6 Ways To Increase Dwell Time on your Website

So you have all your SEO efforts pouring in place. You’ve got an excellent rank on search engines and the traffic is pouring in.

Now what?  

You pour all your effort on content and social media marketing, and SEO.

There’s nothing wrong with this. However, do you also put in the same time and effort once visitors are actually in your site? There’s no point boosting your traffic if users are leaving your page, as soon as they get there.

Not only that it hurts your chances of turning them into potential customers, but it significantly hurts your SEO efforts as well.

What’s Dwell Time, and Why Does it Matter?

In its most basic form, dwell time is defined is the amount of time a user clicks on a result on search, before going back to the results on search engines.

Meaning, it’s the amount of time an average user spends on your site before they go back to look for more on search results.

The longer your dwell time is, the more will users precisely find what they need. Also, having longer dwell times sends signals to search engines that you can be trusted.

Therefore, helping them boost your rankings and placement on search results.

In this post, we’ll talk about ways on how to improve the dwell times in your site.

1. Produce high-quality content

When it comes to improving your site’s dwell time, the content that you provide your audience is the key. Ensure that your content gives something of value to the reader ‒ it must be helpful, informative, and engaging.

As much as you can, avoid writing promotional content. The content that you curate doesn’t have to be dull, and encyclopedia-like.

Keep in entertaining, and compelling so that your audience will be engaged. Utilize photos, infographics, videos, compilations, quizzes and more.

2. Clear and concise navigation

Providing users with an easily navigatable site is essential if you want to capture their interest, which in turn, improves your site’s dwell time.

A site with easy navigation offers the following benefits as well:

• Longer bounce rates and extended duration of the visit- Providing easy navigation for both your desktop and mobile sites keeps people from asking, “Where am I?” The less time that consumers have to dig for the information that they need, the less likely that they’ll be frustrated and bounce away.
• Precise information- Your site’s structure is crucial. When your navigation content is short and on-point, people can easily find what they’re looking for.

3. Use Images and Videos

Even you have high-quality content, a lot of people won’t read it.

But why? Because one, it’s too overwhelming to read. Two, it doesn’t have necessary breaks, it’s harder to maintain their attention. Lastly, they know that there are much better alternatives out there.

Therefore, placing visuals in your blog posts enhances value, captivates your readers, and helps improve your dwell time.

4. Implement Call to Action

A call-to-action is effective if it’s asking your audience to continue to engage and interact with your content after they’ve consumed it.

For example, when you ask people to leave a comment, click on an internal link or subscribe to your email list, it enhances your overall dwell time. People are also more likely fixated on what you have to offer them. Just don’t be too aggressive or pushy, though.

5. Optimize Loading Speed

Here’s the thing, people these days don’t have the patience to wait for a slow-loading site. If it takes more than two seconds to load, they’ll leave.

Your web hosting provider has a significant impact on the speed and consistency of your site load time. Thus, it is important to look for a hosting deal that provides the best uptime and server speed that you can afford.

You can also make small improvements to enhance your site speed. It includes compressing images, utilizing a quality caching plug-in, optimizing your database, and using a lightweight theme on your site.

6. Internal Linking

Using links effectively to other content in your site is an effective way to improve the dwell time of your site. It’s because the internal linking function to guide a reader to other content in your site that is relevant to their interests.

Internal links can also be utilized to tie your content with a specific product or switch a user’s focus to an entirely different aspect of your site.

While it isn’t an excellent idea to fill all your content with hyperlinks, strategically placing a handful of them in your content is a straightforward way of keeping visitors in your site.

Over to You

Many factors affect your site’s rankings, and your site’s dwell time is the most underrated. By following the tips that we’ve mentioned above, it’s entirely possible to come up with content that keeps your visitors engaged. It also helps you maximize your position on rankings.