How to maximize the positive impact of web push notifications on SEO

Only 5.7% of pages will rank in the TOP 10 search results within a year of publication, so SEO (search engine optimization) specialists need to work hard on moving web pages into TOP of search engines. And, it's crucial to build the right SEO strategy and select marketing channels that help your website ace SEO metrics. Here we review how push notifications affect SEO and how to maximize the impact of web push notifications on SEO.

Web push notifications basics

To make the most out of tactics, you need to know how push notifications work, so first, we'll go over the process from the beginning to the end.

• Installation. The easiest way to get push notifications for your website is by using a push notification service. You can use services' WordPress plugins and integrations for different CMSs. Or add a code generated by service to your website manually. The web push implementation is straightforward and typically takes up to fifteen minutes.
• Opt-in. Your visitors will see a permission request after you add push notifications to your website. They can allow sending notifications or deny the request in two clicks. This helps collect a subscriber base of users interested in your content very fast.

(Source: gravitec.net)

• Subscribers. Once you have subscribers in your base, you can send them notifications such as news and product updates and everything you want them to inform. To fit subscribers' interest, the best practice is to use the segmentation feature and group subscribers based on their behavior, device, browser, and country.

Mobile and desktop. Browsers web push notifications will reach mobile and desktop devices within the most popular browsers. They pop up when the recipient's browser is active.

• Opt-out. Subscribers can opt out from push notifications at any moment, either through push notification settings or in the browser settings.

So, web push notifications are a powerful tool for communicating with a website audience, and the best part is that they can help improve your SEO.

What metrics are the most important for SEO

Plenty of tactics can be effective in making your website visible for search engines and improving its SEO. Among such tactics are using keywords in your articles as a heart of on-site SEO and getting backlinks as a core of off-site SEO. Also, you need to optimize your website for mobile devices as Google has moved to mobile-first indexing. Check out the TOP SEO ranking factors. But, after you start getting your organic traffic, you need to pay attention to users' behavior as this is another set of important SEO metrics. We'll review four behavioral metrics that you can find in Google Analytics.

• Page views
• Time on site
• Bounce rate
• Returning visitors

These metrics signal your website's credibility to Internet users, and as a result, they signal search engines how to rank your website. So, we'll explore these metrics in more detail and the connection between web push notifications and SEO.

What is the impact of web push notifications on SEO

Web push notifications are considered a helpful and user-friendly tool by Google as they support it for Chrome. However, Chrome has a Quieter Permission UI to protect users of abusive websites that misuse push notifications.

(Source: blog.chromium.org)

So, to not get a ban on your notifications, you should follow Google recommendations such as delaying your permission prompt for visitors.

Before we start with metrics, it is to say that push notifications help index your new web pages faster. Once you publish your new content, you can automatically send a web push notification to your subscribers and immediately get visits. It can be done with the RSS to Push automation - a common feature for push services.

Now, let's dig deeper into metrics and how web pushes help improve them.

Page Views

Page views show how often users visit a particular page. With its help, you can learn which of your pages are the most popular. Page views is an engagement metric, along with pages per session and time spent on a page. They signal search engines whether your content is helpful for Internet users.

How push notifications impact page views

Web pushes help increase the number of page views. Whenever you send notifications, you'll see statistics on clicks in your push notifications service that will be reflected in Google Analytics as the number of users for a campaign and the number of page views. An average click-through rate for push notifications is up to 5% for standard campaigns and up to 30% for targeted and transactional notifications. So, if you send a campaign to 10,000 subscribers, roughly 500 of them will visit your web page. Check out a case study on how a media website attracted 300,000 visitors per month with push notifications.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate indicates how many people leave your website after viewing a single page. The average bounce rate for websites in the top three search results is roughly 49%. So, if you want to compete for the highest positions, you need to make it easy to navigate on your website and create relevant and engaging content.

How push notifications impact bounce rate

Push subscribers are your loyal website users; otherwise, they would unsubscribe from your notifications. So, they are familiar with your website, and chances are their interest positively impacts bounce rates. To illustrate this, here is a the case study of Koovs online store that decreased its bounce rate by 12% by using push notifications.

Time on Site

Time on site is how long people spend on your website after they open it. The more time users spend on a website, the better it will be ranked. For search engines, it indicates whether a user found what they have been looking for. To improve time on site, add relevant keywords to your content.

How push notifications impact time on site

The Oncrawl research shows that time on site for push notifications is three times higher than for social media. If your web push title and description are concise with your page content, and you target a push campaign to the right audience by segmenting subscribers, push subscribers are likely to spend more time on your site than an average visitor.

Returning visitors

Website owners struggle to attract new visitors. However, returning visitors are your potential customers who increase conversions. For search engines, returning visitors metrics indicate your site's credibility and that it has value for users.

How push notifications impact returning visitors

Returning visitors and repeat visits are perhaps the most important metrics for push notifications. They increase returning visitors rates. For blogs and news websites, push notifications are usually the primary source of repeat traffic. This way, web pushes help to improve readership and increase ad revenue for media websites. At the same time, web pushes help websites grow in the eyes of search engines as repeat visits are what web pushes make the best.

Best push notifications practices to improve SEO

• Use automatic notifications to inform your subscribers of your new posts immediately. This way, you'll be as fast as lightning in delivering breaking news to your readers and will be ahead in better indexing and getting into search engines quicker.

• Customize your permission prompt and set the delay time so that your website visitors are ready to subscribe and make the user experience smooth.

• Make your web push notifications content inline with the page content where you target your subscribers. Otherwise, instead of good, you would harm your SEO. For example, if you promote a sale but direct your subscribers to a product page with your standard prices, this will result in a bounce.

• Use segmentation to fit your subscribers' needs. You can create subscriber groups based on the pages that they visit. This way, you would know which categories of your website are the most relevant to a specific subscriber group. Additionally, you can use filters by location, device, and browser to better target your content. If your content is sent to the right audience, this will lead to longer time spent on a page and lower bounce rates.

• Choose the optimal frequency to send notifications. Keep the balance between being annoying and too shy. This will result in higher engagement and CTR, so you'll get more page views and increase returning visitors.

• Set the right time to send web push notifications so that they reach out to your subscribers when they are more likely to explore your content and not get annoyed.

Are there any drawbacks of using push notifications for SEO?

Some push notifications services might slightly slow down website speed as any WordPress plugin or script. However, their influence is insignificant.

So, web push notifications can't do any harm to your SEO and website performance. However, you need to care about your subscribers' convenience and consider their interests to create a great user experience. This way, web pushes will improve engagement metrics that affect search engines' decisions on ranking your website.

Wrapping Up

If used properly, push notifications are a helpful tool to re-engage website visitors and improve SEO.

To sum up, here is a list of SEO metrics and push notifications practices to improve them.

1. You can Index your web pages as fast as you publish them by using push notifications automations.
2. Push notifications increase the number of page views. The average web push CTR is up to 5% for standard campaigns sent to all subscribers.
3. If your web pushes content relevant to your subscribers' interest, they will increase time on site, which is the second ranking factor by importance.
4. You can decrease your website bounce rate by sending web push notifications to your loyal audience.
5. The increase in your repeat visits, which can definitely be done with push notifications, will make your website more credible in the eyes of search engines.

To get the best results from your web push campaigns, apply best practices such as segmenting your subscribers, setting the right time and frequency to send notifications, and customizing your permission prompt.