4 Web Design Tips to Promote Social Interaction

One of the best ways to increase interest in your pages and rank higher in the search engines is to encourage readers to participate in active dialogue by posting comments and responses to your posts. Expert analysts agree that the future of search engine optimization ranking factors will be largely influenced by social engagement on a site and page level. In other words, search engines are beginning to analyze visitor reactions and linking behavior as a reliable way to judge the quality and usefulness of a page. Thus, the best way to increase your rankings and attract more visitors is to encourage social interaction. You can start doing this by heeding the following four web design tips:

Integrate Facebook Commenting

Facebook provides a social platform that drastically simplifies viral marketing by making each user’s online commenting and “liking” actions transparent. You can insert a Facebook comments section on your web pages and people can post responses/comments through their Facebook account. Subsequently, their friends will be notified that they commented on, or liked your page, thereby attracting more visitors. As more people discover your pages through their friends’ Facebook accounts they’ll be more likely to post backlinks to your site on their own personal blog, and they may even return to your site in the future or subscribe to your RSS feed. Also, you can become Facebook friends with the people who comment on your blog, thereby increasing the size of your social network exponentially. Ultimately, this increased attention inevitably leads to higher rankings and a more diversified web presence.

Use Polls and Ask Questions

Asking questions or inserting polls at the end of your posts will encourage readers to participate by responding with their own opinions/comments and this is no doubt one of the most useful web design tips. This is doubly beneficial – it gives your site free, keyword-rich, user-generated content that is highly relevant to the targeted subject matter, and it leaves a memorable impression on visitors. Try to avoid questions that have obvious yes-or-no answers, and if the question has to have a straightforward answer, be sure to ask your readers to elaborate on their choice. If you’re not encouraging your visitors to provide their own input you’re missing out on an important part of creating an authoritative website.

Install Social Widgets

Another great way to get your visitors to propagate and expand your content is to make it easy for them to do so by providing convenient share/bookmark buttons for various social networks. An easy way to do this is to add a social plugin to WordPress (i.e. – AddtoAny or Socialize). These extensions will read your visitors’ cookie files, determine what their most visited social sites are, and then give them easy access to sharing buttons for their favorite social networking sites.

 Develop Content Based on User Recommendations

When visitors feel involved in the development and progression of your blog/site they’re more likely to participate in open discussions and continue to contribute content to your comment sections. Thus, it is a good idea to heed the recommendations of visitors and develop new articles based on their inquiries and requests. For example, if you notice that a large number of visitors are asking a specific question in the comments section, you could create an article to answer it and then link them to it in a response. Not only will this help you keep visitors involved, it will also give you insight into what topics are trending and what information is most wanted in your niche. Aside from examining competitor websites, listening to the wants and needs of your visitor-base is by far the best way to conceptualize new content ideas that will encourage readers to provide more input at a later date.

 

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