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When you are spending time and money getting new visitors to your website, you want to put your best foot forward to keep them around.
Depending on the site, this could involve reading a few articles, buying a product, or signing up for your newsletter.
In any of these scenarios, tracking site engagement is vital. One metric that can help––pages per session.
In this post, we’re going to look closer at this metric, along with 41 actionable strategies and tactics that you can use to increase it.
Pages per session is the average number of pages a person views in a given session. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of pageviews by the total number of sessions. This metric can be helpful for gauging how sticky and engaging your website is. In general, any content site that relies on Adsense, advertising, or affiliate revenue wants to increase the number of pages that each user sees. More eyeballs and time spent browsing pages on your site means more revenue. ?For example, if your website has an average pages per session of 3, this means the average user visits three pages before leaving your website.
According to Databox’s own Benchmark data, pageviews per session for B2B companies is 1.9 (monthly).
This benchmark was calculated from anonymized data from over 800 companies.
For B2C companies, the median value of pageviews per session is 2.06.
This benchmark was calculated from anonymized data from almost 500 companies.
*Important note: Databox Benchmark Groups show median values. The median is calculated by taking the “middle” value, the value for which half of the observations are larger and half are smaller. The average is calculated by adding up all of the individual values and dividing this total by the number of observations. While both are measures of central tendency, when there is a possibility of extreme values, the median is generally the better measure to use.
Viewing benchmark data can be enlightening, but seeing where your company’s efforts rank against those benchmarks can be game-changing.
Browse Databox’s open Benchmark Groups and join ones relevant to your business to get free and instant performance benchmarks.
You can track the average pages per session for your website in the Acquisition Overview Report in Google Analytics. You can find this along the left sidebar.
Here, you can get an overview of the overall pages per session for your entire website.
Want to dig even deeper into this metric? You can also see the average pages per session for each individual channel, source, medium, referral. This will help you see which traffic sources bring in the most engaged users.
You can do this by navigating to Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels along the left sidebar in Google Analytics.
Here, you’ll be able to see the pages per session for each of your major acquisition channels. This way you can determine which channels are driving higher engaged users to your website.
While it’s good to track pages per session in Google Analytics, it’s even more helpful to track this metric (alongside other important metrics to your marketing efforts) in a more visually compelling way to make it easier to spot trends and discover insights.
With Databox, you can visualize pages per session in a couple of different ways that allow you to pull even more insights from this metric.
Here’s a couple of ways that we recommend…
First, we recommend tracking pages per session in a line graph showing daily fluctuations. This allows you to track the impact that specific campaigns have on your overall website engagement.
That big email promotion? New website redesign? That time your post was retweeted by a big influencer? BY viewing pages per session this way, you can easily track the impact that things like this have.
You can also segment pages per session based on channel or source.
For example, using this bar graph in Databox, you can visualize your average pages per session specifically from organic traffic. We recommend using a visualization like this if you’re heavily invested in content marketing as an acquisition channel. This way, you can see if the organic traffic you’re driving to your website is actually engaging with your website beyond the initial entry page.
*The same holds true for paid traffic. This will allow you to maximize the ROI of your paid ad campaigns by ensuring people are sticking around and completing your desired actions instead of immediately bouncing.
Editor’s note: Did you know that you could view your dashboards from your mobile device, tablet or Apple Watch? That’s right. With the Databox Android or iOS mobile app, you can literally wear KPIs in your pocket, or on your wrist!
Okay, so, after all of that, how do you actually increase your pages per session?
We surveyed dozens of marketers to find out the most useful and helpful ways of doing so.
In total, we counted 41 ways to approach increasing your pages per session.
Sure, there are dozens (and dozens?) more Google Analytics 4 metrics you could track. But, starting with these 10 commonly tracked metrics will give you a pretty high-level view of how your marketing is working…
If you want to track these in Google Analytics, you might find the visualizations limiting. It’s also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.
