Dwell times center around the time spent on a website before the visitor returns to the search engine results page (SERP).

It’s a ranking factor for Google and your overall SEO.

It’s an essential factor that you want to get good at winning. Otherwise, people are not consuming your content.

We’re going to take a deeper but easy dive into how you can ensure your website dwell times increase by practicing proper content placement and using visual means of catching the attention of others.

Increasing the time spent on your website before a visitor clicks back into search isn’t rocket science.

Put Mobile First for Bettering Dwell Times

Mobile first!

I guarantee that most of your audience is visiting with a mobile device.

Even if your website was wholly dedicated to information about desktop users, I bet most of your traffic would come from mobile. That’s just the cyber age we live in. Eventually, it’ll all be mobile.

So, for that reason, make sure you are editing your website to look as good as it can for mobile first.

And it can’t be just basic mobile friendly, either.

You got to put the mobile crowd first! If your design plan doesn’t work on mobile, scrap that plan and find one that does. If you don’t, your dwell times will be negative, period. There is no way around this. Mobile or nothing!

Make sure the user experience is excellent, easy to do, and visually exciting for every mobile device.

Many sites let you see what different mobile devices see, or you can have people on the internet look for you. It would be a perfect opportunity to survey your traffic sources.

Putting mobile first will likely result in better search engine optimization and ranking on Google.

Increase Dwell Times with Smart Content Placement

One word – Hook!

Your content needs to have a hook at the very beginning.

The first thing people will see when clicking on your website (aside from the logo) should be your hook.

If the first thing they see is boring, they’ll likely click back before the page loads.

Placing your content strategy is the definition of practicing clever content placement. It needs to be put in to keep the visitor interested in what your website has to say.

I suggest you use shorter sentences.

Shorter paragraphs.

Many line breaks!

You can see it in this article and every other article I make online. I write my articles in a manner that seems like I am speaking to you directly.

Because that is how you win with content distribution.

But it doesn’t stop there! Increasing your dwell times means ensuring people remain on your website after arriving.

You do this by auditing every sentence you type out! Every sentence should be a continuous hook. Make every sentence count.

Don’t add a sentence to fill a webpage with content. Google doesn’t care as much about length as they do about dwell times.

It is more important to keep traffic on your website for an extended period rather than to fill a page full of content that most people will not finish reading.

In all honesty, most people who read this article will only read about 15% of it, if that. But if 15% of my words keep you on here for four or five minutes, that will help my ranking versus you clicking off the moment you click on my article webpage.

Increase Dwell Times with Visually Appealing Strategies

Are you on social media?

Do you do the same thing I do?

Scroll through social media, passing the text posts like they aren’t even there until something stops you from scrolling!

A beautiful photo!

An exciting video thumbnail!

That is what makes us stop and look at something – visually appealing media and other content.

It is what we like and desires these days, and we own that all to social media; for better or worse, it is how it will be from here on out.

Written content is essential. It is how you instruct people to do something. It is how I am showing how to increase your dwell times.

But written content as a whole isn’t always going to be the answer. If you want people to stick around further on your website, you have to ensure it’s visually appealing.

Add exciting and nice-looking photos and other images to your content.

Add a video or two if it’s relevant and the thumbnail stands out.

Instead of using clickbait in words – try to utilize it in photos and videos without lying about something. The pictures and videos will be seen more than the worded content. Take advantage of those elements.

And there you have it! The very easy-to-do options above will help you significantly increase your dwell times on your website. That will substantially increase your search engine ranking on Google and other major search engines. Of course, we’re all trying to make it big on Google more than anything else. If this article was helpful, follow me on Twitter for more tips and announcements about new articles we publish here daily.

About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.