by Have you ever looked at your website statistics to find out how long visitors spend on your site? This information is very important for two reasons.
Firstly, if readers are spending a good amount of time on your site, it’s because they’re finding your content useful and engaging – which should hopefully translate into sales for you.
Secondly, the time visitors spend on a site affects your Google rankings. Google is in the business of giving its users links to quality content; the time that people spend on a site is one of the measures of quality.
How long should visitors be spending on your site?
There’s no hard and fast rule as to how long visitors should be spending on your website. That will vary, for example an e-commerce website is likely to have visitors staying for longer than a brochure website, simply because of the whole shopping and checkout process.
Instead of aiming for a set time, a good way to approach this is to have a goal of increasing the average time visitors spend on your site.
How can you get visitors to spend more time on your site?
There are various ways that you can get visitors to spend more time on your site, and they all boil down to good quality content. Here are some ideas for you to consider:
- Articles and resources: Having good quality reference information is a great way of engaging visitors and getting them to spend more time on your site. Just make sure the information is on your website, and not a link to someone else’s website! Also, make sure that it’s unique information, rather than something you’ve copied from elsewhere.
- Blog posts: If your blog is part of your website (rather than a standalone blog site) that too is a great way of keeping your visitors engaged. Be sure to update your blog frequently, so there’s plenty of fresh and interesting content for your visitors to read.
- Videos: Websites don’t have to be about written content: having some good quality, engaging and informative videos are another way to keep people on your site for longer.
- Fun stuff: This is material which isn’t related to your business, but things that you’re interested in, and that your readers will find interesting too. It could be things like recipes, cartoons, photographs, games, humour… whatever you feel comfortable with.
Summary
Getting people to spend more time on your website isn’t just good for Google rankings. It’ll mean that you’re engaging readers more, so they’re more likely to remember your business – and therefore more likely to buy from you, or recommend your company to their friends and colleagues.
