My user engagement tracking set up

If you’ve subscribed to my disquisitions for any amount of time, you'll know I have a new obsession with user experience (UX). 

Because of the Google Algo Leak, we now know UX is far more important for ranking—especially for smaller sites—than we ever thought before.

During my first nine years in SEO, I didn’t think twice about UX. I focused on keywords and backlinks but never took time to actually review and understand how users were interacting with our websites.

Now, UX is where I spend the bulk of my time, and I truly believe it’s where most SEOs should be focusing.

That said, measuring user engagement and experience is a bit tricky. Not nearly as easy as plugging keywords into Ahrefs and letting it tell you where you rank.

So, today I want to show you my exact setup for measuring user experience and engagement.

And in future newsletters, I’ll share each of my “wins.” 

Understand your users

You need, need, need to understand how your users view your site, whether on desktop, mobile, or tablet.

If I had to guess, I’d say most websites see a ratio like this:

• Mobile: 70%

• Desktop: 25%

• Tablet: 5%

It amazes me how many people don’t view their site on mobile despite this common traffic ratio. We internet marketers sit behind our computers all day but guess what. 

Your users are on their phones.

Go look in Google Analytics or Google Search Console and figure out your specific ratio so you can optimize for that viewport.

As we can see above, one of my websites actually has a more extreme split. 

A whopping 88% of visitors are mobile, with about 11% desktop and 1% on tablet.

Now that you know how people are viewing your site, you want to optimize for that viewport. 

In the beginning of my UX obsession I got hung up because I wanted to make desktop and mobile look sexy. 

But more often than not, the development required to get everything perfectly in place for both viewports was either impossible or far too time-consuming (and expensive).

And, more importantly, just not necessary.

I’m a huge believer in the Pareto Principle, and with this principle in mind, it’s clear we should focus first on mobile and then on desktop.

I’m not saying forget about your desktop visitors but rather put them on the back burner. People surfing the web on desktop have much higher engagement and retention rates than those on mobile, who need a dopamine hit every two seconds because TikTok turned their brains to mush.

Tools to review

Now that we know what viewport to optimize for, I want you to create one report and start using one software.

Google Analytics

In Google Analytics, create a report that allows you to review two specific metrics (h/t Alex Savy for these suggestions):

• Bounce rate

• Average engagement time

These metrics aren’t the be-all and end-all, but look for extremes. If a page has a bounce rate over 90%, make a point to review it in Microsoft Clarity (more on this below) and see why people keep leaving the page.

If the average engagement time for a page is 45 seconds or below, spend 10–20 minutes watching screen recordings and figure out why people aren’t interacting. 

Are you missing something here? Take a look at competitors and see if they’re doing anything better. 

Now, just because a page has a low average engagement time or high bounce rate doesn’t mean it’s bad. 

You’re going to have to use your own judgment based on the keyword and search intent.

For instance, the first line in the screenshot below shows a page with an average engagement time of 22 seconds. 

At first glance you would think this was bad but given the nature of the keyword, it’s not. People have a very specific question, we give it to them at the top of the page, and they peace out.

We solved their problem, and while this results in low average engagement, it also results in 50,000+ visitors each month and hundreds of email captures. 

Microsoft Clarity

Once you have your high-level tracking set up, dive into Microsoft Clarity when you see issues arise (high bounce rates or low engagement time).

Microsoft Clarity is my go-to choice for all things user experience. It’s 100% free, doesn’t slow down your site, and you get access to screen recordings, heat maps, click maps, and much more.

The value is insane for being completely free and this is what enables you to start truly seeing how people are interacting with your content.

I personally set aside 3–5 hours each week to review engagement metrics and screen recordings in Clarity. It’s a bit of a learning curve at first, but with some basic YouTube searches, you’ll get the hang of it.