To better understand how your website performs in terms of traffic growth and conversions, we’ve made this plug-and-play dashboard that contains all the essential metrics for understanding how successful you are at optimizing different aspects of your website.
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
“Get feedback from your target market,” says James Miller of Minuteman Review. “Asking for a review is a straightforward method to fix costly mistakes that influence our page per session metrics. It never hurts to be direct with customers, and it is virtually free too. However, most companies fail to utilize the power of surveys to their advantage, thinking that it is a cheap and sneaky tactic. On the contrary, our visitors appreciate this practice because they see that we took the time to consider their opinion regarding the issue.”
Jared Ebrahimoff of Lavari Jewelers adds, “The best way to increase the average pages per session is to improve customer experience. For that, we hire mystery shoppers to shop incognito on our competitor’s online stores. In doing so, they can provide us with invaluable insight into what makes the customer experience of our competition work for their patrons. After gathering data, businesses can modify their current system to make it more appealing for visitors, which undoubtedly increases the average pages per session.
“An effective way to increase your average pages per session is to create content that is relevant to your target audience,” says Meir Gold of Guesty. “There are no real shortcuts here, provide quality content and your pages per session and conversions will increase!”
Marcus Miller of Bowler Hat adds, “Generally, the best way to increase average pages per session is to clearly interlink content articles or to signpost what the user should do next.
As an example, if I am reading an article on a website, then within that article, there are links to other articles that further expand upon a given point, I can quickly end up with several tabs open and an increased reading list.
With my analytics hat on, this increased engagement gives me a much clearer idea of what this user is interested in, which helps me craft far more interesting remarketing recipes to help nurture this user towards whatever I am pursuing.
It is really hard to answer these kind of questions though without specific context, as it just depends. There are some instances in which we don’t want a user to visit other pages – a landing page for instance. These pages are typically designed to do everything in one place and generate a lead.
Alternatively, higher up the funnel, we may be interested in engaging our users and learning more about them – if this is the case, well-linked content articles are a solid way of driving increased engagement and further page views.
Or, maybe we have a more advanced sales funnel that takes users from a more basic, low friction conversion, to something a little more weighty. In this instance, we want to focus on UX and conversion optimization to keep nudging that user to our destination.
If we were looking for one single strategy or technique, then it is to really understand your user and to help them achieve their objectives – if you can understand your audience then engaging them becomes so much easier.”
“An effective way to increase average pages per session is to design a user journey through your website,” says Djordje Milicevic of StableWP. “Plan out what page should come next after each landing page, then make the next step insanely obvious. Have clear call-to-action text, prominent CTA buttons, easy navigation, and plenty of internal linking.”
“Interactive webpages are quite effective in increasing average pages per session,” says Damien Martin of Shufti Pro. “Adding CTAs, downloadable content, videos, in-text internal linking, and some magic with design makes your customers spend more time on your website and to navigate pages.”
“The best way to improve pages per session is to improve navigation and incorporate it throughout your site– not just in the main menu,” says Tianna Mañón of Manon Media Management. “For example, utilize sidebars, hyperlinks within the body, and grouping related content to make an immediate improvement. Past this, identify 3-5 pages you want people to see every time they visit your site. This can be your mission statement or booking page, but once identified, it’s critical that these be found throughout your site not just in the main menu. You will immediately see a rise in pages visited per session!”
Chris Harrison of Media Lounge says, “In my experience, the best way to improve this metric is to create an engaging and enjoyable user experience. Visitors to your site will be far more likely to stick around and explore if your pages load quickly, avoid using overbearing popups and generally keep things simple. Do everything you can to remove distractions and keep the user focused on your content or products – they’re far more likely to engage with more of your site if they’re finding what they want easily and don’t have to waste time waiting for things to load. A site that is fast, clean and easy to navigate will always win out in the long run.”
Alex Cascio of Vibrant Media Productions agrees, “The most effective way that has had increased average pages per session has been our overall pay layout and design. We incorporate various types of video banners/parallax elements, sometimes for titles to help break pages up. With the right call to actions or ways to direct your audiences, you will be able to drive them to the right places that you want them to see.”
