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What Is Dwell Time and How to Increase Dwell Time on Your WordPress Site?

Dwell time is often neglected when it comes to your WordPress site’s Search Engine Optimization ( SEO) because people spend more time trying to get people to their site, rather than looking into how they can also keep them there.

Want to know more details? Then let’s continue with what is dwell time, why you should measure it and increase it on your WordPress website.

What Is Dwell Time?

Dwell time indicates the number of time visitors spend on your site. The time between a user clicks on the search result and returns from your website is the dwell time. It is a metric that tells search engines how well you satisfied your visitor’s needs. The longer dwell time indicates a positive user experience and it’s also something search engines take notice of.

• Five seconds may indicate that your content does not provide useful information. 
• A minute or two is good as it can easily indicate the visitor consumed your content. 
• Five minutes or more means your content offers engaging, helpful resources to the visitor.

Why Should You Measure Dwell Time?

Your content may look perfect to you but it is only an assumption, not a fact. Dwell time will give you a clear idea of your content quality. By measuring it you’ll get a real objective view of how effective your content is. It will provide you with better audience analytics which will let you know your audience’s needs. Therefore, you’ll be able to create targeted content and increase dwell time. Subsequently, the increased dwell time will signal to the SERPs that your web pages offer valuable content worth presenting to more individuals. This adds overall ranking optimization and future traffic.

How to Measure Dwell Time?

Before increasing the dwell time, first, you need to have an idea what is the current condition of your site’s dwell time. There is no official way to measure it. The only thing Google offers is time on page and bounce rate. Though dwell time is related to bounce rate and time on the page, it’s not quite either of them but those are useful metrics to approximate dwell time. We are explaining the Time on page, Dwell time, and Bounce rate below as you can approximate the dwell time of your site.

Time on page:  Time on page is how much time a user spends on your page before going anywhere else. They could return to the search engines, another page on your site, a different tab, or a bookmark – anywhere away from that page.

Dwell time: Dwell time is how much time passes after a user clicks through to your site from the search engines before returning to the SERPs.

Bounce rate: The bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site after visiting only one page. It doesn’t matter whether they spent two seconds or an hour there, without a second click both count as a bounce.

To check the Bounce Rate and Time on-page you have to go to Google Analytics.

1. Log into your Google Analytics account
2. Click on Behavior
3. Go to Site Content
4. Then click on All Pages

How to Increase Dwell Time on a WordPress Site?

There are some practices that you can adopt to attract more visitors to your web page. In this section, we’ll discuss those tactics to increase dwell time and improve user experience on the WordPress site. Follow this simple guide on how to improve dwell time:

Optimize the First impression:

The first thing people see on your site has a great influence on whether they will stick around or not. So design your page the way users can easily find what they need. Categorize your content, keep your site design simple and focus on navigability. Your site should be clear with simple backgrounds, plenty of white space as well as clear and easy-to-read fonts. Ensure your site is mobile optimized. Also, popups can be essential in building an email list, they can also be annoying as well. The same goes for ads. Make sure they don’t interfere with the user experience, otherwise, your site will be penalized by Google.

Improve Page Speed:

According to Google, 53% of users abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Without a fast loading speed, you won’t even have a chance to win them over with your amazing content. Pages with longer load times tend to have higher bounce rates and lower dwell times. Consequently, to increase dwell time on your site is to learn how to speed up your WordPress website. Keep load time below five seconds.

Build Internal Link Connection:

Dwell time is not just about the WordPress site page that people land on. It’s also about the total time they spend on your website. Internal link building refers to adding links to your content that lead users to other pages on your website. The best way to build an internal link network is to focus on content production. Do this by creating a variety of posts and articles which are interconnected. This ensures users go from one internal link to another, rather than bounce off your website in search of more valuable content elsewhere.

You should also add external links. However, when you do, make sure to open those links in a new tab. Keep in mind that you should never add an irrelevant link.

Create Quality Content:

The simplest way to ensure that your dwell time will increase soon is, to reevaluate your content strategy and create quality content for your target audience. Follow these tips to improve your content quality:

• People love to read that they connect with. So let your personality shine through your writing. Ask questions, make jokes, and be a little silly. It will help you to connect with your readers on a more personal level.
• Older content is one of the best ways to direct visitors to the back button. There’s nothing more disappointing than clicking through to an article and realizing it’s too old. Normally visitors don’t even want to click on search results older than two years. So keep your content always up to date.
• Long-form content outperforms shorter pieces by a long shot. It only makes sense, as longer posts allow you to dive deeper into a topic and answer more of your readers’ questions. Although it’s more work, it also gets results.
• Readability is about making your site content clear and understandable for search spiders and online users. Use transition words and active voice, keep sentences clear and concise, and write in a conversational and professional tone to make your content more readable.
• Writing and subsequently publishing original content for your audience is essential for success in terms of increased dwell time. Combined with the best paper writing site for editing and formatting, your content will achieve its purpose and engage users far more frequently going forward.

Add Video Content:

Video content is always known for its engaging nature. 54% of users want to see video content from a brand or business, which they are interested. As a video usually lasts at least a minute or two, adding a video on your page will capture your target reader’s attention, keep visitors automatically on the page if they watch the entire video, and compel them to explore other web pages. People like to share videos more so it drives your content to more leads and boosts traffic.

Make Content Engaging:

One of the best ways to keep users on your website is engaging content. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 81 percent of participants agree or strongly agree that interactive content holds page visitors’ attention more. Engagement can be encouraged in various ways such as via calls-to-action, quizzes, native ads, service demos, and other activities. You can also enable comments and discussion on each of your blog posts or product pages to further engage would-be visitors. But don’t just open up the comments and walk away, check in regularly and respond to users. These will not only positively affect your dwell time, but also contribute to your conversion rates and subsequently boost your SEO.

Either Google tracks dwell time or not is a matter of debate. However, no matter whether Google tracks or not, taking measures to increase, can always help you to get better SEO on your WordPress site.

Hope, this article helped you to get a clear idea of dwell time. If you have more queries let us know in the comment section. We appreciate our visitors’ queries and suggestions.

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