We cannot deny the importance of optimization on search engines (SEO) for business success. Investing in your SEO is a very good idea. But, you will only harvest the fruits of this investment if you practice A SEO Intelligent. How can you be sure that what you put in place is effective? In measuring success of your initiatives. Among the more than 200 factors Taken into account by Google during the classification of a website, there is The Dwell Time. In this article, we will explain this to you What is the Dwell Timewhy is it important for your SEO and How to optimize it.

What is the Dwell Time?

The Dwell Time is simply time that a person spends watching a web page after clicking on a search result. This is the short time when you assess the web page on which you have just click. Either she instantly provided you with the answer you want, or it was a failure and you immediately clicked on the return button.

The value of this measurement for a search engine should be obvious – the more you go from time to consume content of a page on which you clicked, The more probability that this page meets your needs is high. The opposite is also true: the less time you spend on this page, the less likely you are satisfied.

This measure “strengths” webmasters to focus on improvement to bring Increase the immediate interest of users.

But, Dwell Time is also a metric used on social networks. For example, LinkedIn algorithm takes into account The Dwell Time on each publications. More people go from time On a publication The more algorithm understands that this content is relevant to them.

Given that The Dwell Time does not appear Not in Google Analyticsyou are probably wondering how to measure this factor. Unfortunately there is no formula of Calculation of the Dwell Time. However, it is possible to calculate this metric using ” Average duration of the session ”in Google Analytics. This is the average time spent on your site after a user landed on one of your pages. Here's how to access it, step by step:

  • Connect to your Google Analytics account
  • Click on “behavior”.
  • Click on “Site content”.
  • Click on “Destination pages”.
  • Create a “new segment” and specify that you only want to display “organic traffic”.
  • You will then see the indicator “AVG.” Average duration of the session ”.

A weak dwell time indicates that when a user Performs a search on Google And then click on your site, it is disappointed with what he finds there – for one reason or another, that does not correspond to what he was looking for or does not provide him with the complete answer he needed. There are many options to counter this problem.

Make sure your introduction corresponds to the reader's intention

To start, here is A tip that works Both for the pages of a website only for a publication on social networks.

First of all, Examine the introduction of your article. Is it easy to read and does it give an overview of what the reader will find in the rest of the page? Better yet, she helps the reader to quickly find what he is looking foreither through a table of contents, or using short paragraphs and flea lists to make the content more digestible?

User experience Maybe a Major element of the low visit timein particular at the top of the page, because readers who are not immediately captivated by the introduction will tend to leave the site very quickly.

To help you, do not hesitate to look and take an example On the best classified articles in search results to better understand what works.

Take a concrete example: you find thate the dwell time of your article “How to delete a theme in WordPress” is weak. When you click on the article, you find that the introduction focuses on the reasons why WordPress could be a good web hosting solution, as well as the statistics that support this assertion.

Problem: readers who have just sought “How can I delete my WordPress theme?” Probably already have an account and do not need to be convinced of the forces of the tool – they just need to delete a theme. If your article does not fly to readers from the start, this could be an important factor in the low Dwell Time.

Make sure the page is taking care of it quickly

A loading time slow is a major obstacle to a high dwell time – If your page takes too long to take care, readers will not stay long on site. In addition, once readers scroll through your page, if they find that the images do not take care of properly or that the experience is low qualitative, they can choose to abandon the page.

It is therefore essential to have a “clean” page and to follow the best referencing practices to obtain a quick loading time (in particular by compressing your images and by putting your web pages) in order to increase the time of visit to your site.

Have good internal links

Globally, The Dwell Time is the time that someone spends on a page before returning to search results. For keep These Internet users On your site even longer, do not hesitate to Include internal links to your other blog articles or destination pages. Here, the important thing is to ensure that your links are relevant to the subject addressed.

For example, if your article talks about Good practices on social networksthe internal link should refer to other articles which concern Instagram or YouTube for example, and not on the development of a website.

Integrate multimedia elements

Many readers can get bored to read too much textthen plan to break the monotony by integrating videos, podcasts, images and other multimedia elements to maintain the interest of your readers.

In addition to improving The Dwell Timethe integration of these elements on your page May increase traffic to other types of content of your brand. For example, the integration of a YouTube video in your blog (if it is relevant) can increase the number of visits to your YouTube channel.

A web project? Let's talk about it! Free audit