Familiar with dwell time?
It’s a lesser-known metric that MIGHT (probably does – think RankBrain) have a big effect on your SEO.
In this article, I’ll cover what it is, why it’s important, and how you can improve yours.
What We’ll Cover:
- What is it?
- How it differes from bounce rate and time on page
- Is it a ranking factor?
- Factors that may affect it
- How to improve it
- Dwell time FAQs
What is it?
If you have found yourself wondering what is dwell time, today is the day that you learn something new.
It is a concept first introduced in a Bing article back in 2011, which centered around how to build quality content for your site.
The gist of it is this: it is the length of time a visitor spends on a page before returning to the SERPs.
So for example, if I’m researching “SEO best practices,” I’ll type it into the search engine and click on the result that most interest me.
Suppose reading that page took me 7 minutes and 10 seconds, and after I decide to return to the SERPs to gather more information from other sources, so I click back.
It is the time between those two clicks – that 7 minutes and 10 seconds.
As you can imagine, longer times are better for business. The more time a visitor spends on a page, the more likely they are to have read and understood your content. It’s a signal that your content strategy is working and appealing to your intended audience.
How it Differs from Bounce Rate and Time on Page
It is commonly confused with bounce rate and time on site SEO, so let’s do a quick refresher course.
Perhaps the easiest way to think of the relationship is that it is really a combination of these metrics. Moz describes it as:
“Dwell time, in a sense, is an amalgam of bounce rate and time-on-site metrics – it measures how long it takes for someone to return to a SERP after clicking on a result (and it can be measured directly from the search engine’s own data).”
Bounce rate is the number or percentage of users that come to your site without visiting any other pages.
Time on page, on the other hand, refers to the amount of time a visitor spends on a page before navigating anywhere else. This factor can be heavily influenced by time on page SEO.
The big difference is in the second click. It refers, specifically to the time spent on a page before returning to the search results.
And all these metrics are interconnected. For example, if someone’s second click does send them back to the SERPs, or if there is no second click (the user manually enters a URL or closes the window), a page’s bounce rate will increase.
This can clearly present a problem: someone who visits a page for 20 minutes before clicking back to the SERPs still spent quite a bit of time engaging with your content, but Google will still register it as a bounce.
Which is exactly why it can be a more accurate indicator of a page’s relevance to a user, rather than rely solely on bounce rate.
It’s also important to note that it has no actual metric available, while both bounce rate and time on page can be found in Google Analytics.
To get an accurate read, you need to take the other two metrics into consideration. A high time on page and low bounce rate will indicate a high dwell time.
On the flip side, a low time on page and high bounce rate mean your dwell time will suffer as well.
Is It a Ranking Factor?
According to Google, not officially – but do we really believe them anymore?
The platform is tight-lipped regarding anything that directly plays into their algorithm, and there’s evidence to suggest that dwell time SEO does have some effect on search rankings.
Not exactly a ranking factor, but not exactly unimportant, either.
Another sign that it is more important than Google lets on came when Google began offering the option to block all results from a specific URL in the search results.
If Google notices that you’ve had a very short dwell time on a specific domain, they would then offer you the option to block all results from that domain completely.
By removing those results, Google can then deliver on its ultimate goal – a better user experience.
Another indication that Google tracks it came with the inclusion of a “People Also Search” for feature in the SERPs.
It looks like this: when you click on a listing in the Search results and then click back, you’ll see a “People also search for” scrolling feed or list with related content under the original listing you clicked on.
If a user is returning the search results, they must not have found the answer they were looking for. So, to create a better user experience, Google offers a few related searches to help you point you in the right direction.
To be clear, neither of these features indicate that it is, in fact, a ranking factor. But they do suggest that Google monitors it in order to improve the user’s experience.
Factors That May Affect It
Most often, a low dwell time means one thing: visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for on your site.
That said, there are a few other factors that can contribute, you’ll find these are similar to those that affect bounce rate and time on page.
These include:
- Mobile Friendliness – Mobile is now the go-to when it comes to search (it represents 80% of global internet usage). So it makes sense that if a user visits a page from a mobile device and finds that it’s not mobile-friendly, they’ll quickly click back, resulting in a low dwell time.
- Inaccurate Tags & Descriptions – Your title tags and descriptions are intended to accurately represent the content on a given page, but if they’re not doing that, your users will find themselves on pages unrelated to what they searched for.
- Slow Load Time – Here’s a hard pill to swallow: 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Even slow loading images that throw off a reader’s location can be enough to immediately earn a click, so make sure you’re using Google’s PageSpeed Tools to ensure your site loads fast.
How to Improve It
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Create Killer Content for Your Target Audience
Simple as it sounds, the key to improving dwell time is really improving your content.
Truly successful content marketing requires a sound strategy and creativity, and this can only be created and implemented by someone with a good understanding of what good content marketing is.
That’s because good content relies on a researched, proven understanding of what your audience really wants.