Maia Wells of ClearPivot adds, “Having an organized, multi-layered menu helps set the foundation for easy exploration of a website. This one tweak alone can help to improve the average number of pages viewed on a site. Here at ClearPivot, we have found another effective way to increase the average pages per session on our website is to create a more interactive user experience, prompting the visitor onto a selection of additional content through CTA buttons. An example is our home page, where we have a large banner section above the fold with a FIND OUT HOW button to draw the visitor in. At the second layer, we try to provide opportunities for deeper exploration of topics through pages for specific services and verticals.”
Joe Bailey of My Trading Skills says, “For some time, we had noticed that our site’s average pages per session was flatlining. We tried so many things to increase this number, including creating more evergreen content, as well as promoting old blog posts. There was some movement upwards on the page per session metric, but, it was not as impactful as we had hoped.
Then, we began tweaking the website to improve the user experience, and this finally did the trick. Within two months, our average pages per session had more than doubled, and now, we see a steady increase in this metric every month.
Bottom Line: Your website might have the best content and resources, but, if its user experience is less than optimal, you will find that people continuously spend less time on your website. Always strive to provide a great user experience to all of your site visitors.”
“One of the best ways we’ve increased pages per session is by creating content that naturally flows into other pages,” says Matthew Myre of PurpleCup Digital. “For instance, on our own website, we accompany every section of web copy with a call to action directing you to another page or to our contact box. The best way to increase pages per session is to simply tell users where to go next. Don’t leave it up to them”
Yvonne Deegan of Velo says, “Relevant, effective signposting – a visitor’s natural next step should be clearly guided with a signpost to another page of relevance, mapped to where they likely are in the buying cycle. A top tips guide shouldn’t just point someone to a product page as the next step – that’s a big jump for a visitor who has likely landed on the site for knowledge seeking to immediately be pushed to in-market.
Jason Reed of Suppwise adds, “We’ve increased the average pages per session on our website by doubling down on internal linking at the end of our articles. If for example we have a visitor on a page analyzing a probiotics supplement, we want to engage them with links to probiotics blog posts toward the bottom of the page. This helps naturally guide them through the flow of our website, while keeping them reading content in a category they’ve already expressed interest in.
“Websites with high-tech and animation-filled interfaces are more likely to lag and require a steadier and more robust internet connection to function fully,” says Jeremy Johnson of Seriously Smoked. “Visitors incapable of handling your website will have a lower page per session count because they’re annoyed with their computer’s slow loading.
Remember that not everyone has devices that can handle high-capacity programs. Your bare minimum system requirements should be accessible even to low-end devices. After all, low-income households are the largest demographics of the world. Additionally, you don’t need flashy animations and high-capacity programs to make your customers stay. They’re nice to have but completely unnecessary.”
“The best and most effective method I have discovered to increase the average page views on my blogs is to create content hubs and link to related pages from every page in the content hub,” says Trishan Mehta of PassionWP. “For example, I created a content hub around the Astra WordPress theme that included pages on different aspects of this theme. I also linked to each page in the Astra hub from every other page. Since these pages are highly relevant to the overall topic i.e. the Astra theme, users naturally clicked on the internal links to know more about different aspects of this WordPress theme. In the process, my average page views increased from 1.1 to 1.8 in about 2 months.”
“As part of our SEO content strategy, our writing team generates article ideas by using HubSpot’s topic cluster method,” says Bernice Quek of Singapore Forklifts. “According to these experts, a topic cluster has a main pillar content that’s able to branch out to many different cluster content as subtopics. Each article should be covered extensively on its own.
Adopting this strategy will establish yourself as an authority figure that has deep knowledge about the topic. Moreover, this allows you to do internal linking between all the pages as they are all related topics. To gain a full understanding of the pillar content, users would most likely navigate from page to page via the internal links. This effectively increases your average pages per session, while improving your SERP ranking.”
