Outbrain's Content Discovery and Engagement Report indicates that search and content drive the most engaged traffic to sites. Internet marketers might consider that search engine-optimized content can cover both bases by attracting relevant audiences.
The company examined traffic for more than 100 million internet sessions to discern how online consumers discover content and what happens when they do. Reader engagement was determined by page views per session, bounce rates and similar metrics.
Search engine-derived traffic visited the most pages per session, with page views from these site visitors far exceeding the average. Traffic from content sites also exceeded the average, whereas social media traffic viewed fewer pages per session.
Social traffic had the highest bounce rates, while search traffic and traffic from content sites – again – demonstrated high engagement. Both delivered site visitors with below-average bounce rates.
Content sites took the lead in terms of delivering “hyper-engaged audiences.” Outbrain defined hyper-engaged readers as those who view five or more pages per session.
The study concludes that readers who move “from content to content” are “likely to consume more pages than those referred from other sources. Readers referred from search queries consume slightly more pages than average.”
Internet marketers should take this as a cue to generate search optimized content that will attract relevant audiences to their sites, and they should encourage content-to-content views via an internal linking structure. Engaged content readers could become customers – as Brafton has reported, 61 percent of consumers say they are more likely to make purchases with brands that offer custom content.
