After my last post about Panda and Penguin updates and how to improve your site I got a lot of emails asking about how to improve average time on site and keep the user on your site longer. You can do this in a few ways, let me explain a few.
Add Video To Your Website
By adding video to your site the user will stay on your site and watch the videos. You can make a bunch of “How To” videos and keep the user on your site for a few minutes. If you can't make some videos you can find a video or two on YouTube and embed it into a post. Not exactly the way I would go about it but if you really needed to increase your time on site until you can make a video I will allow it until you get started making your own videos.
If you can't make a video or you are shy, write out a script and head to Fiverr.com, there are plenty of people that will do a video for you. You can also upload that video to YouTube and use it to drive traffic from YouTube to your website. If you click on my affiliate marketing page you will see the page starts with a 50 minute video. Any guesses what the average time on site is for that page?
Your “About Me” page is an excellent place to put a video and show your audience that you are a real person. People buy from people they trust and by them being able to meet you it helps build that trust 100% better.
Every Friday the guys over at SEOMoz make a video and call them Whiteboard Friday Video. Every Friday I am on their site from anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes depending on the length of the video. Real helpful quality stuff that is fun to watch. Once again if you were Google would you rank this website above a SEO website where the user only stayed on the site for a minute. The page where I have the video of the Space Shuttle hitting the train trestle averages almost 4 minutes, not bad at all.
Add Audio To Your Website
Same thing as the video above, people will sit on your site and listen to audio. Making a podcast is not that hard and getting the audio on to your site isn't rocket science. I have websites where we have 30 minute podcast that we did 2 years ago that is still getting listened to. Some sites it is 15 minute podcast! If you think you can't do a podcast that long put out a Tweet looking for experts in your field. Someone will love to come on your podcast and do 90% of the talking. All you have to do is ask them questions.
If you want to super optimize the page with the podcast have it transcribed. We use Speechpad to get our podcast transcribed. If you have Dragon Naturally speaking 10 software you can upload your mp3 and have it transcribe it. It may not do a good job but spending 10-15 minutes editing it you will have a page of natural flowing content that is better than any writer could ever write for you. In the future you will see more podcast on this site.
Add Pictures To Your Website
Usually I go against putting a lot of pictures on a page but having a few pictures and some text can increase your time on site. Explaining what is in each picture will take the user some time to read the page. Having my camera with me 90% of the time I end up with some great photos which I don't share enough here on the site. I am still looking for a good plugin gallery.
The reason I have a pictures category on here was done with time on site in mind. When you first saw this picture on the left of a seagull picking up a bagel it caused you to look at the picture for a few seconds. Every second counts when it comes to time on page.
That is just three ways I keep the reader on my sites a little longer. It doesn't take much work at all and once you get in the habit of putting video, audio, and pictures on your site it becomes second nature.
String a Few Pages Together
There are many times that I go out and take a ton of pictures with my camera. Of course I can not put them all on one page because that would kill the load time. Sometimes I will take my top 5 photos and make 5 pages and create a story about each picture on each page. At the end of each page I will have a Click Here to see the next picture. Not only does this help improve average time on site it also helps on pages per visit.
Don Campbell says
Great tips Vinny.
I publish of “how-to” videos on Expand2Web, just like you suggest in you article. Solid advice – it definitely helps my time on site stats, but most importantly provides useful information for readers on specific topics.
Vinny O'Hare says
Thanks Don
I bet you have a nice time on average for your website. I know I watch every video you have for the entire length of the video.
James Martell says
Hey Vinny, great tips. I like Daniel’s “audioposts” idea as well. We do 10-15 minute discussions on our most popular sales pages. They work great!
Daniel M. Clark says
Great article, Vinny. I’ve just recorded and posted the first two “audioposts” to go along with some lengthy articles on one of my sites. They’re sort of like podcasts, but they’re not sequential and are read from a script – the blog post. Kinda like starting with a transcript and creating an episode rather than the other way around. Each one is 6-9 minutes for posts that are 1000-2000 words, so I’m thinking time-on-site will be through the roof.
Vinny O'Hare says
That sounds like an interesting way to do some post. I am sure it will help that time on site will improve. Let me know how it works out.
suzanne@rowingmachinereviews says
HI Vinny! I was redirected to your site by James Martell. He posted a link to this article in his fb page. Glad that I followed it. A lot of great ideas! Am not a pro like all of you guys..am just pretty new here and I will be following your tips! Thanks a lot!
Vinny O'Hare says
Glad to have you on board Suzanne!
Joe says
Just come across your site. Really good advice for affiliate marketers. Notice that you post to G+ far more than Facebook. Nearly wore my finger out tracking down to the first of your posts on G+! I take it you get a better result on G+ than Facebook. Haven’t used G+ yet but will have to give it a try.