A website is an integral part of every online business. Several critical factors are involved in keeping it top-notch to achieve the company’s objectives. Website dwell time is one factor that acts as an important yardstick for measuring a website’s success.
You will find a thousand blogs giving you ideas on boosting your website dwell time but going through so much content is not worth it. We have included only the essential steps through which you can achieve the reason why you are reading this blog.
Let’s get started!
What Is Dwell Time? (History Of Dwell Time)
This dates back to 2011 when Duane Forrester used the term “dwell time” in one of his blogs for the first time. “When a visitor visits your page, your aim should be that the website content answers all of their questions, encouraging their next action to remain with you,” he wrote.
They will leave if your content does not entice them to stay. Search engines can detect this by monitoring dwell time.”
He stated that your website should provide users with high-quality content that encourages them to return. If the website’s content is poor, users will leave quickly, which search engines can exploit.
Dwell time is the time span between when a user clicks on a search result and when they return back to the search engine results pages (SERPs). It measures a user’s dwell time which is how long they spend on a page, starting and ending with the SERPs.
You can most likely understand “dwell time” as you’ve done this before. It’s the brief moment when you evaluate the website you just visited.
It either gave you the answer you were looking for right away, or it was such an apparent failure that you hit the back button immediately.
How Is Dwell Time Calculated?
You can calculate dwell time in Google Analytics by looking at “Average Session Duration,” which gives you info of the time period for which visitors stay on a website on average. It is calculated by dividing the total duration of all sessions, or visits, in seconds, by the total number of sessions.
When a user visits a specific website, an event occurs in the form of a session. When this session begins it then expires after 30 minutes of inactivity or when the user exits. The inactivity cut-off exists to ensure that you receive an accurate report of your metrics without false inflation.
This metric is already calculated for you in Google Analytics and is displayed in minutes and seconds. One can look for it in two places: first, you’ll see it when you log into your Google Analytics account.
This metric is already calculated for you in Google Analytics and is displayed in minutes and seconds.
One can find it in two places: To begin, when you log into your Google Analytics account, the homepage will display “Average Session Duration,” which indicates the average dwell time on any of the accounts you’re tracking.
To find out “Average Session Duration” for individual landing pages or blog posts, click “Behavior” on the left side of the screen, followed by “Site Content”> “Landing Pages”:
What Is The Difference Between Dwell Time And Bounce Rate?
A website dwell time is the average time a website visitor spends on your website. In contrast, a bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who visited but left immediately.
These factors now play a significant role in measuring a website’s performance for a website owner. When you give your website visitors something exciting and worth their time, they will stay longer to explore the content.
They will leave quickly if they believe the website is taking too long to load and the content is not unique. Sometimes, without even fully exploring the website.
One method is to increase your website’s dwell time by including engaging elements. As a result, the bounce rate will eventually come down.
Ideas To Boost Website Dwell Time
A. Content
1. Create Excellent, Helpful Content
Dwell-worthy content comes in a variety of forms. Giving your website visitors a reason to stay on your site is critical.
You can, for example, post educational content on your websites, such as the latest news, trending topics, and academic or how-to blogs, to encourage your website visitors to stop and learn something new.
Including an RSS Feed to your website is an excellent strategy because it compiles your most recent content in one place. Choose topics related to your website so that your website visitors can connect.
2. Match Search Intent To Increase Dwell Time
It would help if you initially spent some time understanding search intent before you start producing content.
The purpose behind a user entering a particular search query is known as search intent. For example, if someone searches for “Best Backlink Trackers,” they want to find the best link analysis tool and intend to purchase it.
Google prioritizes resolving consumer issues and values the user experience. Therefore, pages that provide highly relevant information to the search phrase and user intent are likely to be ranked highly by the search engine.
Determine the user intent behind your target audience’s most popular search phrases if you want to rank higher.
3. Video Content Is A Must!
Including responsive and engaging video content on your website can significantly increase website engagement. 98% of all marketers believe that video will play a vital role in marketing in 2022.
Videos are typically 30 seconds to 1 minute in length. So when you add an engaging video to your website, your visitors naturally draw in and spend more time on your website.
Check that the tool you use to embed videos on your website allows you to include responsive video feeds. So, regardless of whether your website visitor is using a smartphone or a mobile device, they can easily watch the videos on your website while on the go.
