Hey blog fam! Have you been wondering how to keep visitors on your website longer? Looking for more ways to grow your online community?
In this post we take a look at a some definite ways that you can start using today to turn website visitors into fans and members of your online community.
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Starting a new website you will have different emotions. You will be excited for the possibilities of getting your online presence started.
There may be some uncertainties especially if this is your first website.
Of all the emotions you will be feeling I encourage you to press forward in your blog journey and learn to manage the ups and downs of blogging.
The best way I’ve learned to blog is by blogging! You will be introduced to many things at the same time and will need to learn how to manage your projects and time.
For some of the elements of blogging you will find courses, ebooks, or videos that can help especially with the technical aspects of blogging.
This website is filled with all sorts of resources, guides, and great tools to use to help you with your blogging journey.
Other elements like knowing how often to post, or how to use social media to promote will be learned as you go.
You want to make an impact with your content and draw visitors to your website.
Get really good at delivering value and turn website visitors into fans and members of your community.
Keep Visitors on Your Website Longer
Keeping visitors on your website is important, but how many visitors are actually coming to your site? How are visitors finding your content?
Related: Best Tips To Get Your New Blog Noticed
These are two really important questions to answer before we move into the topic of keeping visitors on your website longer.
A great tool we have for tracking website data will be Google Analytics (GA). Using GA you can track just about everything you can think of with your website.
This is a free service from Google and it’s packed with great tools. If your not using GA you should get started right away and begin tracking your websites analytics and performance.
I have posts written that will help you get started with GA and learn the important metrics to track.
Related: How to Install Google Analytics
Related: Understanding Google Analytics
How To Keep People on Your Website Longer
Time spent on a website is called “stickiness” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_content
PRO TIP as you start digging into your analytics you can determine what content visitors spend the most time reading.
We want to find the content that people are spending the most time on and also the content that people seem to be bouncing from.
With this data you will be able to create more of what is popular and go back in those posts that have less time read, and find ways to improve them.
In GA scroll down to Behavior-Site Content-All Pages. This is where you will find content listed from most visited to least visited.
Looking at posts that get lots of pageviews but have a high bounce rate is the specific data we want.
This piece of information is telling us that we may have a catchy headline but nothing in the content to hook the reader and capture there full interest.
This is an opportunity to strengthen these posts!
How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages
According to a study done by the Nielson Norman Group, website visitors will leave a webpage in 10-20 seconds.
To retain visitors on your website for longer times get really good at providing value and solutions to your readers queries.
To increase website engagements have a clear catchy introduction in your content so that your readers understand what your article is about.
What is Pages Per Session
This is the average number of pages a visitor views on your website during a session.
Quick example would be if your GA report shows 4 pages per session, this simply means that your visitors on average are viewing 4 pages before leaving your website.
How To Increase Pages Per Session
- Create evergreen content
- Use your sidebar to promote other posts
- Repurpose old posts and add links to content
How to Find Pages Per Session in Google Analytics
You can find the average pages per session data in your GA under Acquisition-Overview-Channels.
The data found here will give you pages per session for each channel or source of your website traffic.
Website Load Time
Why does website load time matter? The main reason is providing a great user experience.
When your visitor lands on your website the goal is to keep them on your page.
A slow loading website can be frustrating and cause that visitor to leave your website.
The goal is to do everything possible to attract and maintain visitors to your website/blog. Another reason would be Google.
The search engine keeps an index of web pages. Whenever a search is entered Google quickly goes through its index to find the most relevant results for that search.
Optimization will help your website/blog to be found in those results.
Related: Why Website Load time Matter
Great User Experience
A great user experience is helpful in keeping your visitors on your website longer.
Starting with a simple background you want to create a design that is not to busy and easy on the eyes.
Use easy to read fonts and great images. You have complete control over your website look.
I only suggest a simple design that increases your chances at retaining visitors.
Have a look at this handy graphic for a visual interpretation. It’s an idea called The User Experience Honeycomb.
Using this method your content can serve several purposes at once.
- Useful – your content has to provide a solution.
- Useable – keep it simple, your content should be useable by your readers.
- Desirable – there should be some popularity in search for your content.
- Findable – this relates to easy site navigation, users should be able to navigate your site in three clicks.
- Accessible – if your website is slow loading or not responsive users will not have a good experience.
- Credible – you can build credibility by delivering well research, useful and meaningful content that is accurate.
- Valuable – a website should continuously deliver value to people and help them solve there problems, and queries.
Scannable Content
It has been reported that people don’t spend a lot of time reading through a websites content word for word.
A reader will come to your website and scan your titles looking for information that may help them.
Making your content scan friendly will help retain a visitor as they scan your content.
Scannable content is written with easy to read large fonts. You should use short paragraphs usually three or so sentences, and add images to break up text.
A great way to keep visitors on your website longer is to have a clear and easy to navigate site.
