Everything You Need to Know About Dwell Time and Its Importance

The significance of SEO in making a business successful is quite evident. According to reports, organic search results continue to be the primary website traffic source across all industries.

Undoubtedly, investing money in search engine optimization is a wise choice, but in order to reap greater rewards, you need to practice smart SEO. But how do you know if you are doing it right or not? The answer is – Metrics! Measuring the success of your SEO strategy will help you know areas where you are performing well and areas that need improvement, and then you can tweak your efforts as required.

Having said that, Google considers more than 200 ranking factors, and finding out which ones matter can be a hard nut to crack. Dwell time is a metric that you must examine when analyzing your SEO strategy.

In this blog, we will discuss what dwell time is, why it matters, and how you can measure it.

What Is Dwell Time?

Dwell Time is the amount of time that a user spends on a particular web page from the moment he/she clicked on its link on the SERP to the moment they go back to the search results – the total length of time they stay put on a webpage starting and stopping with the search engine result pages. And this is what makes it different from ‘time on page’ and ‘bounce rate.’

For example, suppose you perform a Google search for “Indian restaurants in Vancouver, Canada.” You click on the first organic search result (not an ad) on the SERP. You look through the web page that opens, browse the menu, go through the restaurant’s photos, check the price list, and then go back to the SERP after spending 2 minutes 15 seconds on the web page. This is the dwell time for the web page you just visited.

What Is the Difference Between Dwell Time, Bounce Rate, and Time on Page

When talking about dwell time, it is necessary to discuss how it is different from the bounce rate and time on page. Let’s understand them in the simplest terms:

• Dwell Time – The main difference is that dwell time begins and ends with the search results.
• Time on page – This metric tells the amount of time a user spends on your web page before they navigate to another place. Now, this other place can be anywhere. The user might visit another web page on your website only, or a link provided in your content, or they might even return to the search results. Time on page measures the time between when the user clicks on the link that leads them to your webpage and when the user clicks to navigate elsewhere.
• Bounce rate – If a user visits only one web page on your site and then leaves, it is called a single-page session. The bounce rate comprises the total percentage of single-page sessions of your website. Bounce rate can occur due to a visitor returning to the search results or closing the web page. Whether the visitor spends two minutes or two hours on that web page, it will still be counted as a bounce.

Now, if you see a low average time on page, that could mean two things – either the visitor got what they were looking for immediately and so left the page, or they didn’t find it at all. The same applies to the bounce rate too. Maybe the visitor found they wanted after a quick scan and therefore closed the window, or maybe they didn’t.

However, on the other hand, dwell time is more conspicuous and effective. If a visitor looked through your webpage concisely and then decided to return to the search results, this could mean that your web page didn’t provide them what they came looking for. In a nutshell, they were not entirely satisfied with what you offered.

So, what is a good dwell time that you should be aiming at? A minute or two is considered as a good dwell time as it shows that the visitor consumed our content. However, less than this might be indicating that something needs improvement on your page. But just like most SEO numbers, the exact numbers are always changing.

Does Dwell Time Impact the Ranking of a Page?

While it is popularly believed that dwell time plays a role in determining a page’s ranking, Google is not very open and expressive about this topic (although it has always remained tight-lipped about all its ranking factors). When you see your Google Analytics dashboard, you can easily find time on page and bounce rate there but dwell time is nowhere to be found.

Although the search engine giant has never officially announced whether or not and how dwell time is considered as a ranking factor, there have been some clues that it is indeed taken into account.

How to Measure Dwell TIme?

After reading that dwell time does not show up in Google Analytics, you are probably thinking, how can you measure it then? Here’s a surprise – there is no calculation formula for dwell time either. But don’t give up, though.

It is possible to calculate dwell time with the help of the ‘Average Session Duration’ factor available in Google Analytics. It shows the average time a user spends on your website after they land on any of your web pages.

Here is the step by step process you can use to estimate your average dwell time using the average session duration metric.

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Click on Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages.
3. Build a “New Segment” and clearly state that you only want to see ‘Organic Traffic.’
4. Then, you will see the “Average Session Duration” metric.

Now you must be wondering what good does this information do? Well, just like any other metric, it lets you see what is working and what is not. Suppose you go through the duration across your multiple web pages and one of them sticks out with a three minutes dwell time while the other pages are stuck at less than two minutes of dwell time. Now have a look at that page with the highest dwell time and see what’s different in it. Perhaps it has more content, custom visuals, or an engaging video. Whatever difference you identify there, implement it on other web pages as well to increase their capability of engaging the site visitors well.

Conclusion

If you have a low dwell time or just getting started with all of it, there’s no need to panic. Although it might all sound very daunting to you right now, the truth is there are numerous tools available in the market ready to ease your work and take you where you want to reach.

The higher dwell time you have, the more successful your web page is in engaging your audience.

 Meaning if you improve the user experience, content quality, and length, embed videos, use internal linking, and interact with your visitors in the comments, you will be able to keep them engaged. Most of the factors that improve your dwell time are also included in the basic on-page SEO. It’s a win-win!

Now that you know what dwell time is and why it matters, it’s time to start working on improving it. However, don’t despair when you don’t see instant results. These things take time, but eventually, it will help boost your search rankings. So be patient and keep working. With the right tips and tricks, you will get there in no time.