3 Steps to Increase Your Page Views per Visit
You’ve worked hard and prepared a big meal for your guests.
There’s a full spread, including snacks, appetizers, salads, meats, veggies,
and desserts. But it all goes to waste, and the only thing that’s eaten is a
bowl of pretzels. What happened?
The same thing’s happening when your content site’s Visitors only
touch one or two pages during a browsing session.
You think to yourself: Look at all this content, I have pages that cater to topics my audience wants, I have different types of content like video, white papers, and light reading, I have guided navigation and search, and still, they come in they hit one or two pages and leave, what gives?
You think to yourself: Look at all this content, I have pages that cater to topics my audience wants, I have different types of content like video, white papers, and light reading, I have guided navigation and search, and still, they come in they hit one or two pages and leave, what gives?
There’s one metric that you can look at that can help you
understand user engagement and how to generate multipage sessions: Pages per
visit.
For a content site, your pages per visit metric is a good indicator
of the quality of your content, navigation structure, and overall user
experience (Patel, n.d.). It’s
also interconnected with the visitor characterization metric of visit duration
and the engagement metric of bounce rate. (Bateman, n.d.) When taken together
with these metrics, you can learn about how to improve your content, optimize your site, and increase your page views per visit.
Just think about it, instead of all that work going to waste, you
can create an experience where your guests happily graze from one page to
another. It’s a clear indicator that your serving up good content. But to reach that goal it takes a site navigation structure and in-site search that works, at speeds that satisfy
users need for instant information (Bateman).
So if you're looking to increase your page views per visit, focus on these three areas:
So if you're looking to increase your page views per visit, focus on these three areas:
- Content: High quality, evergreen content
- SEO: Produce a lot of content, link to other high-traffic sites, use keywords in your writing
- Site Optimization: Make sure your site's fast, your pages are well designed, and you provide recommended content
A Short Note on Goals
Your ideal page views per visit depends on the goals you have for your site. Since
you’re in the content game, it’s safe to assume that you want your visitors to browse,
download, and share your content. These actions enhance the equity of your
content site and brand, because people are getting what they came for, and page
views per visit is one indicator that you’re on the right track.
Two or three pages per visit may work for some, while
eight to ten may be the right number for others. Do you want people to share
your content so you can generate more traffic and thus ad revenue? Do you want
people to book you for speaking engagements? Do you want people to sign up for
premium content? Think in terms of what you want people to do on your site,
then structure it in a way that leads people to take that action and “convert”….before
they bounce.
One way to better understand if people are doing what you want
them to do on your site is to align your page views per visit, bounce rate, and
repeat visitor metrics. Are repeat visitors browsing more pages during their
sessions? At what point do they bounce from your site? Do they bounce before
they take an action that you consider a conversion? If you’re wondering why,
you could find an answer by posting a one question exit survey before they
close the browser.
Content That Keeps 'Em Clicking
So what are some of the content and site design moves you can make to maximize conversions and multipage browsing sessions?
So what are some of the content and site design moves you can make to maximize conversions and multipage browsing sessions?
Think of your site strategically and look at elements related to
content, user experience and guided navigation. SEO and Content expert Neil
Patel recommends creating great content that’s optimized for search and evergreen,
while also having a site that’s blazing fast, and strategically promotes
content (Patel).
As with all things content, quality is critically important.
Smart, well-written, error-free work is the minimum standard. Relevant,
supporting graphics and well-produced video also have a positive impact but once you have those in place, what's next?
Search and Content Optimization
The next step is making certain you have a sound SEO strategy. One basic tactic is writing with the keywords you need to drive traffic in mind. Then, create content known as "evergreen", it's content that has a long shelf-life and isn't dependent on news trends. Think about your editorial calendar, and write about problems that matter to your customer. Think about what keeps your customer awake at night, then identify those needs and select topics that address tthem. A strategic approach to how you create content is also helpful, as filling the content pipe can be a challenging task. Create “hero content” that’s easier to break apart and reuse, repurpose, and reconfigure so you can fill the void consistently (Didner, 2015).
The next step is making certain you have a sound SEO strategy. One basic tactic is writing with the keywords you need to drive traffic in mind. Then, create content known as "evergreen", it's content that has a long shelf-life and isn't dependent on news trends. Think about your editorial calendar, and write about problems that matter to your customer. Think about what keeps your customer awake at night, then identify those needs and select topics that address tthem. A strategic approach to how you create content is also helpful, as filling the content pipe can be a challenging task. Create “hero content” that’s easier to break apart and reuse, repurpose, and reconfigure so you can fill the void consistently (Didner, 2015).
Site speed can also have an impact on page views per visit. Site speed can be improved by simple tactics like minimizing the
size of images and graphics. Downscaling images can quickly take 20Mb site
pages down to less than 2Mb. Google has a useful tool called PageSpeed Insights that you can use to figure out what’s slowing down your pages.
You might be surprised at what you find, and how simple tasks like downscaling
can improve user engagement and conversions. Patel cites that slower sites see
a 11% fewer page views, and for big players like Amazon and Walmart, every
second of improvement can yield 1-2% improvement in conversions (Patel).
Finally, think in terms of strategic promotion of the content
that’s on your site and how it can drive more pageviews. Guide your users with a sidebar that promotes related
content, link to old content within your articles, and elevate fresh content
though both sidebars and recommendations.
Once you make these changes keep an eye on your pages per visit
metric and ensure that it’s moving closer to the goal you’ve set. To monitor
it, you can set a goal within your Google Analytics report, here’s a template you
can place in your advanced dashboards. Soon you’ll find that your sites’ guests
are leaving full and satisfied, and your site’s not full of unwanted, leftover
content.
References
Bateman, S. (n.d.). Pages per visit
overlooked and vitally important. Promise Media. [Blog]. Retrieved on October
19, 2018 from https://www.promisemedia.com/content-development/pages-per-visit-overlooked-and-vitally-important
Didner, P.
(2015). Global content marketing. McGraw Hill Education: New York, New York.
Patel,
N. (n.d.). How to increase your pageviews by visitor. NeilPatel.com. [Blog].
Retrieved on October 18, 2018 from https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-increase-your-pageviews-per-visitor/
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