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Dwell Time

Dwell Time: What Is It and How To Improve It

You’ve written great content, but isn’t ranking well?

The reason could be dwell time.

Writing good stuff is one thing, but presenting it in a way that keeps people sticking around and going through all your content is another. This is where dwell time becomes important.

You may have written the best content ever or have really interesting information, but if it needs to be more fascinating for Google and other search engines, they won’t rank your page highly.

Let’s understand this important factor that can make or break your content marketing and SEO efforts.

Just to remind you how important dwell time is, if you’re not paying attention to dwell time, you’re missing out big time. So let’s learn what it is and how to improve it to take your content game to the next level!

What is Dwell Time?

Dwell time is the time spent by a visitor on your site after coming from a search engine results page (SERP). When users see your link on the SERP and click on it, the dwell time starts counting. It ends when the same visitor goes back to the SERP.

For example, if someone searches for “best running shoes” on Google, sees your site’s listing, clicks on it, and spends 3 minutes reading your page before hitting the back button to the search results, their dwell time on your site is 3 minutes.

This metric is very different from time on site, where the user comes directly to your website, spends some time on a page, and may close the window or navigate to other pages on your site. Time on site doesn’t consider the visitor’s origin.

Dwell Time:

  • Tracks visit duration from a search engine
  • Resets when the user goes back to search results
  • Indicates relevance/quality of content for searched query
  • Not a direct ranking factor for search engines

Time on Site:

  • Tracks total duration on your website
  • Continues across different pages until exit
  • Indicates engagement with your overall site content
  • Not a direct ranking factor

Did you notice that it isn’t a direct ranking factor?

So why are we even bothered to talk about it?

While dwell time itself is not an official ranking factor used by search engines, it acts as a strong signal for user experience and the relevance of the content.

Search engines like Google want to provide the best possible results to satisfy a user’s search intent. Their goal is to rank pages that truly answer what the user is looking for.

This is where the pain point for search engines comes in. They have to continuously evaluate which pages most thoroughly satisfy the user’s intent behind their query. Dwell time provides them with valuable user behavior data to make this assessment.

If a page has a low dwell time, meaning users quickly bounce back to the search results, it indicates to search engines that the content did not meet the user’s needs. On the flip side, higher dwell times signal that the page comprehensively addressed what the user was searching for.

This metric is closely analyzed by search algorithms as a critical piece of the relevance puzzle. Pages with higher dwell times are more likely to be prioritized in rankings because search engines interpret that behavior as the content being high-quality and highly relevant to the query.

6 Ways to Improve Your Dwell Time

Now that we know how important it is to keep your dwell time high. We will list out some important points you can consider to improve your dwell time and therefore increase your keyword rankings.

1. Know In & Outs of Your Audience

You may think you know your audience, but truly understanding their pain points, needs, and motivations is crucial for improving dwell time. It’s not enough to just define broad demographics but rather you need an intimate knowledge of what makes them tick.

People don’t come to your site to be dazzled by fancy words or learn about your company’s history. They’re looking for solutions to their problems and answers to their questions.

Understanding your audience’s struggles, fears, and desires, you can create content that speaks directly to them.

Craft your messaging and content flow in a way that lets your audience know you “get” them. Use their language, anything else is just unacceptable. Highlight the benefits and outcomes they care about most. When readers feel you comprehend their situation and can guide them through it, they’ll be hooked.

Go a step beyond basic audience personas. Do user testing, surveys, social listening – anything to uncover those deeper insights. The more you empathize with and understand your audience’s reality, the better you can engage them from the moment they land on your page.

Mediocre content is a dime a dozen. But content that makes your audience feel truly seen and understood? That’s what keeps them glued to your site, driving up dwell times and signaling to search engines that you’re delivering insane value.

2. Write Longer Content

Pillar, in-depth articles have been shown to rank better in search engines and can keep people engaged for a longer time.

A study by serpIQ found that the average top-ranking piece of content was over 2000 words:

Average Content Length

Longer content pieces allow you to comprehensively cover a topic from multiple angles and go in-depth on addressing your audience’s questions and concerns. The more thorough your content is, the more value it provides readers.

