How do you know if people like your content?
The best way to measure reader engagement is to track average page views and average time per visit. These two blog metrics will tell you whether people stick around and read multiple pages on your blog or whether they bounce off after a single page view.
It’s important that you understand that these measures are averages and include all of your bounces. A high bounce rate above 70% means that most of your visitors are probably finding your site through a search engine and that your content is either irrelevant to what they searched for, or that it’s not dense enough for them to stick around to read another page.
You can improve average time per visit by writing longer posts or adding video to them which will boost average time per visit. Adding more internal links to your posts will help increase the average number of page views per visit. Both of these approaches increase content density and promote deeper engagement.
If your average pages views per visit are 2.0 or higher and average time per visit is over 3:00 minutes, then keep doing whatever you are doing. If not, you need to make some changes to the amount of detail in your posts and the amount of internal cross-linking you do.
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I beg to differ :)
I’ve long been of the opinion that bounce rates are irrelevant, and reflect an outdated, corporate-style approach to web design. The whole “we need to keep them on our pages for as long as possible” is very 1998, “web-portal” thinking.
People today have a trillion things to do online. They spend a huge amount of hours per day online, viewing all kinds of information, shopping, reading the news, checking facebook. People don’t want to spend ages on a site, and sites should be designed to reflect this: access to information and content should be fast, concise and self-contained.
It’s unreasonable to expect readers to want to stay on your site having visited one page. If the land on that page, it is generally because there is something there that interests them. They read it, and move on to the next thing.
Most avid readers use RSS aggregators, and don’t even visit the sites unless they want to make a comment. Indeed, it’s irritating if a site has blocked RSS access.
To say that “a bounce rate above 70% means that most of your visitors are probably finding your site through a search engine” is a strange thing to say. Most of what we find from the web is vis a search engine – it’s the primary means of navigating to content.
You say that if they don’t stick around “your content is [...] irrelevant to what they searched for” – so what? You can’t write content that is relevant for everyone. Sometimes when I’m searching for something I land on an irrelevant page. If it’s not relevant, of course I’m going to move on. I don’t have time to read irrelevant information.
Another detail compounding irrelevancy is information density, but I feel you have it the wrong way around. A long, dense, post is a turn off for most people – unless they are specifically in search of a literary experience on a subject they are already interested in, and most are not. Most want to get to the facts in the minimum mount of time. I would wager that people would stick around on a site and explore it more if they felt it had relevant information in accessible bite-sized form, where a quick scout around would provide them with something interesting, after which they would add it to their RSS stream or favorites.
“You can improve average time per visit by writing longer posts or adding video to them which will boost average time per visit.” But what difference does this make? So what if someone stays longer on your site reading a long post? It doesn’t mean they will read anything else – in fact, by the time they get to the end they will probably be so fed up they’ll be eager to move on. All that is achieved is a longer page view time, because it took longer to read.
Adding video is a contentious area. Admittedly, video is popular on YouTube, and perhaps this is a generational thing. Personally, I get extremely irritated with video because it cannot be speed read – it cannot be skimmed. If you want to find relevant information in a video, you have to jump around all over the place with the timeline, hoping that you randomly land upon the relevant section. The only alternative is to sit through a 6 minute review of, say, an alcohol stove, which could have been read if it we in written form in less than a minute. So yes, both of these approaches increase content density, but is that really a good thing? Deeper engagement? Personally, I don’t think so.
Lastly, internal linking: yes, we all do it, because we want to point to our other content. They can be extremely relevant and useful. But we should also link to external content – other reviews by other people. True value from a website comes from the writer/owner proving him/herself to be a willing exponent of the field and other people. To find an undiscovered, useful site with relevant information from the site being browsed is a true time-saver, and will increase the esteem of the linking site and it’s author. Trying to keep people trapped within the confines of your own site will achieve nothing but the opposite.
Wow, Mr. Roberts — How VERY refreshing to read your remarks. It certainly is nice to find you are not the only voice crying in the desert.
You are dead on — and the trends you cite are accelerating. Roping and tying visitors is soooo last century and positively medieval thinking.
With increasing views being done on portable [small screen] devices complex site navigation and lengthy print articles have all the relevance of sailing ships in the jet age.
The FIRST thing people look for when they arrive at a page is their search term. IF they do not see it almost immediately most will abandon the page — only a VERY small percentage will bother to navigate on the off-chance that data relevant to their search can be found somewhere on the site.
Those who fail to design accordingly are hoping for the return of vaudeville — but it just ain’t happen’ follks; get used to the idea that large screen HDTV has replaced it. PERIOD — and catch up to what is happeingin now or go the way of the dinosaur.
Good points. I think it really comes down to what you are trying to achieve on a web site. If it’s a business site where your goal is to make some $$ off your readers, repeatedly over a long period of time, deep engagement is important. But it’s true, posts don’t have to be long or deeply linked. If you post relevant material frequently you can have the same impact.
Outdoor companies do not have the luxury of hosting blogs that do not have a monetary upside. Marketing budgets don’t work like that.
Thank you for the article Philip! I just checked my pages viewed/visit on my new site and I am at 2.21 (up from 1.98 with the old site design) ….and I still have internal linking that I’m working on!
You just made my day! :)
Good news – you’re doing exactly the right thing.
Thanks! I hope so! :)
I liked this article. It was informative, contained usefull advice that was exactly relevant to what I was searching for ( yes, I came from a search engine), and I found the discussion in the comments engaging. And I will not be clicking on any links to other pages. To the analytics I will count as a bounce; such is the nature of the web. I too want more people to visit more pages on my site, that’s how I ended up reading this article, that just might not be how the web works now.
I was little worried to see only 3 pages per visit and bounces of 59% in average. Thanks for the post. It was very helpful to me. I think I am on the track.
Thanks for the article. Today so far we’ve had a quite amazing 13.6 pageviews per visitor and our average for this month and last month is about 6. Thanks to you I know we’re doing well. Now we just need more readers!
That is pretty phenomenal. You’re doing great. Try getting your readers to refer others that they know will be interested in your content using social media.
Thanks. We’re working on that. I just found out about Tumbler today and that is doing some good. Facebook helps, actually everything I’ve tried helps some. Work=rewards.