Let’s talk dwell time

Let’s talk a little #SEO for a minute or three.

There are tons of important metrics in the SEO process, and today we’re gonna talk about the importance of people staying on your website. This metric is “dwell time,” which does make sense; it’s the metric of how long people stick around.

See, for a long while, SEO was thought of as creating a stew of keywords and stuffing them into an article to rank. And you know what? It worked pretty well…for a while. You know how it went: you’d get on Google to search how to replace the CV joints on your Passat, and you’d find an article that was 197 words long and told you absolutely nothing, but it did mention “Passat” and “CV joints” 43 times. Well, it ranked great, but the article was trash, so you moved on.

Google (and the other search engines) are a lot smarter now. Content quality matters a lot more now than in yesteryear, so if the content itself is garbage, it isn’t going to rank just because it checks the boxes for keywords. Thank Goodness.

So, what is dwell time, then, exactly?

Dwell time is the average amount of time that a user spends on a page after clicking on a search result. It is a metric that is used in SEO to measure the quality of a page and its relevance to the search query. A high dwell time indicates that the page is providing valuable information that is relevant to the user's search, while a low dwell time indicates that the page is not meeting the user's needs.

It is a powerful way to see how effective your keywords are in conjunction with the quality of content. If you can draw people in, i.e., get them on your page in the first place, then your keyword research is on point. But if they are only sticking around for 32 seconds on average, then your content needs improving to keep people there. Also, dwell time can be used to measure the effectiveness of long-tail keywords. If a page with a long-tail keyword has a high dwell time, it indicates that the page is providing valuable information that is relevant to the user's search. This can help to improve the ranking of the page in search results.

Do with this information what you will, but the bottom line is this: keyword research is critical, but so is good content. You cannot ignore one and expect consistent gains.

How do long-tail keywords play into this? Wait, what is a long-tail keyword?!

Okay, well, first, let's talk about long-tail vice fat-head keywords. These odd qualifiers actually have to do with how the keywords appear on a chart. The long-tail keywords are towards the end, where the graph tapers off and has a rather long tail.

Long tail keywords are like the niche players in the world of search terms. They're longer and more specific phrases that people use when they're closer to the point of purchase or when they have a very clear intent. While shorter, more generic keywords get a lot of search traffic, long-tail keywords are valuable because they often have less competition and can attract a more targeted audience.

Think of it this way: someone searching for "running shoes" might just be browsing, but someone searching for "best running shoes for trail running" or "women's lightweight running shoes for flat feet" is probably closer to making a purchase.

So, a long-tail keyword may be harder to rank for, but if you weave them well into your content, you are likely to reach the very specific audience that you were looking for in the first place. Good content + the right long-tail keywords = a recipe for good dwell time.

SEO Tips of The Week

I've got a couple of good articles queued up this week for you to level up your understanding of dwell time and long-tail keywords.

First up is dwell time:

1. https://www.semrush.com/blog/dwell-time/

2. https://linkwhisper.com/dwell-time/

Next is long-tail:

1. https://www.wordstream.com/long-tail-keywords

2. https://ahrefs.com/blog/long-tail-keywords/

3. https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/long-tail-keywords

Spend 30-45 minutes reading and digesting these, and you'll be in the top 1% understanding these terms (rated against the gen pop, of course, not SEO nerds 😆).