B. Design
1. Have A Clean Web Page Design
Having a clean web page design is one of the most critical steps in carrying your crusade of boosting website dwell time. It is a known fact that aesthetically appealing websites attract customers. Still, customers will value a useful and easy-to-navigate website more.
Make sure you are creating a web page design that would make customers’ task of navigating through your website more accessible. Just with this thinking, you will step ahead of your competitors.
2. Embed a Social Media Wall
We’ve all spent hours scrolling through the feed or the Reels on social media platforms. As a website owner, this presents a fantastic opportunity to profit.
A social media wall is a simple tool that allows website owners to gather their favorite social media content, curate it, and display it on their site.
Social wall tools provide a no-code process, so you don’t have to be a coder to use them. In addition, the tool is responsive, which is the best part.
So, regardless of whether your website visitors are using smartphones, tablets, or PCs, they can enjoy the social wall experience on your website.
3. Offer A Unique Multimedia Experience
Consider breaking up the page with embedded videos, podcasts, images, and other multimedia elements to keep your readers engaged.
In addition to increasing dwell time, embedding these elements on your page may drive traffic to your brand’s other types of content.
For example, embedding a YouTube video on your blog post will increase views on the channel. On the other hand, adding a YouTube link to your podcast episode could increase the number of listeners.
4. Showcase User-generated Content
User-generated content is created by people on social media platforms using a brand’s hashtag. For example, it could be a fan, follower, or an experienced customer who has shared a social media post such as an image, video, or tweet or left a review on your review pages such as Yelp, Google Business Profile, or Facebook reviews.
According to various surveys, millennials trust user-generated content (UGC) 90% more than brand-generated content.
It is standard for a brand’s website to mix branded and user-generated content. However, making your audience brand advocates is critical to developing a positive brand image.
It immediately establishes trust and demonstrates that spending time on your website will be worthwhile. Not only that, but your visitors will be more likely to return to engage with your content in the future.
C .Technical
1. Remove Intrusive Pop-Ups And Ads
There is absolutely nothing wrong with placing a bit of advertisements on your site, whether it’s branded callouts or banner ads for affiliates. Still, there comes the point where it becomes an issue.
Flashy advertising and repetitive pop-up ads can be irritating, especially to repeat visitors, and can harm your brand’s reputation.
Make sure to include advertising on your site elegantly.
2. Be Strategic With Internal Links
As discussed above, dwell time is the amount of time a user spends on a page before returning to the SERPs. Including internal links to your content and landing pages is a great way to keep them on your website for a longer period of time.
Follow brilliant link-building practices to build the infrastructure for SERPs. The key is to make sure your links are pertinent to the topic at hand.
3. Improve Page Speed
No matter how much customer engagement you garner on your website, your website’s speed and loading time are critical if you don’t want your visitors to become distracted and leave.
More than half of all visitors abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to load.
Select responsive and easy-to-use widgets and tools for your website. Numerous tools available on the market can assist you in increasing the speed of your website and automatically distinguishing yourself from your competitors.
4. Optimize For Mobile
Since mobiles account for more than half of all global traffic, you must provide a mobile-first experience on your website.
This goes without saying, but your website must be mobile-friendly.
You will lose many users if your website is challenging to use on a smartphone or tablet.
Furthermore, Google penalizes non-mobile-optimized sites so that you may experience lower initial traffic.
5. Make User-Friendly Pages
Naturally, most people will visit your home page first, and the design and performance of this page will significantly impact the overall experience.
Because the home page design creates the first impression of your site, any design improvements to that single page can significantly impact conversion rates and time spent on the site.
6. Use Social Share Plugins
People’s social media dwell time is high, and to boost the dwell time of your website, you must tap on this social media swell time. Using social share plugins is a brilliant way to increase your website across multiple social media platforms.
Suppose people are coming to your website to read your content. In that case, you should provide them with an option to share that piece of content with their friends and community through social media.
You can add social media share plugins to your website so that people can log in to share their content with their social media friends.
7. Create Better User Experience
One of the fundamental principles of ensuring high dwell time is user experience. Therefore, even if you create excellent content on a fast-loading page with a poor user experience, it will not translate into improved dwell time performance.