Jayant Gosain of The Tech Toys adds, “To increase average pages per session, what I do is to publish the content around a broad topic (Like Dog) and then publish related content to that main broad topic (Like Dog house, Dog training, Dog food, Dog health, Dog grooming, best dog breeds, Dog Collar, Dog pillow).
Once the pillar article and related articles are ready, just interlink them. This is a cluster content strategy where everything is connected to each other. That not only increases the average pages per session but also creates authority in your niche.
That way, when a user lands on your page and starts consuming the content, he/she will find other related articles that are directly connected to the main article and they will definitely visit those pages as well.
Before using the cluster content strategy, just make sure the related content you are writing should be relevant and closely in relation to the main topic. And also, try to understand the intent of the user. Just don’t write anything for the sake of it.
Do not go beyond the main topic and limit the information you are providing. If you think any related topic requires more information, create a new blog post instead of stuffing everything in a single blog post.
Interlink the content in a natural way. Do not force the reader to visit the next page because I want to increase pages per session and improve my bounce rate. Users don’t care about your stats.
This strategy works for me and will definitely work for others.”
“Match User Expectation,” says Liam Ridings of Safari Digital SEO. “It sounds simple, but stick with me.
There are a myriad of technical, formatting, and UX optimization steps that can be taken to reduce bounce rate and increase the number of pages per session. However, at the core of bounce rate and low page per session rates is the relevancy (or irrelevancy) of content that you are serving visitors.
SEO is a driving force behind critical website decisions. And rightly so – SEO is a powerful way to get users on-site and drive traffic, enquiries, and sales for your business. However, it should not lead you down the path of targeting keywords for the sole purpose of onboarding users. Your page needs to be relevant to the user query. If the page is not relevant to the user query, you can be almost certain that the user is going to bounce away from your site without navigating to other pages on site.
Ensure the content on your webpages is reflective of your headings, page titles and the keyword that you are trying to rank for. User intent should be at the forefront of every decision that you make.”
“The benchmark for a website with a good page per session is 4.4,” says Mike Bran of ThrillAppeal. “That means the site is more likely to transact or engage with an advert and lies between the 20% best websites. To be in the best of best, I make sure that my site always has engaging content. For this, I create great and optimized blog content.
Today, marketing relies on the content, and visitors tend to spend more time on websites if the content is engaging, simple, and up-to-date. The best content naturally convinces visitors to click around and increase your conversion rate.
I think of my website as a book. I make sure the content on the landing page is good so that visitors look through to the end. I use relevant blogs with great content that keeps the visitors engage on my site. Another important thing I learned was to do the basic SEO for my site content to rank it on search engines. I am using Yoast SEO to optimize the content of blogs that I regularly post on the site.”
“A great method for increasing average pages per session is to include links to other similar content on your site within the body of your posts,” says Greg Brookes of Kettlebells Workouts. “This can look like Skyscraper content that leads to various areas of your site, or it can be linking to other blog posts within the same silo of content. Many visitors will use these links as resources to provide additional information on topics that are of interest to them.”
“One effective way we have successfully increased the average pages per session is to add a related articles section to the bottom of each blog post,” says Kevin Miller of The Word Counter. “This will directly lead the user to view the next related article.”
“Elle Meager of Outdoor Happens adds, “What’s worked best for me is multiple articles on the same subject. For example, I wrote several articles on attracting wildlife to your garden. I’ve got one on attracting frogs, one on attracting squirrels, one on bees… I add a list of all the related articles after the first paragraph of content, and again at the end of each article. This has dramatically improved the number of pages per session. My readers are clicking through from one page to another. The more related articles, the better. You’re basically building a mini content hub with very specific subjects.
“The best way is to create genuinely helpful content,” says Chris Wilks of BrandExtract. “If users trust your content and they look at you as a resource, they’ll be more inclined to stay on your site for more than just their immediate need.