However, it’s not just about hitting an arbitrary word count. The key is ensuring your longer-form content is well-structured, easy to scan and digest, and packed with substantive insights, examples, data, and actionable tips. Break it up with descriptive subheadings, bullet points, visuals, and anything else that enhances readability.

When done right, in-depth pillar content will keep users engaged and consuming information piece-by-piece without feeling the need to go back to the search results. Their interest and attention will be held as they map their journey through your exhaustive material.

The longer you can keep providing value, the higher your dwell times will be. And search engines will take notice of those impressive numbers as a signal that your content is a comprehensive resource deserving of top rankings.

3. Use Internal Linking Wisely

Internal linking is an often overlooked but powerful tactic for improving dwell time. By strategically linking to other relevant content on your site, you create a smooth content journey that keeps users engaged and consuming more information.

Think about it – when you provide a helpful resource that piques someone’s interest in a subtopic, including well-placed internal links allows them to easily dive deeper into that subject without interruption. With each click, their session time extends as they continue satisfying their curiosity through your contextual content recommendations.

The key is ensuring your internal links are highly relevant and contextual to what the user is reading about. Random, out-of-place links will likely be ignored or create a disjointed experience leading to bounces. But links that naturally complement and expand on the topic at hand provide a seamless content experience that encourages profitable engagement.

Read More: A Complete Guide For Internal Links For SEO

As Tina Miller points out, optimizing your internal linking strategy is going to boost the “dwell time” of your SEO pages. By cohesively connecting your related content, you remove the impulse to revert to search engines and keep visitors fully engrossed in exploring and consuming your informative resources.

Tina MIllar Points

4. Use Engaging Visuals

Capturing and holding someone’s attention with just text alone is an uphill battle. To keep readers glued to your content, you need to make it visually enticing.

Incorporate multimedia elements like infographics, videos, and relevant imagery throughout your pages. Huge walls of uninterrupted text tend to overwhelm people and make them disengage.

Break up your content into digestible chunks using short paragraphs and section breaks. Implementing lists and bullet points also helps readers easily scan and consume the information.

Page load time

The easier your content is to consume visually, the more likely readers are to stick around and continue digesting it from start to finish – a win for dwell time metrics that search engines closely watch.

Also Read: Top Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

5. Improving Page Speed

Page speed is one of the many Google ranking factors. A slow-loading website will drive people away.

So, make sure your content loads quickly by optimizing images and using a caching plugin if you are using WordPress. Page speed directly impacts dwell time – even a one-second delay can increase bounce rates.

B2B Websites Page Speed

Source: https://wp-rocket.me/features

Nobody wants to wait around for a sluggish page to load, no matter how great the content is. Slow load times disrupt the user experience and create frustration right off the bat.

That negative first impression often leads to an immediate bounce back to the search results.

On the flip side, lightning-fast load speeds provide a seamless entry into consuming your content. When pages render instantly, users can easily dive right in without interruption. This smooth transition promotes higher engagement and dwell times.

6. Leveraging Video Content

According to a study conducted by Thrive Internet Marketing, 80% of marketers found that video content on their web pages increased dwell time.

Video has become one of the most engaging and consumable forms of content. By strategically incorporating video into your pages, you tap into powerful dwell time benefits.

Videos added throughout text-based content provide a welcomed multimedia break that recaptures wandering attention spans.

Short, engaging videos motivate users to keep digesting your material bit by bit instead of dropping it off. Beyond breaking up text, videos inherently boost dwell time simply because users have to keep watching to extract the full value and context. An informative 3-minute video embeds a reader on your page for at least that duration.

Longer-form video content like tutorials, webinars, or video courses can significantly extend dwell times even further. When providing in-depth, valuable video resources, viewers stick around for the long haul to fully consume and implement what you’re teaching.

Videos also allow you to repurpose and repackage written content in a new, more dynamic format. This provides added value for video learners in your audience.

With billions of hours of video consumed daily, it’s a no-brainer medium for boosting engagement.

Final Word

Regardless of the size of business you are, dwell time is an important metric that you should keep considering throughout.

Not only that, matrices that aren’t directly related to ranking, are however directly related to other metrics and business revenue.

So have you started measuring the time spent on your site by users?

If you haven’t now, it is not that late. Start it today so that you can see the longer effects later.