Visitors should be able to get to your content within three clicks. Anything more than that a visitor may bounce because of a perceived difficulty of finding your sites content.
Make sure to have simple navigation menus and showcase your most popular content in an easy to find place.
Keep in mind mobile responsiveness. Near half of website traffic can be coming from a mobile device.
If you are not using a mobile responsive design you will see a higher bounce rate.
Make sure you are using a mobile responsive design.
Deliver on Your Headline’s Promise
Going for the best and most catchy headlines is important. You want to attract visitors to your website.
Just as important as your titles will be your content.
This could be a small over looked area, but if your content doesn’t “hold it’s weight”(so to speak) your readers will loose faith in your writing.
Whatever your title advertises make sure your content delivers!
New Content
Your blog should be filled with fresh content as much as possible. The more content you have the better your website will look to visitors.
Having a large catalog of articles will help keep your website viewers on your site much longer. More content= more traffic.
What if your just starting out? Chances are you won’t have tons of content on a new website.
You want to work hard to build up your content and add value to your website.
The saying “quality over quantity” really stands out for newer bloggers.
Even though you may not have lot’s of articles on your site you can have great well written articles.
Taking time to research topics in your niche and produce useful and meaningful content can strengthen your website.
In time your website can become a great resource for your readers.
Remember to take the time to research topics that your audience will have an interest in.
Write content that delivers solutions- and helps people with there queries.
Related: How to Write Engaging Posts
Long Form Content
Content is king! Typically you want to take time to research and write longer articles.
There may be times when you have articles that are 500- 1,000 words. This is ok because each article serves a purpose.
Other times you want to write long form content. Writing longer articles can be away to gain more regular visitors to your site, and keep visitors on your site longer.
These are posts that could be 2,000-3,000 words and up.
Now if you look at studies of posts that rank high in SERP’s you will see that often times long form content generally ranks higher on Google.
One reason for this could be the amount of research for long form content could end up with more details about your topic.
This can be good for Google because your post will stand out.
Writing long form content can be difficult at times, but here’s a couple of quick ideas that you can use.
Writing a how to or a tutorial on a topic. You can also create guides that get really detailed about a specific topic.
Related: How to Guide For Improving Website Performance
Interlink Related Content
Interlinking related posts may seem simple and not high tech. This is however a way to keep your readers attention and get them to spend more time on your website.
Interlinking allows your visitors to discover more of your great content.
With interlinking you are adding links in your blog posts that lead to other related posts on your website.
I usually bookmark a website when I find multiple articles on topics I’m interested in.
Most bloggers are doing this I’m sure, but if you are newer to blogging and you don’t have lot’s of articles written this is ok.
PRO TIP create pillar content and use clustering to build up your blog catalog.
This is a method of writing that as a new blogger you can create content with a main topic and add supporting articles that can be interlinked.
Pillar content is a way to build your authority on a topic. Taking time to research and write from different prospective’s on a topic shows diversity and is good for Google and your readers.
How to interlink blog posts using WordPress Gutenberg? Follow this quick tutorial below.
- High-lite the word or words in your article that will be used for your link.
- Tick the link on your editor box.
- Choose your option (open in new tab) Paste in your link or type in a keyword from your post, select article and press enter to save.
When creating links for your blog do not choose “open in a new tab”.
You want to keep people on your website.
If you are using a link to another website then this is a time where you choose “open in a new tab”.
Use a Related Post Plugin
Related posts plugins are great for putting more of your content in front of your readers.
This is another way of getting visitors to hang around on your website longer.
Using a WordPress plugin called Contextual Related Posts you can display posts at the end of an article.
The plugin uses keywords to find other posts on your blog. This is especially good if you are writing on a specific topic.
FYI-even though your theme may show “next or previous post” you still want to use a related post plugin.
Use Charts and Graphs
If you are using a statistic or comparing things you can use a chart or a graph to illustrate your point.
You can get really fancy and use bright colorful designs. Creating your own designs is really easy with the right tools.
I like PicMonkey for graphics. You can check out there website and even start a free trial to test out there online editing tools.
See PicMonkey here
In conclusion
In your blog journey you will discover the technical aspects of blogging are relatively easy. (Designing your website, doing backup’s, and using plugins)
What you need to get good at is attracting and retaining visitors to your site. Keeping people on your website longer is possible by planning your website setup and including the right attributes.
Using the ideas in this post can help help you to convert your visitors into fans.
Once your great content is discovered you will begin growing your online presence and become a great resource for your community.
Now over to you
What are some ideas you could share with us that you use to keep visitors on your website longer?
Leave comments below we love to hear from our readers!
4 Responses
I just started my blog and want to thank you for these handy tips! You saved me a lot of work 🙂
Awesome Canna I’m glad they helped out! Thanks for dropping by
Thanks for the tips! I’m a new blogger so I really appreciate them
Awesome! glad they helped Elizabeth