Tomahawk Blog

The importance of dwell time and online findability

byJelle Hooijman

Bounce rate, user engagement, average session duration and click-through rate. You are probably already familiar with these terms and have an inkling that these metrics affect your Google ranking. We SEOs are treasure hunters. We are constantly looking for secret ingredients of the Google algorithm. In this blog article, I am going to discuss dwell time and why it is so important. In SEO land this is also called "the long click," personally I would describe it as hang time.

Dwell time consists of three components

Average session duration
Bounce rate
Click-through rate (CTR) from the search results page(SERP)

To avoid any misunderstandings about dwell time, I am first going to further explain the above terms and briefly explain how Google Analytics records this data. Are you already familiar with this? Then proceed directly to the piece on dwell time.

Average session duration and bounce rate

Average session length is the length of time a visitor stays on the website. The bounce rate can be explained in different ways, but I personally think this is the best explanation:

The percentage of all visitors who leave the website after viewing only one page. Thus, a visitor who does not view a second page on the website.

I often hear people say that a high bounce rate is bad for SEO, but this is not so black and white. You need to know how Google Analytics records visitors to draw a conclusion about the bounce rate.

Visitor duration on the last visited page is not measured

When each page is opened, a signal is sent to Google Analytics. A visitor arrives on the homepage and clicks through to another page, for example, the time in between is measured and is referred to as the dwell time. Specifically, the dwell time of a bouncer is always 0 seconds. This is because it is the first and also the last page visited.

Myth debunked: bouncers don't read the page

But a bouncer may as well have been on the page for 10 seconds as 10 minutes. Visitors can hang around on one page for a long time as long as the content is interesting.

Reasons why bounce rate is not an SEO factor

Not all websites use Google Analytics (unfair competition)
Google Analytics may be installed incorrectly
Google Analytics can be manipulated quite easily

Organic CTR from the SERP

Anyone who uses Google Ads knows what CTR is. But it may be less known that organic CTR also exists. In Google Webmaster Tools - recently renamed Search Console - this information can be found.

CTR = the ratio of the number of impressions to the number of clicks on your website.
Number of clicks / number of impressions x 100 = CTR. The higher the CTR, the more relevance someone sees between their search query and the listing in the search results. And that's a strong usage signal to Google.

Back to dwell time

Dwell time is the amount of time someone spends on a Web page before returning to the search results. Dwell time is measured in the following way:

You enter a search term in Google for example Soccer Shoes Adidas. Google presents the results (Search Engine Results Page or SERP). You click on one of the results, view one or more pages with Adidas soccer shoes and then go back to all search results via the back button. The time in between is the dwell time.

Pogosticking

Dwell time goes beyond the phenomenon of " SERP pogosticking." Pogosticking is what users do when they search for a particular keyword, click on a result, review the page inside and click the browser's back button. With pogosticking, the visitor is always a bouncer, while with dwell time it is not.Dwell time goes beyond the phenomenon of " SERP pogosticking". Pogosticking is what users do when they search for a particular keyword, click on a result, review the page inside and click the browser's back button. With pogosticking, the visitor is always a bouncer, whereas with dwell time, they are not.

The importance of dwell time

Dwell time is not a confirmed SEO factor and is debated in SEO land. Personally, I believe it is an important SEO factor because:

Google keeps logs of all searches
Google measures organic CTR for all searches
Google measures the time it takes for someone to return to search results

In this way, Google can track what a long visit and what a short visit was.
Google itself, does not need the Google Analytics data of its users at all. Whether or not you install Google Analytics has no advantage or disadvantage regarding your rankings. So Google itself can distinguish between a bouncer who spends 8 minutes on a page and a bouncer who has returned to the search results within a few seconds.

So does the bounce rate mean nothing at all?

Of course it does. But you shouldn't look at it so black and white. Bounce statistics say nothing without context. Most people see a high bounce rate as something negative when it doesn't have to be that way at all. Common sense is also important in this one. A high bounce rate on the homepage is usually not so good, but a high bounce rate on the contact page is normal.

What is a good bounce rate?

I am often asked this question. In general, you can adhere to the following:

10 - 40 % = Good
40 - 60 % = Fair
60 - 100 % = Poor
0 - 10 % = Not realistic, in this case check that Google Analytics is properly installed

Type of content and good/acceptable bounce rates

Content websites < 40%
Lead generation < 80%
Blogs < 85
Webshops < 50%
Service sites < 40%

What is a good dwell time?

Usually a person can absorb the content on a page within 2 minutes. Of course, this depends a bit on the amount of text and images on the page. In addition, most visitors judge within 5 seconds whether they find the page relevant.

< 5 seconds = very poor
5 seconds to 1 minute = moderate
1 to 2 minutes = reasonable
2 - 7 minutes = good

Improve dwell time

Here are a few brief tips for improving dwell time:

Write/rewrite your title tags and meta descriptions and improve organic CTR with them.
Choose the right keywords you want to rank for. Don't think too broadly and only in search volume.
Rewrite headlines and try to convince visitors with the first sentence.
Don't write long paragraphs.
Improve the loading speed of your website.
Write good text by answering what your target audience is likely to want to know and enrich it with images and videos.
Provide a pleasing web design.
Link internally to other pages that may also be of interest to the visitor.

Nice that dwell time, but can it be measured?

Yes, but this is not easy. You need Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for this. It requires a fair amount of coding and exactly what this code should look like depends on what website technology is being used. Check out Simo Ahava's tutorial if you want to know how to measure dwell time. Does that get a little complicated? Get in touch with us.

Conclusion: dwell time is not an officially recognized SEO factor

Dwell time is not an officially recognized SEO factor. Google also does not comment on it while they do confirm or disconfirm other SEO hypotheses from time to time. There is division in SEO land about dwell time though it will be clear which side I am on. The search engine itself is the only one that can measure dwell time 100% accurately because the data from Google Analytics is prone to error and manipulation. Want to know more about dwell time or would you like support in improving your dwell time? Then feel free to contact us. We will be happy to look at the possibilities with you.