In this post, I\u2019ll go over exactly what dwell time is, why you need to pay close attention to it, and how you can improve your dwell time today.<\/p>\n
What In The Heck Is Dwell Time Exactly<\/h2>\n
Basically, dwell time is the length of time a user spends on your site after a click-through from the search engine results page (SERPs).<\/p>\n
Here are the three behaviors<\/a> visitors can replicate after landing on your page from SERP:<\/p>\n Ideally, you want a visitor to stick around as long as possible.<\/p>\n As recent updates have proven, search engines are becoming exceptionally good at returning results that match the user\u2019s exact intent.<\/p>\n This is because they don\u2019t want you to leave and search somewhere else.<\/p>\n In this sense, measuring the dwell time acts as a good filter to determine which pages are valuable for specific keywords.<\/p>\n The longer someone stays on your page, the more Google (probably) likes you.<\/a><\/p>\n Be careful not to confuse dwell time with time on page and bounce rate.<\/p>\n While they are all closely related, each metric measures something very different.<\/p>\n For example, time on page calculates how long visitors stay on a page before going to another page on your site, a third-party website, or even back to SERPs.<\/p>\n The difference here is that it\u2019s not mandatory for visitors to return to SERP.<\/p>\n As long as they leave, the time on page measurement ends.<\/p>\n This data is widely available on tools such as Google Analytics<\/a> and used by marketers to find problematic pages in their funnel.<\/p>\n Bounce rate like its two cousins is used to determine when visitors leave your page.<\/p>\n The key difference here is that it\u2019s limited to single-page sessions only.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter if visitors hang around for a few seconds or hours, as long they stay on one page before leaving to go anywhere else, it counts as a bounce.<\/p>\n Bounce rate is a much-talked about metric in the SEO community.<\/p>\n With bounce data also widely available<\/a>, it\u2019s often the de-facto metric marketers try to fix to improve their SEO.<\/p>\n This all may sound a bit confusing but hear me out.<\/p>\n Dwell time effectively looks at the CTR of each link ranked on SERP and measures its resulting session length and bounce rate<\/p>\n This is a signal to Google as to how valuable that page really is.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there\u2019s no tool yet that will measure dwell time for you.<\/p>\n Since dwell combines data that is easily tracked, you can analyze each individually to estimate your dwell time.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s break each down:<\/p>\n Ask yourself what a session duration really means and the minimum time visitors need to spend on a page before Google considers it to be useful.<\/p>\n Fortunately, a study from Microsoft Research<\/a> conducted a comprehensive review and found that a majority of visitors leave a page within 10 seconds.<\/p>\n If their stay is longer, it\u2019s only because something has caught their eye.<\/p>\n The period between 10-30 seconds is when your site is assessed by visitors for usefulness.<\/p>\n The risk of abandonment at this stage is almost as likely as within the first 10 seconds.<\/p>\n However, if you are able to weather this initial storm and win over visitors, they will stick around for at least a few minutes<\/a> to digest your page.<\/p>\n This makes the 2-minute mark effectively a \u2018safe\u2019 zone.<\/p>\n Since bounce rate analyzes single interactions, it factors heavily into dwell time analysis.<\/p>\n If more and more visitors leave your page after landing on it, your bounce rate will be high and this will negatively impact your dwell time and SEO.<\/p>\n Google will interpret this as a flaw with your page.<\/p>\n Generally, a bounce rate up to to 60% is considered decent for ranking purposes. Take a look at this average spread of bounce rates<\/a> from a few websites.<\/p>\n Most pages have a bounce rate somewhere between 25-60%.<\/p>\n If you want the exact breakdown of what\u2019s considered good and bad, check this out:<\/p>\n By looking at both time on page and bounce rate a little more analytically, you can reasonably estimate your page\u2019s dwell time.<\/p>\n As a rule of thumb, make sure your session duration is at least 2 minutes and your bounce rate less than 60%.<\/p>\n Like I said before, Google has been historically tight-lipped with its algorithm.<\/p>\n Unless they come out and announce dwell time as a ranking factor, spending time and money to optimize for it seems like a gamble.<\/p>\n With that said, there have been hints that dwell time has previously played a role in rankings.<\/p>\n Google experimented with a few features that had dwell time written all over it.<\/p>\n A few years ago, when you typed in a keyword such as \u201ctennis,\u201d<\/em> you were shown an option to block all results from a page you didn\u2019t find helpful.<\/p>\n Another feature Google tested was giving searchers the option to see \u2018more results\u2019 from a certain site or individual directly on SERP.<\/p>\n While these features have long been retired, that doesn\u2019t dwell time is history also.<\/p>\n Since Google and all other search engines are increasingly personalizing results, it\u2019s a safe bet to say that dwell time still probably plays a role in determining rank.<\/p>\n But does that mean you should optimize your site for dwell time?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, that depends.<\/p>\n There are situations in which dwell time can make all the difference and other times where it\u2019ll make little to no difference.<\/p>\n Dwell time is only significant when you\u2019re already ranking well.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re ranked outside the top 10, let\u2019s be honest and admit that you barely receive traffic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s only the first page of results where visitors can really \u2018dwell\u2019 on a page.<\/a><\/p>\n This means that if you\u2019re trying to rank for a keyword, your first job is to first attract traffic to your page. Once you start breaking in the top ~10-15, then you can optimize for dwell time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s at this stage when the difference between being ranked first or second can boil down to dwell time.<\/p>\n Speaking of keywords, not every kind of search requires a high dwell time to signal quality.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at scenarios in which dwell time can\u2019t always be relied on.<\/p>\n If a user is providing an input that is a question such as asking for a phone number, zip code, or a movie release date, a shorter dwell time is desirable.<\/p>\n For example, let\u2019s say I want to find out when the new Game of Thrones season will start.