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Ways to Improve Average Time Spent by Visitors on Our Blog

Ways to Improve Average Time Spent by Visitors on Our Blog

The efforts you make for creating a piece of information can only reap benefits if the purpose of creating it gets fulfilled. One of the key purposes of framing content is to grab the attention of the target audience and make them read it to ensure that they get what they want and you get what you want. Yes, this is a two-way process, if your target audience does not get what they are looking for with your content, you are not going to get it either.

Now the theory is simple, if you want people to read what you have for them, they need to spend some time on your blog post. You should also know that the time spent by the visitors on your site also tells a lot about the quality of your website. Thus, here as well there are double benefits, one you will tell the target audience about how you are helpful for them and two, the quality of your site will improve. 

What is the need to improve visitor’s average time spent on your site?

We tend to spend much more time in a store while shopping where the products are great and are according to our choice. This means the store you have chosen to do shopping is of good quality. While on the other hand, if commodities we want to buy are not of good quality, we just decide to move to another shop without wasting any time. Similar is the case with visitors on your blog, if they do not find qualitative and informative content, they will just move to another site. If this is the scenario, it will lead to an increase in the ‘bounce rate’ of your website and that is not at all a good sign for the site’s SEO. 

Bounce Rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who enter your site and leave it directly without going to any other page. This is not considered good by search engine bots and will negatively affect the reputation of your site. That is why it is important to have a better average time spent by visitors on your webpage. 

In this post, we will talk about some important tips that’ll help you improve the time spent by visitors on your webpage. 

Tips to improve the average time spent by visitors on your blog

  • Design

Your website’s design is one of the prime factors that’ll help visitors stay longer. It is important for you to understand that the design of your website should be simple and easily navigable. Remember, people do not take more than few seconds to decide whether they want to leave or stay on your website. Thus, your site’s design should be appealing enough to tempt visitors to scroll and navigate around to what they are looking for. 

One of the key tactics is to ensure a clutter-free design with appropriate white space.

  • Links to open in a new window

When a visitor lands on your website in search of some information, he/she should get it in a trouble-free manner. You might have come across sites where the links present in-between content tends to open on the same page where you are reading it. Some links are important for the visitors and that is the reason they click on them to get more detailed information. 

So, you must set all the internal or external links present in your blog posts to open in a new tab. Doing this will make it easy for the visitors to get detailed information and ensure that he/she spend a good amount of time on your webpage. 

  • Readability is important

The basic reason for a visitor to land on your webpage is to read the content to get the desired information. Thus, if the readability of the page is not good then it doesn’t matter how well-researched or informative your content is, people will just close the window and move to your competitor’s site. This is directly proportional to the bounce rate. 

So, make sure that whatever information is there on your blog, it is easily readable without any distractions. Because if people are not able to focus, they will not stay on your site and this will reduce the average time spent by them. 

Thus, keep it simple and easy to read and ensure better engagement. 

  • Include images

Long paragraphs of written content are always boring and not many will consider reading them completely. But if you include some quality and relevant images in between your blog post, it will become interesting and more engaging. Doing this will ensure that visitors spend more time reading the post than just bouncing off.

Images tend to grab the attention of people and that is what will improve the time spent by visitors. One thing to keep in mind while adding images to your post is uniqueness and originality. Even search engines like Google prioritizes and suggests to be unique and original with the images you add on webpages. 

For better results, try including some relevant infographics, and you’ll see not only better visitor’s average time but also better SERP ranking. 

  • Videos work well too

As we have talked about the relevance of images in your blog posts, similarly, adding videos also works well. An interesting and relevant video in your blog has the power to engage visitors for more time than the one without it. 

Another reason why videos improve average spent time on your blog is their ability to explain things better. We must say that videos can give better meaning to your written piece of information and people will love it when they are able to understand it without any difficulty. 

For example, a chemistry topic is better understood through an animated video than just reading the written content and that’s why videos work better to engage visitors on your blog. 

  • Hold visitors with Exit Intent

If you are able to change the idea of leaving your site of visitors at the last moment, you are going to convert more and improve the time spent. Now you must be thinking about how this is going to happen. Don’t worry, we will help you out with this and assist you in holding on to your visitors. 

You can do this with the exit-intent pop-ups. Such kinds of pop-ups appear when the visitor moves his/her cursor towards the closing tab and shows some discount coupons or other relevant offers that tempt the visitor to go back and complete the purchase or any other action he/she was in between. 

These kinds of pop-ups are shown with the help of a JavaScript snippet that has the ability to detect the speed and direction of the cursor of the mouse. 

  • Ensure the basics right

Simplicity is always better than making things complicated and this theory works well here as well. To ensure better engagement of visitors, it is important for you to follow the rules of writing a blog. Considering them will help you prepare content that is easy to read & understand and contain unique information. 

Thus, if visitors find the information in your blog relevant to the search query and they are able to easily understand that, the time spent by them will automatically improve. One thing you must understand here is, never think that you are superior to readers, whichever information you are providing, do it in a conversational tone. This will ensure high engagement and visitors will spend much more time reading your post. 

