Hey guys, welcome to Module 4, Lesson 2.In the last lesson you learned all about UX Signals. I showed you that, for your site to rank, your site still needs to have the traditional ranking signals in place. Specifically backlinks and keyword-optimized content. But sites that rank well today have those traditional signals and they’re optimized for UX Signals. In other words, they optimize their content for the specific types of user experience signals that Google cares about. As you just learned, one of the most important user experience signals is your site’s click-through-rate.
After all, if no one clicks on your result, it’s probably not a great match for that keyword. On the other hand, if an above-average amount of people click on your result, Google will give you a rankings boost so that your site is easier to find. I also gave you a handful of strategies you can use to improve your organic CTR. So now that we’ve covered CTR, it’s time to cover another key Google UX ranking factor, Dwell Time.
Before we get into the strategies, let me quickly cover why Google cares so much about Dwell Time. In Steven Levy’s classic book, In The Plex, he noted that Google engineers were obsessed about what they called “short clicks” vs. “long clicks”. Basically, Google upranked pages that people spent a lot of time on, also known as a “long click”.
And this Google ranking factors study found a strong correlation between Dwell Time and first page Google rankings. So now that you’ve seen that Google directly measures and uses dwell time as a ranking signal, let’s quickly define it.
Dwell time is the amount of time that a Google searcher spends on a search result. For example, let’s say that you search for “best premium headphones”. The number two result looks intriguing, so you click on it. But the page you land on is a total mess. There are ads everywhere. And the intro makes it sound like the author has no idea what he’s talking about. So you hit your browser’s “back” button after 6 seconds. Your Dwell Time on that page is 6 seconds.
You still want a pair of headphones, so you click on the number three result this time. And you think: “now we’re talking”. The intro is fluff-free and straight to the point. You can see that the author has personally tried all of the headphones listed on the page. And the content itself is a thing of beauty. It’s full of key info like pricing, specs, screenshots, and videos of how each headset works.
Before you know it, you’ve spent 7 minutes and 34 seconds on the page. Now look at this experience from Google’s point of view. If most people have the same experience you had, what’s Google doing to do? They’re going to shift around the results so that the page with the great dwell time ranks higher than the page with the poor dwell time. Note that dwell time is different than bounce rate.
A bounce is when someone clicks on your result and clicks back to Google no matter how long they spend on your page. Google probably takes bounce rate into account too. But it’s not as helpful as dwell time. After all, if you stayed on a page for 10 minutes, then clicked your back button, that’s technically a bounce. But, based on Dwell Time, you were still probably happy with that result.
So bounce rate is a messy signal that Google probably does use in some capacity. But it’s not nearly as important as dwell time. Plus, when you optimize your site for dwell time, you’ll also lower your bounce rate automatically. So there’s no need to worry about both. Speaking of, it’s time for me to show you how to increase your site’s Dwell Time using four proven strategies.
Let’s dive right in with strategy number one, push your content above the fold I never understand why people put a big fat image at the top of their page, like this. I mean, I guess it looks cool. But for an impatient Google searcher, all this image does is make it harder for them to get what they’re looking for. And because a giant image makes a user have to work to find what they’re looking for, they’re likely to click away before seeing the first sentence.
That’s why I recommend pushing the first sentence of your content above the fold. This means eliminating any ads, images or anything that stands between a Google searcher and your content. For example, take a look at Backlinko. The post title and content meet your eyes right away. There’s no need to search for the first sentence. It’s right there.
And even when I do use header images, I make sure that they’re not so big that they push all of the content below the fold. That way, anyone that lands on that page can start reading right away. Without needing to scroll down. Which hooks them so they actually do scroll down the page OK so let’s move right along to strategy number two, sticky intros. I’ll come right out and say it.
Most introductions are horrible. And considering that your intro is the first thing someone reads, a bad intro almost always equals low dwell time. So, what do I mean by a horrible intro? Well, I’ve found that most bad intros make the same two mistakes over and over again.The first mistake is that they state the obvious. For example, here’s a piece of content I found searching for “link building strategies”. “Backlinks are quality links that are created when another website links to your website.
They are only a part of the holistic structure that helps in SEO. They are an important part of boosting your rankings and ought to be carefully considered.” Blah blah blah. Someone searching for “link building strategies” already knows this stuff. They’re looking for strategies. So there’s no need to rehash the obvious.
The second mistake people make with their intros is making them WAY too long. Remember, your intro’s main job is to hook your reader and let them know they’re in the right place. So there’s no need to go into the complete history of the backlink, volume 1. Let’s look at that bad intro again.
Not only does it restate something you already know, but it rambles on for 129 words. Even if this intro was amazing, there’s no need to string you along like that. They’re going to get frustrated and leave. What’s the solution? Sticky Intros. Sticky Intros are content introductions designed specifically to reduce bounce rate and increase dwell time. And sticky intros have three elements that make them different than most other introductions.
The first element is that they’re between three and six lines. For example, take a look at this Go-To Guidebook from Backlinko. This intro is a total of three lines. Now I could go into how YouTube is growing in popularity. Or how video marketing is becoming more important. But I know that anyone searching for a guide like this already knows that.
