Oftentimes, when we think about getting more traffic through SEO, we like to think of the BIG (more fun) things like content creation, fixing broken links, and getting backlinks. However, TODAY, we’re going to chat about creative, often overlooked ways to boost your average time on page. And if you’re like, “What, Faith? I don’t even know what that means!” then make sure you grab a notebook and pen and take notes because I’m gonna break it all down in very simple, normal human terms. 

(If you’re more of an audio learner, tune in to this podcast episode about increasing time on page ) 

Implementing these strategies can really help boost your back-end SEO efforts and help put all of your content marketing work to better use. This will bring you the traffic that will give you the leads and sales that your business needs.

What Is Average Time on Page Matter…And Why It Matters

If you don’t already have my SEO Cheat Sheet, now is the time to snag and download it! To make this all make sense, we have to do some quick definitions. 

Dwell time: the total time from when someone clicks on a SERP (search engine result page) result and stays on a page before returning to the SERPs. 

Time on page: the time a viewer spends on a specific page until they go anywhere else. Fortunately, the days when this metric was measured based on two clicks, requiring a user to click on a second page on your site, are gone. You can now monitor average engagement time for how long a visitor spends on each page of your website (including a single visit to one page) with GA4. 

Bounce rate: when viewers visit a webpage and leave without taking any action (such as navigating to another page or filling out a form). Bounce rate helps you to understand how well your content is performing. To calculate the bounce rate in GA4, divide the number of bounced (or non-engaged sessions) by the total number of sessions x 100. 

While these terms technically mean separate things, they’re often used interchangeably because together they calculate how much time someone is spending on your website. (For more great information on dwell time vs. average time on page, check out these articles from Databox and Neil Patel).

You Get Docked if People Don’t Linger on Your Page

We need to remember that a search engine’s whole purpose is to categorize information and get it in front of the right people. Google and other search engines reward sites when the information appears to be the right information for that person. So when somebody comes to your website and they see your blog post or your static website page, click on it, and then quickly click back to Google, that tells Google, “Oh, snap. This is not what they are looking for. Maybe this isn’t valuable content, or maybe there are errors, or it’s a poor user experience.” And that hurts your SEO street-cred BIG TIME.

So one of the things that we can do within our websites for relatively not very much work is to very strategically increase your visitor’s average time on page. Now this is a metric that you can find inside of your Google Analytics in literally 2 seconds. Just go into the search bar in your Google Analytics and type in “average time on page” for whatever month you’re looking up data.

I actually do recommend tracking that because I want you to be able to see if your efforts are working or not. 

But if we want to ultimately increase our website traffic and conversions, one of the NOT often talked about ways that we can do that is by increasing our average time on page. So let’s discuss how to help somebody stay on your website longer.

8 Ways to Increase Visitors’ Average Time on Page

1. Page Load Time

If it takes a hot minute for all of the stuff on your website to load, somebody’s gonna leave. Ain’t nobody got time for that. There are a lot of things that can go into page load time that we’re not going to get deep into today, but think of things like:

• Smaller image sizes
• Too many ads on the page
• A poor website host
• Too many videos

All of those things can negatively impact your page load time.

2. Pop-up Timing and Ease of Exit

I get that this can be a little tricky, but it can KILL your time on page. The metrics are clear: pop-ups increase lead magnet sign-ups. We’re not gonna get away from pop-ups, and I’m not against them. But if I can’t get out of that dang pop-up without a Harvard degree because your x-out button is the same color as the background or it’s hard to find….I’m gone. I do not want to consume your content badly enough to spend my whole life trying to get out of that pop-up. 

I’ve built my own websites, I get that sometimes formatting the pop-up is tricky. However, it can absolutely kill your time on page if it’s hard to exit the pop-up or it is too soon after a user enters your website. Don’t hit him in the face with a pop-up right away….let him get a feel for the website and then bring it. If we’re here to serve people and we’re slapping them in the face with a pop-up that they can’t get out of, that feels kinda shady to me. 

3. Mini Table of Contents

Having a mini table of contents at the top of an article helps your visitors find the exact information they’re looking for which increases their average time on page. So think about it like this: if you are writing an in-depth blog on everything somebody needs to know about sourdough, the chances of a reader needing every piece of that content all at once is kinda slim. They might be at the place where they’re trying to get their sourdough bread to rise a little higher or have a better score, and they don’t actually need to know how to start their own sourdough starter. 