  • Internal linking delivers too

It is not only about engaging visitors only on a single blog post, if you are able to navigate them smartly to other webpages on your site as well, then the reputation and quality of your site will improve a lot. Plus, you will see great results with an average spent time of visitors on your site as well.

It could be done by simply interlinking your webpages on the right anchors. For that, you are required to write quality and well-researched posts for your site to build trust and provide some quality data to your target audience. 

Remember, internal linking is also a key factor when it comes to SEO of your site thus, it will improve SERP ranking as well. 

  • Don’t cook stories upfront

We know it is better to convey the message by telling a story as most people like it. But it is advised not to start your post by a story. You need to remember that people land on your website in search of something specific and hence, you must provide the information up-front for the query your web page is shown in the search results. 

Getting the answer easily will create eagerness in visitors to know what else you can offer with their query and they will spend more time on the webpage reading below. In this way, you can build trust and hold the visitors on your site for more time.  

  • Make blog posts interactive

Not many will take interest in your boring posts and spend time there. So, you need to try making them interactive using dedicated tools. Interaction is the best way to keep people engaged and even reciprocate. 

What you can do is put some interesting yet relevant games, quizzes, or even place an interesting character that responds in a funny way when the mouse cursor is placed. These are just examples of what you can do to make your blog posts interactive. 

Adding such interesting yet interactive elements will be of great help in holding visitors on your site willingly. 

  • Make people comment on your posts

Commenting is one of the best ways to interact with visitors on your site. Thus, preparing such content that convinces people to comment will do the job for you. Now the question is how will you prepare such content? Don’t worry, it is not a tough thing to do, all you need to do is include some questions in between your content for the readers to answer. 

Adopting this strategy will make readers give their opinion and, in this way, you can ensure better interaction and improved average time spent on your site.

  • Generate curiosity

Your blog should have the magnetizing property that can attract readers until the end of your post. This could be best done by generating curiosity in readers through your post only. You can do this by using certain phrases that grab attention and tempt people to see what you want to say. This is how people will read your post with interest and spend more time when compared to a simple post. 

Some of the phrases that you can use in your content are:

  • Here’s the catch
  • Remember
  • What is its need
  • There’s something more

These are the examples of phrases that you can use in your content to make readers curious about the information you have. Doing it smartly will deliver great results. 

  • Hold them via the intro

The introduction is the first part of any article or blog post where readers get to know what all is included along with a brief intro. Now what you can do here to improve their time spent on the post is to reform the introduction part by telling its benefits for the readers and what they will gain in the end after reading it.

Doing this will make visitors read the entire post to gain knowledge and hence, it will make them spend more time on your site as well. 

  • Give options to your audience to grab the information

It is true that not everyone wants to read a blog post, doesn’t matter how much effort you have made. The reason behind that could be anything, but if you give them options by which they can see what you have to offer, results could be different.

What we want to say is that in your single post, give people an option with which they can know what is there in the post, and the options you can offer include a video and audio compatibility. Some people prefer watching a video instead of reading the content while some love to listen especially when they are stuck somewhere, where it is not possible to read. 

This is also a way to improve the credibility of your site and blog post. 

  • Build more organic traffic

Someone who willingly lands on your website or we can say organically lands tend to automatically spend more time without any extra efforts. Only, your content has to be of top quality with credible information. 

So, what we want to say here is to generate more organic traffic on your website and that will automatically improve the average time spent by visitors on your blog post or site. 

  • Show links of related articles

It is one of the simplest things that you can do to keep people engaged on your site. Try showing some suggestions for your articles on the side bar that are related to the search query of the visitors. This will help them get more detailed information about the topic and spend more time on your website.

Considering this will deliver double benefit to your online presence, as it will bring genuine traffic on the webpage related to the search query plus, also to the related articles. It might also boost the SERP ranking of other pages of your website. 

These are some of the ways that could help you out in delivering long-term results with the improvement of average time spent by the visitors on your blog posts. In this digital world, nothing comes readymade, you are required to make efforts to make this world a better place for you. And with your efforts to increase the time spent by visitors, these above-mentioned techniques will help a lot. 

Final Words

Online presence is a must for all businesses in this digitally-focused world and this is the reason why everyone is making efforts to ensure a strong online presence. The first thing that we want on our website is visitors because that is what will bring you the revenue. 

Bringing visitors never mean to make your site a crowded place because that will never be going to help. Visitors that hold value to your business are important and only they will reciprocate to what you want. 

It is important for you to understand that visitors must spend enough time on your site so that they can what they want and you can get what you want. They will only the quality of service or product you offer when they stay on your site and look around the posted content. Even if you have thousands of visitors but none of them are staying for even a minute, how will they know about the quality of your brand despite being an excellent one? 

This post focused only on telling you the ways and techniques by which visitors on your blog post willingly spend a good amount of time and improve the average rate. Considering this will also have a good impact on your SEO and SERP ranking. 

We hope that this post would have helped you in giving the information you were looking for and will be great in reaping long-term benefits.