Publishers
What is dwell time?
Anna N

There are some ranking signals if we speak about Google and search engine results pages (SERPs). One of them is dwell time. It is considered to be rather important and it is also connected with SEO – Search engine optimization. It is a process of improving and optimizing website traffic, so search engines rank it better.

Dwell time is a certain amount of time spent by users when they go to their search results and go back to search engine results pages (SERPs).

However, Google never claimed dwell time to be affecting rankings officially and never denied it, so there was nothing clear about dwell time and website rankings. But there were several light hints that dwell time has some impact.

Now there are some machines learning how to track when a user comes to a page after a click and stays or goes back to search engine results pages. So machines are integrated into the process of Google rankings. And the machines pay really close attention to how long users stay on any page. This fact may slightly prove that Google does care about dwell time.

01
How can one calculate dwell time?
There is nothing about it in Google analytics, so users may wonder about getting it. So if you look into all the metrics in your Google analytics account, you would see Average Session Duration.
It is used to get your dwell time. These metrics inform you about the exact average time which was spent on your page by any user after landing.
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Here is a tiny guide on how to check your dwell time.
  • Go to your Google analytics account, log in and find the drop-down menu
  • Find “Behavior” and go to “Site content”
  • Find “Landing pages” in your drop-down menu
  • Choose “Create new segment”
  • Select “Organic traffic”
  • After this appears your average session duration
  • Here is your dwell time
02
What is a good dwell time?
There are two types of answers, a short and a long one. If we say itl shortly - it depends.
But if you want a full answer, keep reading! So, a good dwell time depends on lots of factors and things.
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Some of them are:
  • Seasonal trends
  • Type of content
  • Your niche
  • Search query people use to find your page
So no worries! Just try and focus on improving your dwell time! There are some tips on how to increase it, and we will tell them in our next article.