Though they might seem quite similar, dwell time and bounce rate are two different factors that contribute to SEO.
What is dwell time?
Dwell time is a measurement of the time visitors spend on your website before heading back to the search engine results page (SERP) that led them there. It is a useful indicator of whether the SEO of your website is performing well.
If your page has a dwell time of just a few seconds, this suggests the visitor left the page quickly because it didn’t answer their search query. Whereas a dwell time of few minutes suggests your website was exactly what your visitor was looking for, and provided a satisfying user experience (UX).
Dwell time is equivalent to the “Average Engagement Time Per Session” stat that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) measures.
What is bounce rate?
Bounce rate is a measurement of the percentage of visitors who leave your website without taking a specific action. Bounce rate is measured regardless of how a visitor arrived at your website (i.e. even if they didn’t come from a search result page).
Since the introduction of GA4, bounce rate isn’t as much of a factor as dwell time when it comes to SEO. Dwell time is more useful, as it only looks at visitors that arrive and leave your website from search engine results.
Dwell time and SEO
Google has never admitted that dwell time is a factor it takes into account when defining web page rankings. However, digital marketing experts are fairly confident that dwell time has a significant impact on SEO.
Simply put: the higher the dwell time on your webpage, the better that page is likely to perform (and rank) in search results. This is because a higher dwell time suggests to Google that your page is useful and interesting to visitors, and therefore should be more discoverable (ie. rank highly in search results).
There are several things that can affect dwell time, including:
- Bounce rate: As mentioned above, bounce rate doesn’t always measure visitors who reach your website through search results. However, a high bounce rate on pages that get a lot of traffic definitely points to low dwell time too.
- Organic click-through-rate (CTR): CTR measures the percentage of visitors who click through to a website from SERPs against how often the page is shown. Pages that have a high CTR and a low dwell time are underperforming in SEO terms. This is likely because the pages are appearing for search queries they do not satisfy, and visitors are leaving because the page is not what they expected.
- Pogo-sticking: Pogo-sticking is when users repeatedly jump around between pages in search results until they settle on a page they like. Google RankBrain can detect pogo-sticking, and sometimes deems it to mean that a page offers a poor user experience, and ranks the page low in search results accordingly.
How to improve dwell time
To improve the dwell time on your most valuable web pages, there are a few actions you can take.
Improve user experience
User experience should be built into your website from the very start. UX can be improved by looking at the structure of your site, ensuring it is easy to navigate and intuitive – and enjoyable to use.
Match content to search intent
Unsurprisingly, if users don’t find the answers they were hoping for on your website, they leave. Ensure your content is both keyword optimised and actually answers the questions your visitors are asking.
Your content also needs to be easy to read, clearly formatted, and entertaining. Informative, useful content that quickly satisfies search queries is the key to improved dwell time.
No clickbait
Manipulative, misleading page titles and metatags are great for generating easy clicks – and terrible for dwell time and SEO. Clickbait generates resentment, impacts trust, and is just plain lazy. Avoid at all costs.
Use analytics tools
Tools like Google Analytics are perfect for identifying where different pages on your website are suffering from low engagement. You can configure your analytics to filter for organic search traffic, so you can focus on visitors finding your website from SERPs.
You can also compare other metrics (bounce rate, engagement rate, etc.) and look for patterns that indicate what might be impacting the dwell time on your site. For example, high bounce rates and low engagement rates indicate visitors are pogo-sticking off your website.
