Original Post By-: searchenginejournal (http://goo.gl/iOCFIP)
Being a smart SEO is not just about geeking out on technical details. Increasingly, SEO is less of a science and more of an art — the art of understanding your users and delivering exactly the kind of content they need and want.
In this article, I discuss dwell time, which is a critical, but often overlooked facet of search optimization. Dwell time is a user-based metric that Google uses to decide how to rank your site. If you want to succeed in the SERPs, you’ve got to succeed with dwell time.
First, I’ll give you the definition of dwell time, then I’ll discuss how I arrived at this definition.
Dwell time is a metric that calculates user engagement, session duration, and SERP CTRs. It is a data point that is not publicly available (or thoroughly understood), but is nonetheless a factor that affects a site’s search engine results.
“Dwell time” is not as straightforward a metric as you might think. Usually, people conflate “session duration” (or time on page) with “dwell time,” but, they are actually two different things. Another source of confusion is “bounce rate”, which is a different number, too. Dwell time combines these two — session duration and bounce rate.
Dwell time, as Moz’s Dr. Peter J. Meyers explains it, “is an amalgam of bounce rate and time-on-site metrics”. Since it is not an accessible metric, we can only speculate as to the precise formula used to determine the dwell time number.
Suffice it to say, an optimal bounce rate, a healthy session duration, and a strong SERP CTR are all factors that improve dwell time. More on that later.
Dwell time, then, is a combination of two components, with one related component.
1. Session duration
2. Bounce rate
3. Click-through rate (CTR) on the search engine results page (SERP)
To help clarify the differences and gain an understanding of dwell time, let me provide the definitions for all three of the factors which appear to affect dwell time. It’s going to be a bit of basic review at first, so bear with me.
Session Duration
Session duration is the average length of time that users spend on a website. You can view this number in Google analytics:
A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave the website after viewing only one page.
More Info Visit: http://goo.gl/iOCFIP
Being a smart SEO is not just about geeking out on technical details. Increasingly, SEO is less of a science and more of an art — the art of understanding your users and delivering exactly the kind of content they need and want.
In this article, I discuss dwell time, which is a critical, but often overlooked facet of search optimization. Dwell time is a user-based metric that Google uses to decide how to rank your site. If you want to succeed in the SERPs, you’ve got to succeed with dwell time.
What is Dwell Time?
First, I’ll give you the definition of dwell time, then I’ll discuss how I arrived at this definition.
Definition of Dwell Time
Dwell time is a metric that calculates user engagement, session duration, and SERP CTRs. It is a data point that is not publicly available (or thoroughly understood), but is nonetheless a factor that affects a site’s search engine results.
“Dwell time” is not as straightforward a metric as you might think. Usually, people conflate “session duration” (or time on page) with “dwell time,” but, they are actually two different things. Another source of confusion is “bounce rate”, which is a different number, too. Dwell time combines these two — session duration and bounce rate.
Dwell time, as Moz’s Dr. Peter J. Meyers explains it, “is an amalgam of bounce rate and time-on-site metrics”. Since it is not an accessible metric, we can only speculate as to the precise formula used to determine the dwell time number.
Suffice it to say, an optimal bounce rate, a healthy session duration, and a strong SERP CTR are all factors that improve dwell time. More on that later.
The Three Components of Dwell Time
Dwell time, then, is a combination of two components, with one related component.
1. Session duration
2. Bounce rate
3. Click-through rate (CTR) on the search engine results page (SERP)
To help clarify the differences and gain an understanding of dwell time, let me provide the definitions for all three of the factors which appear to affect dwell time. It’s going to be a bit of basic review at first, so bear with me.
Session Duration
Session duration is the average length of time that users spend on a website. You can view this number in Google analytics:
You can drill down into session duration by going to Audience → Behavior → Engagement.
Bounce Rate
A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave the website after viewing only one page.
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