{"id":2334,"date":"2017-06-08T13:20:07","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T13:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getstencil.com\/blog\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2017-06-08T13:20:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T13:20:21","slug":"5-ways-increase-time-page-increase-rankings-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getstencil.com\/blog\/5-ways-increase-time-page-increase-rankings-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Ways to Increase Time On Page (Increase Rankings and Readers!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time on page is an important ranking metric<\/a> and has been for a long time. There are other ways to think about time on page, time on site, or even \u201cdwell time\u201d.<\/p>\n

The overall idea is that a user who is referred by a search engine begins reading your page and decides how long they will spend on that page before moving to another page or clicking the back button in their browser. As soon as one of those events occurs, the clock is stopped and the dwell time can be calculated.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My favorite way to understand Google\u2019s algorithm is through common sense<\/strong> so let\u2019s take a common sense approach to this issue. Google wants to provide relevant and useful search results for every query. If Google refers 100 visitors to your page and they stay on your site for an average of 20 seconds while Google refers 100 visitors to another page for the same query and they stay for 60 seconds, which is the \u201cbetter\u201d page for that query. Using common sense, the people who stayed for 60 seconds cared more about that page and chose to spend longer on that page.<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t email me telling me there are more metrics that just time on page. I realize, this is just a simplified explanation of one single ranking factor!<\/p>\n

How can we influence that specific ranking factor? Said in another way, how can we keep people on a page longer? I have 5 quick tips that I implement on all of the great content that we produce at DiamondLinks.net.<\/p>\n

Add images<\/h2>\n

Images are an all around great strategy. I have subscriptions at multiple stock photo sites and we use them all. A great site is Pexels.com<\/a> and it\u2019s free. Pexels aggregates stock photos from other free sites. For some reason, they don\u2019t have all of them from the sites so we often check Pixabay.com<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

Make sure and check the Creative Common\u2019s Licensing. I usually look for CC0<\/a> which states, \u201cYou can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stock photos are great and help to break up big chunks of text, but even better than stock photos are\u2026<\/p>\n

Create Custom Images<\/h2>\n

This is where Stencil<\/a> excels. I use Stencil to create images and graphics for my blog post but then adapt it to social media to promote the post on social media. Stencil makes that process extremely simple as they have the sizes for each platform already built in.<\/p>\n

Here is my workflow when creating images with Stencil, you can see examples here<\/a> and here<\/a>, both of those examples were created with Stencil.<\/p>\n

Step 1<\/em> \u2013 Find a template<\/a> you like. I try to find something that matches the topic. I chose this template so you can see the before and after transformation.<\/p>\n

\"Template\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 2<\/em> \u2013 Customize text. I put the title into the text to make it fit, I always put in all of the text before making it fit.<\/p>\n

At this point it looks bad, but that\u2019s just temporary.<\/p>\n

\"AddText\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 3<\/em> \u2013 Position Text. Now I begin repositioning the text and other elements that need to be adjusted because of the text.<\/p>\n

\"TextUpdated\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 4<\/em> \u2013 Add Flair. It could be used at this point but I don\u2019t think it looks great, it\u2019s very monotone and needs some flair. Please note that I\u2019m not a great designer. I\u2019m not even a good designer.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really care for the paperclip icon so I\u2019ll look through and find something I like more.<\/p>\n

I added a chart icon by searching \u201cchart\u201d and then changed the background searching \u201cchart\u201d as well.<\/p>\n

\"background\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 5<\/em> \u2013 Increase Readability. I like everything except how hard the text is to read. Add this grey background was a little tricky. I tried to add a background to each text block but that didn\u2019t work. I had to add a text box with just line breaks (hit the enter\/return key) and then move it back and set a background.<\/p>\n

\"textbackground\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I added a light drop shadow to text I wanted to highlight and consider that a finished product! Since this was the final I started to review my creation\u2026<\/p>\n

\"final\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 6<\/em> \u2013 Proof Read. This should be \u201cStep 0\u201d. As I was reviewing I realized my grammar was off! I added the word \u201cand\u201d which should have been there in the beginning. I was never one to measure twice and cut once.<\/p>\n

That was for Facebook, you\u2019ll need to adjust the sizes of your elements to get each of the other image sizes you need.<\/p>\n

Here is the modified final for a blog post.<\/p>\n

\"stencil.blog-post-feature\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Write Compelling Content<\/h2>\n

Great content elicits great feedback.<\/strong> That feedback comes in the form of shares, comments and an increase in time on page. If people love what you\u2019re writing they\u2019ll read the whole thing and then look through your site to see what else you\u2019ve done. I can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve found a blogger I really like but didn\u2019t know before. I read an article and was hooked.<\/p>\n

Compelling content is equal parts art and science. There are a lot of great resources, if you\u2019re new to content creation and content marketing, check out Brian Dean<\/a> as I consider him to be at the very top of this field.<\/p>\n

When I write content, I look at a 5 key factors including\u2026<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Where will this content go?<\/li>\n
  2. Who is the target reader?<\/li>\n
  3. What is my goal with the content?<\/li>\n
  4. What is the main takeaway?<\/li>\n
  5. What should the reader do after reading?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Those questions should set the tone of the article. In my business we write a lot of content for clients. Much of the content is just filler content for a new website. After that is done we often look at ideas for an excellent piece of content that can rank well, drive traffic, and increase overall time on site (because of that one article having a high time on page).<\/p>\n

    Through this type of content marketing strategies we are able to consistently get ranking results for both SEO clients and reputation management clients. I have been in this field since 2004 and had a single Google algorithm update in the mid-2000\u2019s that affected me negatively. Since then, every new algorithm update has had a neutral (no significant change) or positive (major ranking increases) increase in rankings. This indicates to me that great content written and placed on great sites is an effective strategy<\/strong> that is not going away anytime soon.<\/p>\n

    Eye Stops<\/h2>\n

    Naturally our eyes begin to glaze over when we\u2019re forced to read a long paragraph of text. Having some key highlights allows our eyes to rest on that sentence or phrase. This stops mindless scrolling through a page. Here are a few great ways to get the reader to read through each word you\u2019ve written.<\/p>\n