An investigation of the impact of search engine optimization and website performance on online user engagement

With this Master's Thesis, it is aimed to examine the effects of search engine optimization (SEO) performance and website performance on online user engagement. In this context, SEO performance, website performance and online user engagement data of ten higher education institutions in Turkey, which have the highest success ranking in the QS World University Rankings 2022, were analyzed. The analysis of the secondary data obtained by using different online tools was carried out with the multiple linear regression method through the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 program. The research findings show that SEO performance and website performance partially affect online user engagement positively. According to the research findings trust flow, number of referring domains, organic traffic value, time to first byte, and HTTP requests positively affect average time per session whereas the number of top keywords and time to interactive negatively affect the average time spent per session. Second finding indicates that citation flow, organic traffic value, and HTTP requests positively affect the average pages per session whereas first contentful paint negatively affects the average pages per session. Third finding shows that citation flow and number of top keywords negatively affect the bounce rate. The last research finding demonstrates that trust flow, the number of referring domains, the number of top keywords and the organic traffic value positively affect the number of unique visitors and the total number of visits. Since the number of Master's and PhD theses written using secondary data in the Marketing literature in Turkey is quite limited, the current study using secondary data contributes to the Marketing literature in Turkey. In addition, since there is no particular study found in the literature examining the effects of both AMO performance and website performance on online user engagement, the findings of this study contribute to the literature.