Dwell Time

Google wants you to stay! Please stay! 🐱‍👤

This time that a user stays on your site before clicking back to the search engine results page (SERP) is known as dwell time.

There’s a big difference between the time a user spends on an unhelpful website and a website that meets their needs. Dwell time is an important metric, as it provides insights into user engagement and satisfaction with website content.

Is longer dwell time better?

Usually, SEO experts consider a longer dwell time to indicate higher-quality content and a better user experience. In Google’s eyes, a typical user will spend more time on a website that they find informative, engaging, and relevant to their search query. Shorter times are a possible indicator that the user did not find what they wanted or was put off by the site’s design.

Dwell time as an SEO metric was first mentioned by the Bing search engine team in a 2011 blog post. They discussed factors that impact search engine ranking and described dwell time as an important metric. Since then, it has become a factor in determining search engine rankings, and is widely used by SEO professionals to gauge the effectiveness of SEO strategies.

How do you fix dwell time?

Dwell time is a general sign of user engagement. Consequently, improving dwell times (i.e., increasing them) requires you to focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that is relevant to your target audience.

User experience

Be sure that you are providing the answers that Google’s users are looking for, in an enjoyable way that makes users want to stay. Use clear and concise language, incorporate multimedia elements such as images and videos, and present information in a visually appealing manner.

Fix up site navigation

Poor site navigation is another element that can shorten dwell time and drive users away. Strive to employ a site design that makes it fast and easy for users to get the information they are looking for.

Context matters

Dwell time in eCommerce

On the other hand, suppose you run an e-commerce website selling clothing and accessories. If users spend only a few seconds on your product pages before navigating away, this short dwelling time could mean that things could be improved in your design.

Perhaps the product descriptions need to be more detailed, or maybe the images need to be of higher quality. Whatever the problem, a page like this with short dwell times will likely trigger higher bounce rates and negative SEO performance.

Dwell time doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other, more well-known SEO metrics. However, it is a vital measure of your pages’ performance. Website owners would do well to track dwell time to measure performance and continually improve their content and design.