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Dwell time – what is it?

9 minutes of reading
Dwell time – what is it?
Category SEO

Have you ever been asked about what the dwell time of your website is? A lot of people are confused about what this term is all about. The world of Search Engine Optimization has a lot of use of this basic term and that is why it is quite popular too. When a person enters the term dwell time on the internet, the usual result is about what the verb means and it goes like “live in or at a specified place”. The term has a similar meaning to this when it comes to talking about SEO. The optimizations made to a website are for the website to perform well and attract more traffic. Thus to consider how a website performs, certain parameters are considered. Some of the parameters to get the performance quotient of the website are the click-through rate, conversion, organic traffic, dwell time, bounce rate, etc. Among all these parameters, dwell time meaning is clear, it is the time that a person spends on a webpage after he or she has clicked on the link to the page. This time usually shows whether the average audience is intrigued by the page or not. Thus people need to understand what dwell time is.

Contents:

Dwell time – Definition

If you are a professional in the field of digital marketing or SEO, then you must have heard about this term. Nearly every agency in the market tries to optimize a website in such a way that this parameter is in a good range. When we talk about dwell time we can take the example of what happens when we go on the internet and open a link. A web page either makes us get intrigued about the content or we just get bored of the content and get out of it. Mostly the content of the page decides how much time a new user will spend on the page and thus decide whether or not the website will have a good traffic rate. Thus, dwell time is the time that a new user spends on the page upon clicking the link to it. This time is usually counted in multiples of a second as it is considered the standard measure in the digital marketing industry. Many factors govern this measure and we have been able to collect information about all of them. This is a major parameter in deciding the performance of SEO for a website and this is why it is needed that proper optimizations are made for users to get intrigued by the webpage and thus spend more time on it to understand it. This is why marketing agencies try to make sure that they have a good dwell time in all of their works so that their clients are completely satisfied.

Does Dwell time affect SEO?

When we talk about SEO, we usually take concerns about how the website is performing. There are many parameters on which the performance of SEO depends upon. Bounce rate, conversion, traffic, and dwell time are the most important parameters to tell how successful SEO has been over a website. This is why marketing agencies and clients must consider the time that a new user is spending upon getting on the website for the first time. The time that a new user spends on the website is the time that he or she may be able to make up the mind to take services or buy products from the website. The first time a person lands on a website, one of the most important things is the kind of content that he or she sees on the website. It develops a trust factor in the mind of the user and thus the time spent on the website increases. Thus dwell time affects SEO by being a major factor in deciding if or not the website content is liked by new users. If we take a general study, it is known that the larger the amount of time a person spends on a page, the more satisfaction the user gets from it. Thus to improve customer engagement, the first thing a website owner needs to improve is the time spent by a user upon visiting the website for the first time.

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What is bounce rate in SEO?

Bounce rate and dwell time are often confused to be the same. Although both of these are related to the visit to the website by a new user, there is a proper distinction between both of them. As we went to search about both the parameters on the internet, we were able to find that there are lots of misleading articles that make the readers get confused about both these parameters. Thus we are here with the complete information about both of these parameters and drive away any kind of misconception that you may have formed. Firstly, bounce rate usually refers to the single-time engagements on any of the web pages on your website. It is not usually important that the visits to your web pages are related to search engine result pages. People may even visit your webpage for the first time after being redirected from another website. It is not a factor that decides the organic search result rankings of a website. Thus, a proper definition of bounce rate will be; it is the number of single-page visits or sessions of your website divided by all the visits on your website. Unlike dwell time, it does not tell if the users like the content of the website or not since the bounce can happen due to multiple reasons.

How to increase dwell time?

Firstly, dwell time is not the average amount of time a user spends on your website. It is just the time that a new user spends on your website on the first visit. So, when the parameters related to SEO performance are considered, dwell time is taken to be the parameter related to how much a new user likes the content on the site. Usually, there is not much anyone can do to get this parameter to the highest level. It depends not just upon the content on the site but also on the interest of the user. Sometimes, a user might not be interested in the kind of content posted on your site and thus the visit would be short-lived. But after a lot of research, we were able to find out some things that can be done to improve the first visit time on your website. Thus, here are some of the steps you can take to improve dwell time SEO:

Stop autoplay videos

According to a survey, auto roll videos are a thing in the past now. New users do not usually like the auto-play videos or anything that takes a lot of their time to just understand what the content on the page is about. Instead of putting a video on the website, try making use of animations or GIFs that are short and a good way to make new users get engaged on the website.

Be precise and informative

If a user on your website is unable to find the answers to the questions he or she was looking for, then there is not much time they will spend on the site. You need to be precise and informative with the content you post and it all should be in front of the users and not placed below for the users to scroll down and find out. Any FAQ or important detail about the contents of your brand or website needs to be portrayed in front of the users so they can read it instantly and be intrigued to use the website.

Avoid Pop-Up ads

Most of the new users will not find it appealing to tackle pop-up ads upon their first visit to a website. So, if you want a user to be engaged in your website, then it is better that you find another way to allow advertisements on the website than the pop-up ads.

These are some of the steps you can take to make sure that the dwell time of your website is improved. Often, search engines start to rank the websites with low dwell time at a lower level. This is because the search engine does not want the users to keep going back and forth with the search results and end up being frustrated by the search engine itself. Thus if you keep your website engaging and improve this one parameter, you may be able to get better result rankings.

Is Dwell time a ranking factor for Google?

As we discussed above, many factors decide the search engine result page rankings for a website. Google is the most used search engine and is taken into consideration the most whenever a marketing agency performs optimizations on a website. Dwell time is something that a lot of clients and the marketing agencies themselves are interested in. Since it is the time that a new user spends on the website, it affects the growth of the website on the internet. Apart from just this, it also tells Google, whether or not a website is being liked by a user. Imagine searching for something and not getting the most relatable content in the first few websites in the result. You will surely be irritated by the search results and this is something that Google does not want to happen. Thus it is a fact that Google demotes the websites that do not have a good dwell time because it does not want the users to find the search engine unhelpful. Thus if you want to make sure that your website has higher result page rankings, then you need to improve the dwell time of the website and improve the kind of content that you have posted on the site.

Conclusion

After the above discussion, it is clear that SEO is something that works with the help of many factors. The most important factors to judge the performance of SEO are click-through rate, organic traffic, dwell time, and the conversion rate of the website. Thus keeping this in mind, it can be concluded that if a brand wants to improve the rankings of the website on the internet, then it is important that the website has content that can intrigue new users and make them stay at the site for a considerably longer period. It improves the engagement of the website and even the search engine deems the website fit for a higher rank in the search results. So, if you want your website to have a better chance to be at the top of the SERP ranks, then you need to consider the tips suggested before to get better dwell time and hence get a better engagement of the website.

iCEA Group

As a leading international digital marketing agency established in 2007, we have consistently set the standards for traffic acquisition and conversion. We proudly host Poland's largest technical department, staffed with highly skilled SEO, SEM, and UX specialists with years of experience. Our offer knows no borders! As evidenced by our successful campaigns in not only the Polish market but also in India and the United States. Driven by our dedication and expertise, we empower our clients to achieve online success.

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