So what you can do to serve them better and keep them on the page longer is to hyperlink to the different sections of that blog. So if you have 15 different sections of a super in-depth complete guide, a reader can just click on the section that they want. While it feels a little counterintuitive, it’s gonna help them go straight to the content they want to consume instead of thinking, “This is way too long. Bye.” So a mini table of contents at the top of your blog article is a creative and kind of counterintuitive, but great way to increase your average time on page. 

4. Easy Reading Level Content

I’m not saying people are all dumb. God made us brilliant and wonderful in his image. However, the average reading level of Americans is not a 12th-grade reading level. You might think that you have to speak in a very highly educated way to get somebody to think that you are an expert. And depending on your subject matter, you might. Right? If you’re writing medical reviews, you do need to sound like a doctor.

But if you are writing about finances to somebody who’s a beginner in dealing with their finances, you need to write at a reading level that they can understand. And you need to blog like you are talking to a human. 

Hot Tip: If you process information more verbally, you may need to talk through your content before you type it out. 

Whatever you are creating needs to be written for a human and sound like a human created it. This will help you in so many ways, including your EEAT for SEO purposes. But when you can make your content easy to read and at a reading level that actually serves your audience, it helps everybody in the whole picture. (The free plugin on Yoast will actually help you with this.)

5. Increase Average Time on Page with Scannable Content

This one is HUGE, y’all. It’s not that people don’t read every word of anything, but very few people read every word of everything. 

We scan content on the internet to pull out what we’re looking for. Making your content easily scannable increases the average time on page.  Use bullet points y’all! Bullet points are allowed in blogging!

Use your h2 and h3 text strategically. Yes, we need to have keywords in our h2 and h3 text. Absolutely. But also use those how they’re intended to be used, to break up different sections to help people find what they’re looking for. 

6. Don’t Cheat Searcher Intent

Searcher intent is just simply what somebody is hoping to find when they type those words into Google. What’s going to solve their problem? If you use a slightly incorrect keyword because it has 3 times as many searches as your actual keyword, that’s cheating the intent. When somebody clicks on your page with the bigger keyword, and sees that it’s not the information they want, they’re going to click right back out of your page. Which dings your average time on page and hurts your SEO.

I actually did an entire podcast episode about searcher intent. Listen to it here for more in-depth information. 

7. Experiment With Video

This isn’t something that we’re really implementing yet at FH.com, but I do want YOU to experiment with videos embedded within your blog posts. Now there are some things to think about with video:

• Make sure the file sizes aren’t too large
• Everything starts playing at the right time
• The video doesn’t impact the page loading time

Having something to watch or catch their eye when somebody comes on to a page typically does help average time on page. Just make sure it doesn’t negatively impact load time and it actually flows with the content.

8. Link to Other Relevant Content

Think through where somebody is within their customer journey when they’re coming to a piece of content and link accordingly. Yes, you could have things set up so that they link automatically to different blog posts or promote other blog posts. But you should also know your content well enough to know which other posts are relevant to your customer’s buying journey. This will help your average time on page because somebody’s gonna click over for 1 blog, read that, and then go read another blog, and then read that and go read another blog, etc. This ultimately helps your SEO and the entire user experience on your website.

Average Time on Page Helps Conversions and SEO

There ya have it y’all: some down-and-dirty tips for you to implement ASAP to increase the average time on page for your website and sneakily boost your SEO. You can increase your average time on page by:

• Decreasing your page loading time
• Timing your pop-ups well (and make them easy to get out of)
• Adding a table of contents at the beginning of in-depth blogs
• Writing your content at an easy reading level
• Making content easily scannable
• Not cheating searcher intent
• Adding video 
• Linking to relevant content

Nothing too crazy or intense. Just 8 simple, creative ways that won’t take too much time or brainpower, but will serve your people well.Want more? Join Simple SEO Framework & Group Coaching Program. Learn how to get 300%, 500%, and even 12,000% more website traffic in a year.  Get your website set up for SEO Success in a DAY & learn how to maintain a traffic-generating machine in 2hrs/ week. We can’t wait for you to join us!

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