest of terms, interactive contents are dynamic materials that site users are encouraged to engage with.

Think about a piece of content that requires active participation to be used and that is able to adapt itself according to the inputs of the user.

A few of these content types include:

• Animated infographics.
• Quizzes.
• Ebooks.
• Assessments.
• Calculators.

Brands are increasingly investing in interactive content to keep users on the site, as well as to deliver their messages more effectively.

When people interact with content on a site, they are more likely to stay on the site longer – which is great for engagement purposes – because the experience given to the user is more fun, exciting, and customized, and the information is presented in a way that the user is more likely to read.

This type of content also lets you be aware of when and how a person interacts with your materials, which generates richer data for your strategies.

How Does Interactive Content Benefit an SEO Strategy?

When done well, interactive content can be an engaging element that provides a lot of value to the user. After all, a customized message tailored to each person can become more relevant to your audience.

And isn’t relevance the whole point of SEO?

Check our list of why we’re so passionate about interactive content.

Engagement

Engagement is not only important for SEO but is also really important for your brand.

Having interactive content on your site makes it more likely for people to spend more time on your pages – and they are also more likely to give out their personal information.

In the end, it is not only about the information you give, but also the way people get it.

You can create calculators, quizzes, assessments, and many other experiences that will engage and delight your audience which leads to:

• Links to your content.
• Social media sharing.
• More time on your site and more visited pages.

Every day new brands start producing content for their audiences, trying to figure out how to beat their competition and interactive content can be a unique factor to set your brand apart and guarantee an audience that loves and shares your content.

Link Bait

Link bait is a term that simply means you’re baiting users to link to the content you offer.

How come? By offering content so great and unique that people would gladly link to it.

Interactive content can generate a level of engagement and brand awareness that’s not provided by standard, static content. It’s a memorable experience, and memorable experiences are likely to get more links.

Here’s an example:

This persona generator is an interactive content that users love, and it has attracted a large number of backlinks. It is a huge success with our American, Brazilian, and Spanish audiences by helping people create their persona and providing a great experience in the process.

When you look at the Persona Generator page data (the Portuguese version), you can see a significant number of backlinks and more than 600 unique domains linking for it.

That’s an example of how much authority and awareness a well-made interactive experience can generate for your brand and domain.

Social Shares

You probably know that having your links shared on social media doesn’t directly help your organic search ranking.

But that doesn’t mean your results are unaffected by this.

Social shares, like backlinks, show that people like the site and want to “vote” for it. This increases the visibility of your content and helps you get noticed by search engines.

The more online mentions your brand gets, the more authority and awareness you get. This brings more traffic to your site/blog and also increases your chances of getting backlinks.

Also, social shares allow your brand to get more known, which leads to more branded searches and more authority in search engines’ eyes.

How many times have you seen content like calculators and quizzes shared on social media?

Plenty, I’d guess.

Social media users love to share interactive content and infographics because they’re more personal and will give their followers something valuable.

Brand Awareness

A big part of making a website popular is getting both backlinks and social shares. When it gets both of these, your brand will reach people that it has never reached before.

It will be seen by many more people than just those using a search engine. And, it will be recognized for its uniqueness.

It also gets your business name out there and builds a reputation for it. When people have seen multiple pages from your site through links, you start to build a name and show that your brand can be trusted to put out high-quality content.

It does what brands have always sought to do – let people know that they can count on quality with your brand.

Brand awareness, in its essence, is simply a way of letting consumers know that your name is linked to whatever you sell. It seeks to set the brand apart from its competitors with its quality and unique characteristics.

When you put it into an SEO perspective it will increase the number of navigational searches to your website, and that is a direct ranking factor.

Also, if your brand is more well known it is more likely that people click on your pages on SERPs. Sometimes we don’t click on the first result because we know and trust a brand that is ranking lower.

SEO Metrics

Content quality and answering the searcher intent are two of the most important ranking factors (alongside backlinks).

And there are some metrics that help us check how your audience is reacting to your content:

• Time on page.
• Bounce rate.
• Pages per visit.

Using interactive content helps you improve all three of these metrics. We’ll show you how:

Time on Page

Can you imagine having a 1,000-word article that people only spend an average of 10 seconds on? That tells a lot about a content’s quality.

Interactive experiences are engaging and offer a unique experience for the user.

By interacting with your pages people will spend more time at your site and will send better signals of your content quality to yourself, and also the search engines.

Bounce Rate

Another quality sign is shown when people leave your site without clicking anywhere.

Interactive experiences are almost a guarantee that people will engage with your site by clicking or typing or doing any other interaction required for the whole experience to be complete.

Pages Per Visit

The pages per visit can also be affected, as the user may like the page enough to check out more pages of your site.

If these three metrics are positive, it means that the audience is having a positive experience while visiting your site.

And as they do so, they may decide to link to your pages and further spread your links for even better SEO.

Wrap Up: Transforming Your SEO Strategy with Interactive Content

No matter what kind of site you have, you will want lots of people to visit it and for them to stay long enough interested in your content. It’s also best that they link to your site and perhaps come back to it again.

All of these goals can be assisted by interactive content.

This type of content grabs people’s interest, and it gets them interacting and staying longer. It’s also the perfect link bait.

If you need to build your brand and get it recognized and sought out, it might be time for getting started with interactive content.

It’s a great way to stand out in a sea of static content, boost your SEO, and keep your brand growing steadily.