You need to know everything you can about your target audience in order to deliver the most relevant content at the optimal times.
To do so, you need to be providing your audience 10x content. The term, coined by Moz’s Rand Fishkin, means that you need to produce content that’s 10 times better than the competition.
That kind of content hits a few of these major points:
- It’s different in scope than what’s already being offered
- It has to create an emotional response
- It solves a problem or answers a question in a comprehensive and accurate way
- It delivers content in a unique way
It’s a tall order, and it’s a practice that takes time to develop. But once you do, it will pay off in everything from higher rankings in Google.
For more on how to produce 10x content, check out our full guide.
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Restructure Your Content
Your content could be great, but if it’s buried in a bad website format, your visitors won’t find it.
Sometimes, improving dwell time is a matter of restructuring your page so that it’s visually appealing and easy to navigate.
For example, if you’re running too many ads on a page, it could signal a spammy site to many users, and they’ll quickly click back to find a site they deem more reputable.
Or, it could have to do with the content itself. We’ve talked before about the importance of including long-form content, but in order for it to be effective, it needs to be structured properly.
Because long-form content is, well, long, it can easily become overwhelming for readers if it’s presented in chunky paragraphs with little to break them up.
Instead, you want to include clear subtitles (with keywords included) to help your readers navigate your page, and let them know that your post contains what they’re looking for.
You may even want to consider including a table of contents at the top of very long articles so your readers can click through to the sections most relevant to them.
While ideally, you want visitors to read everything on the page and maximize dwell time, if your content is good enough, they’ll stay to read more anymore.
Bonus tip: If you have a great piece of content, always look for ways to improve it. Add in more details based on reader feedback, include a video, or update with any new information on the topic.
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Make Sure Your Content Delivers By Targeting the Right Keywords
This goes back to using the optimized title tags and descriptions.
Users won’t stick around if they find they never really wanted to be there to begin with, which is why it’s extremely important to accurately describe your content by choosing the right keywords.
For example, someone looking for a beginner’s guide to linking strategy could be easily overwhelmed by an ultimate guide to earning backlinks, so you have to be very careful of the keywords you choose for your titles and descriptions.
Remember, Google’s goal is to return the very best answers to a user’s search query, and you can only do that by delivering the right content for your audience.
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Increase it by Using Multimedia
The way people consume content is changing.
These days, they don’t want to see long, text-heavy pages. They want to relevant images and videos that help them visualize the information they’re receiving.
Take a look at these stats:
- When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.
- Eye-tracking studies show internet readers pay close attention to information-carrying images (infographics). When the images are relevant, readers spend more time looking at the images than they do reading text on the page.
- 4X as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.
These all go to show that consumers are relying more on more on multimedia like photos, infographics, and videos to deliver need information.
This doesn’t mean you should be using them in place of text content, but rather as a complementary feature.
As a general rule, try to include images in your content every 300 words or so. And if the subject lends itself, create an infographic or short video to include for added visual appeal and reader retention. This will help to increase the dwell time on your website.
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Include Relevant Links Throughout Your Content to Boost Dwell Time
Links are undeniably essential part of successful SEO.
But they’re not just for Google. They’re for your readers.
Relevant links are meant to point readers to additional information that will be helpful to them and answer any secondary questions they may have about the subject at hand.
That means all your links need to pass the common sense test. Does it make sense to include a link to recipe ideas in an article about hosting a great get-together? Yes, it does, so include the link.
Including these links throughout your content will encourage readers to explore more of your website before returning to the SERPs.
FAQs
1. What are some other things I can do to boost it for my site?
There is a multitude of tactics that you can use to help boost your website’s overall dwell time. Here are a few ideas to help get you started:
- Use multimedia content like podcasts, slideshows, infographics, and videos.
- Shorten your URL to a maximum of 50 characters.
- Don’t use stock photos. Get professional photos done.
- Post easy-to-read, understandable content.
- Optimize your titles to be more clickable.
- Compress your images to load faster.
- Add backlinks.
2. Are there any best practices that are recommended for improving dwell time?
Yes. The preview, proof, transition (PPT) Formula is the way to go if you want to increase it.
Let’s breakdown this formula.
- Preview – The first line of content should be a quick preview. This will help the readers decide if they want to continue reading the content you have provided.
- Proof – The second and third lines should give the reader proof that this information will be beneficial to them.
- Transition – This gradually transitions the reader into the next section of your content. If they are still reading, that’s a good thing.
3. Do embedded videos help?
Yes. In fact, embedding a video can help increase your website’s time by up to 260%.
You can use video in the place of text content, or you can embed a video along with text content. Either way, if your visitors watch the entire video, that will boost the metric significantly.
Wrapping Up
It matters.
While it may not be an official ranking signal for Google, it’s something they take into consideration, and you should too.
A high time will give you valuable insight into what content is working for your audience, so do yourself a favor and don’t ignore it.