So there’s no need for me to become captain obvious and restate what my reader already knows. The second element that all sticky intros have is that they let the reader know they’re in the right place. This is huge. When someone clicks on a search result, they think: “Will this page help me with what I want?”. And your introduction is a GREAT opportunity to let the user know they’ve found the holy grail. For example, let’s look again at that Power Page.
This line tells people that they’re in the right place. Now you don’t need to literally say they’re in the right place. But you should point out that your content will answer their question or help solve their problem. Finally, Sticky Intros briefly preview your content. This is simple: you let the reader know what to expect. This preview re-emphasizes the feeling of “being in the right place”. For example, in this Expanded List Post Power page, I say “So if you want more traffic from every piece of content that you publish, you’ll love this list of tips, techniques and strategies.”.
Simple yet effective. And now it’s time for our third dwell time boosting strategy, long-form content. In Module 2 we talked about how long form content is a powerful Share Trigger. And that’s one of the main reasons that several industry studies have found a strong correlation between long content and higher Google rankings. Longer content impresses Linkreators, which makes them more likely to link to your site. But there’s another reason longer content performs so well in Google.
Dwell time. Like I mentioned, when a Google searcher lands on your page, they’re thinking: “Is this going to help me?”. Well, now that you’ve answered this burning question in your intro, it’s time to deliver with your content. And in most cases, if you want to give a Google searcher the complete solution to their problem, you need a lot of content to do it. For example, let’s say that you do a Google search for “is coffee paleo?”. This isn’t an easy question to answer in 400 words.
If you want to cover the topic in-depth and provide the searcher with a full answer, you’ll need to cite different opinions, the results of research studies and more. And this will require somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 words. And sometimes four thousand, five thousand or even eight thousand words. Now, I don’t recommend keeping a super close track of word count. The idea here isn’t to pad your page with a bunch of fluff and filler. Instead, you want to give your reader a complete answer to what they’re looking for.
And if your content only scratches the surface, your reader is probably going to hit their back button to fill in the blanks. For example, this go-to guidebook on Backlinko is over 4,000 words. I didn’t plan for it to be that long. But that’s how many words it took to cover that topic to a point where someone searching for it wouldn’t need to ever hit their back button.
They have everything they need all in one place. OK so let’s cover our fourth dwell time strategy, use lots of subheadings. Let’s face it: 4,000 words of content can easily become a giant wall of text. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Thanks to subheadings, you can break up long form content into digestible little chunks. For example, look at this Power Page from Backlinko. It’s over 2000 words, so it’s a little on the long side. But note how I break up the content with subheaders.
11 of them to be exact. That’s approximately 1 subheader for every 200 words. And all of these subheaders keep my reader engaged and stuck to my page like superglue. In fact, largely thanks to all these subheaders the dwell time on that page is fairly high. Next up, we have bucket brigades.
Bucket Brigades are words and phrases designed to keep people on your page. Specifically, they’re designed to push someone to read the next line. Here’s an example. I first learned about bucket brigades from legendary copywriters, like Joe Sugarman. I’ve since adapted them to online content. And they work really well at keeping people stuck to a page. By the way, the term “bucket brigades” comes from how people back in the day would transport buckets of water to put out fires.
They’d form a line that made up a “bucket brigade”. And each person in the line would pass the bucket to the person next to them. And it’s the same story here. But instead of a bucket, you’re moving people’s eyeballs consistently down the page. You can create your own Bucket Brigades. Or copy and paste these examples. No need to grab a pen and write these down. I have all of these examples for you in the worksheet. Our last strategy is embedded videos. Here’s where you embed YouTube videos or other types of videos in your content.
In fact, I recently looked into how embedded videos impacted bounce rate. And I found that our pages with at least once embedded video had a significantly lower (11%) Bounce Rate compared to pages without a video. Why does this work? Well, imagine you’re a reader scrolling down a random page. And you see a video that explains one of the concepts in more detail.
So you click on it and watch half the video. Well, that’s racking up significant amounts of Dwell Time. So even if you click back to the search results, Google is going to consider you a happy user. There are two main ways to embed videos in your page. First, you can use a video instead of text content. In other words, embed a video that explains an entire strategy, technique or tip.
For example, I use a video to explain a technique from this Expanded list post. You can also use videos as a way for someone to learn more about something that you’re talking about. Kind of like an external link to another site. But instead of sending them away, you keep them on your page with a video.
Here’s an example. Keep in mind that the videos that you embed don’t necessarily need to be videos that you made. You can embed any video from YouTube, Vimeo or anywhere else that makes sense for your content. And that’s it for this lesson. To quickly recap, you learned that Dwell Time is a key User Experience Signal.
That’s because Dwell Time gives Google a hint about whether or not people are satisfied with a result. In general, if people spend a long time on a page, that sends a strong message to Google that they liked that page. Even if they end up bouncing. But if people bounce right away, it tells Google that people don’t like that page.
I also showed you a handful of ways that you can maximize your dwell time. Looking ahead to the next lesson in this module, Lesson 3, I’m going to show you how to optimize your content for Google’s uber UX signal, search intent. But for now, go ahead and download the worksheet for this lesson. And I’ll see you in the next video.
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