Here are 5 Ways To Ensure Your Website Visitors Stay Longer.
Within the SEO and online business communities, a lot has been written about Google’s continuing mission to make its search engine results exactly match the intent of the person entering the search. In fact, a lot of what has been written has come from Google itself.
They have moved from simply ranking websites based on how relevant they are to the search term to them giving higher rankings to websites where the evidence is that user experiences will be greater than on other websites.
As it is impossible for Google to survey every single person to ask them about their experience, Google instead tries to establish it using data it receives back from the destination website.
There are numerous data points that all feed into Google’s ‘user experience’ score. These include bounce rate, which checks whether visitors take one look at a site and then click away, whether a website gets bookmarked by visitors, and dwell time, which is what we are going to focus on.
Dwell time tells Google how long visitors stay on each page of the website, with logic telling them that if dwell time is high, the visitor likes the site, and if it is low, maybe not so much.
For website owners, this means that they need to do all they can to encourage visitors to stay. Here are 5 simple ways it can be done…
Make The Effort
This is not so much a tactic but more the mindset you have to take. If you want your website to be ranked well, by all means, take care of all the technical stuff like metadata, but also take some time to ensure that visitors have not just one, but several reasons to stick around.
These are your potential customers, so the longer they are on your website, the more chance there is of them buying from you. Google sees all this, remember, so not only will sales rise, but so will your ranking.
Break It Down
Not a dance reference but one that suggests that instead of having huge blocks of written content, you should break it down into sections. For a start, this makes it less daunting for someone landing on the page, and it also means they are more likely to read the entire piece. The longer they read, the longer they remain on your website.
Mobile Responsiveness
It might seem that we bang on about this a lot, but that is because it is so important with regard to ranking on Google. As for visitors, many will be coming to your website from Google using their mobile device, and if your website is not mobile responsive, they will be gone in seconds.
Use Lists
People love lists. Why? Well, part of the reason is that it allows them to take in data or information in tiny bite-sized pieces, and in addition a list does that in an ordered format. Also, once a visitor starts reading down a list, they will want to get to the end of it, so make yours long lists…it will keep them there for longer.
Use Charts and Graphs
An equally effective tactic to using lists, is to use graphs and charts. Seeing data displayed in this way not only makes it easier to digest, but it is more visually appealing than text to visitors, who will stick around to look at them.