Longer content can be divided into smaller chunks, and visuals, images, and navigation buttons can be placed throughout the page.
Wherever possible, provide internal links that explain technical terms. For longer content forms, use appropriate fonts, leave enough white space, and make things as simple as possible for your users.
8. Good Pagination Design
When visitors land on your site, the first and foremost thing they will notice is the design.
They will form an immediate impression of your brand and website, consciously or subconsciously, and decide where to go.
Make sure your design is visually appealing but minimalistic, with plenty of white space, so users can sense your brand and feel welcomed on your site.
Benefits Of High Dwell Time
1. Impact On The Rankings
Google has made no official statement regarding dwell time as a metric for search engine ranking. However, it is widely assumed that it does play a role in Google’s result page.
We know that Google crawlers promote a website people visit and spend time on. So, if we follow this theory, it is evident that high dwell time would improve your Google ranking.
2. Higher Chances of Sales
If your website’s dwell time is good, people will spend a reasonable amount of time on your website. This would provide you with a chance to improve your sales.
You can grab your potential customer’s attention by designing the page so they can get a glimpse of what you have to offer. This way, your odds of making a sale are much more significant.
3. Increase Session Duration
Linking relevant blogs and content is essential in making a website worth staying on for a long time. A boosted session duration and enhanced dwell time are interconnected.
Since you have a brilliant interlinked website, people will get relevant suggestions around a blog they are reading on your website. This way, your visitors will enjoy their presented content, resulting in a high session duration.
4. Build Trust Among Users
User trust building and high google ranking is somewhat connected. We discussed that there is a high probability that high dwell time makes a website rank higher on Google.
Now there is a human tendency to trust those websites that rank higher on Google search pages.
However, this is not the first step. To increase dwell time, you must follow other actions such as creating brilliant content, designing a creative page, etc.
If your content and page are good, people would like to visit your website, again and again, resulting in trust-building.
5. Increase Brand Awareness
Every benefit goes through high visitor engagement and increases brand awareness.
Assuming that your website has all the above elements, people would naturally be attracted to your brand.
Now since they would be impressed with your website, they would spend more time on your website before going back to the Google search page.
This would create a window of opportunity for your brand to educate the visitors about your brand through content and multiple other ways.
6. Open New Earning Opportunities
Another benefit of boosting dwell time would be new earning opportunities. If your website’s dwell time is high, people will not rush back to the Google search page.
This gives you a chance to provide them with brilliant offers, discounts, and vouchers to boost your sales and revenue.
If you are working at something new and looking to attract customers, its chances of success increase with high dwell time.
Conclusion
Boosting dwell time is a significant task for all website owners. Every brand or business wants to ensure that visitors are spending more and more on their website before going back to Google’s search engine.
As a business owner, if you find it tough to boost your website’s dwell time, this blog will help you out with all the necessary information. This blog is a step-to-step guide to boosting website dwell time as we have covered all the areas, so you don’t have to look anywhere else.
Frequently Asked Questions –
What Is A Good Dwell Time?
The industry standard for average dwell time is between 2-4 minutes. Therefore, exploring a website and getting a sense of its design usually takes time.
Does Dwell Time Help To Rank Higher?
Google has not officially stated it. But various studies have suggested that if people spend more time on your website before going back to the Google search page, you are surely going higher on Google search rankings.
Difference Between Dwell Time And Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate (also known as CTR) is the percentage of searchers that click on a search engine result.
Dwell time is when a person looks at a web page after clicking a link on a SERP.
Is Longer Dwell Time Better?
Yes. Longer dwell time is better for a website as it provides opportunities to improve sales and revenue by converting visitors into customers.
Does Video Increase Dwell Time?
Yes. Videos and photos capture customers’ attention more effectively than texts. That is why the more video content on a website, the better its dwell time.
Does Dwell Time Affect SEO?
Yes, it is one of the SEO factors. It provides direct signals to search engines that your blog is really engaging on a particular topic and it helps you get a higher ranking.
Prakash Rawat is a Digital Marketing Specialist. He loves to explore new ideas and implement them into marketing efforts. For the past two years, he has been specializing in SEO & Marketing Strategies at Taggbox (Best UGC Platform).