<\/p>\n I type in my query on Google and get the following results:<\/p>\n And let\u2019s see what happens when you click the first link.<\/a><\/p>\n The answer is literally given right at the top.<\/p>\n Most users will probably leave after seeing this within the first 10-15 seconds. Yet, this doesn\u2019t mean the page isn\u2019t useful to the searcher.<\/p>\n This is why it was ranked first (despite a very short dwell time).<\/p>\n Another situation in which dwell time doesn\u2019t work so well is when searchers type very specific queries.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s pretend I heard a small segment from a Q&A with Elon Musk but failed to catch the name of the podcast.<\/p>\n If I want to listen to the entire thing, I\u2019ll turn to Google and type in a few phrases and hope for the best. What I get is a long list of results that might contain what I\u2019m potentially looking for.<\/p>\n Like most people, I\u2019ll sift through each result.<\/p>\n If I land on a page and it\u2019s not what I wanted, I\u2019ll head back almost immediately.<\/p>\n Though there\u2019s probably nothing wrong with each of those results, Google may mark the site down based on your browsing behavior.<\/p>\n Sometimes to determine whether a page really is useful, we have to spend time on it.<\/p>\n If I land on a 5000-word blog post on how to double my revenues from email marketing, I\u2019ll probably first skim the content and read the subheadings.<\/p>\n If they seem promising, I\u2019ll dig in to read (while dwell time increases).<\/p>\n However, after 5-10 minutes of reading, I may realize that the post is bogus and go back frustrated and resume my search.<\/p>\n Google will not know any better.<\/p>\n According to the dwell time measurement, the page I read must have been great and it will continue ranking.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve read up until now, you probably have a well-ranked page or you simply want to be proactive and optimize your site to improve the user experience.<\/p>\n Regardless of the reason, there\u2019s no magic formula to follow here.<\/p>\n You can take a number of steps to improve your dwell time drastically.<\/p>\n Content is the engine that powers your SEO campaign.<\/p>\n Consistently creating high-quality content will translate into higher engagement as visitors stick around to read your stuff.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t always have to spit out epic blog posts either.<\/p>\n You can take the visual route and create infographic and videos. Whatever you choose, just make sure to be relevant, entertaining, and follow good practices.<\/p>\n Just don\u2019t try to deceive users or search engines.<\/p>\n This is an express ticket to enter Google\u2019s bad books.<\/p>\n Brian Dean from Backlinko is a great example to follow. He constantly produces epic content<\/a> that ends up becoming resource pages with exceptional dwell times.<\/p>\n If you give visitors the opportunity to discover related content after they land on your page, you\u2019ll keep them busy and divert attention away from the SERP page.<\/p>\n The longer you can keep that up, the higher your dwell time will be.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter if users land on a page from the SERP page and then click-through to another page on your site and spend all their time there.<\/p>\n As long as they don\u2019t return to the SERP page, your dwell time will keep increasing.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll effectively kill two birds with one stone using internal linking.<\/a><\/p>\n An added benefit is that websites with well-structured internal links are better understood by spiders when it comes to indexing which results in massive SEO juice.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re designing your page, remember to do so with the KISS mantra.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not talking about that hair band you\u2019ve heard your parents talk about but rather a fundamental design principle that advises you to \u201ckeep it simple stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n The belief is that if you present too much at once on your page, you\u2019ll end up distracting visitors and tempt them to leave your page.<\/p>\n This is an actual psychological phenomenon as \u201cinformation overload.\u201d<\/p>\n A page like LingsCars <\/a>is simply going to have an atrocious dwell time.<\/p>\n Not only is it hard to read but there are too many links that can lead visitors away.<\/p>\n To avoid this, try not to use annoying popups, have a clear layout, and always use responsive design on your pages.<\/p>\n This way the purpose of your page is immediately clear to visitors whether they access your page from a desktop or smartphone.<\/p>\n If a visitor lands on your page from SERP, they\u2019re obviously looking to resolve a pain point.<\/p>\n Ideally, they\u2019ll find it on your page. If they don\u2019t, make sure you don\u2019t give them an opportunity go back to SERP to start their search again.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/dwelltime.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/dwelltimegraph.png\")
<\/p>\nWait, Dwell Time Sounds The Same As Time On Page and Bounce Rate<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/timeonsite.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/bouncerate.png\")
<\/p>\nHow You Can Find Your Page\u2019s Dwell Time<\/h2>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/sessionduration.png\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/bouncerategraph.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
When You Should Bother With Dwell Time (And When You Shouldn\u2019t)<\/h2>\n
I – Block All Results<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/dwelltimeblock.png\")
<\/p>\nII – The \u2018More By\u2019 Option<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/dwelltimemoreby.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/trafficserp.png\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/gameofthrones.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/whenitson.png\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/elonmusk.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
The Secrets To Improving Your Dwell Time<\/h2>\n
I – Churn out some exceptional content<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/backlinko.png\")
<\/p>\nII – Utilize internal linking<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/internalinking.png\")
<\/p>\nIII – Follow good web design principles<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/lingscars.png\")
<\/p>\nIV – Provide content recommendations<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/buffer.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ferzy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/pageloadspeedbreakdown.png\")
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