This isn’t a quick fix like internal linking or running a campaign but in the long run it can be more effective.”
Louis Lehot of L2 Counsel says, “There is no substitute for innovative content that will be sought out by customers to solve their most painful points of friction. Content plays also plays a foundational role in the success of internal linking. It is an art which must be used tactfully to glean results. Less is more, and you should always prioritize quality over quantity. Purely and simply, the more compelling your writing, photos, video and digital media content can be, the more time users will spend on your website.”
“The answer for increasing the average pages per session for each visitor is simple: write compelling, informative content,” adds Andrea Loubier of Mailbird. “If a visitor comes to your site to read a particular article, and they learn from it, then that increases the chances that they will dig a little deeper into your site for other valuable blog posts or on-page content.
Lil Manibo of Anthrodesk explains, “Nowadays, Google loves long-form content. Make sure your articles are composed of well-researched information and they are organized smartly. Include screenshots and citations to support claims and ideas. Links to high-authority sites should also be considered.”
For example, John Vargo of Webolutions says, “Webolutions has found one of the most effective ways to increase the number of page views per session is to first write great content that is informative and has value for the visitor. Developing a reputation as a trusted information source encourages both repeat visits and an interest in viewing additional content. Second, the content must also clearly call out links to other related pieces of content to explore a topic further. Providing great content, which is easy to consume (page layout) and allows the visitor to select additional information they might wish to view is the most effective tactic we have found to increase the average page visits per session.”
“I have tried tons of different recommended techniques to boost my average pages per session and the one that I always see results with is adding a link at the end of the post to a roundup post of all my similar articles in that category,” says Freya Kuka of Collecting Cents. “I create roundup posts of my own articles in the same category to make it easier for my readers to browse through content they may find interesting. So, for example, at the end of a debt management post, I would add a link to a roundup post of all of my similar debt-related posts.”
“One great way to increase views is by adding beautiful graphics within your blog posts with catchy headlines, and if someone clicks on those then they are directed to another blog post on my website,” says Amira Irfan of A Self Guru. “This is not only helpful for my readers where they don’t have to navigate my entire website to find relevant content but also benefits me in the long run because now my readers are staying on my website longer.”
“Making pages user and reader-friendly, helps increase the average page session,” says Amy Hernandez of ElectrIQ Marketing. “That means formatting your website correctly for both PC and mobile viewing so users can easily access the items they want. Additionally to make a page reader-friendly one tip is to be concise in your messaging and use spacing to break down thoughts in longer form writing found in blogs. This is an effective tactic because the more relevant content there is on a page the better, but to retain a user’s attention they have to perceive that content as being shorter and more visually appealing if they are thinking about reading through all of it.”
“Our tip for increasing average page views is to keep your readers wanting more,” says Jessica Rose of Copper H2O. “For example, when writing a blog post, make sure to end the post with a pitch for another one of your blog posts on a related subject along with a link to that related blog post. That way, readers who enjoyed your first post will be naturally transitioned into reading a second post, thereby increasing average page views. Alternatively, you can end your posts with a pitch to view one of your product pages to keep your visitors on your site and engage with it. This is a very simple tip, but, when executed effectively, can result in much higher average page views and dwell time, resulting in higher conversions and improved rankings on search engines. We have applied this tip with all of our blog posts since our inception in 2015 and have noticed great results.”
Nathaniel Hovsepian of The Expert Home Buyers adds, “We have been able to increase our pages per session by leaving unanswered questions at the end of each section that leaves the user wanting to learn more about our process and our company.”
James Canzanella of Isolated Marketing Nights agrees, “Many times I’ll leave out some information just to increase the chances that visitors will click on links to get the rest of the details.”
“We all know by now that it’s pretty important to keep visitors on your site as long as possible,” says Alexandra Zamolo of Beekeeper. “The more time they spend, the more likely they are to sign up for a service or purchase a product. One way to ensure this is to provide some great downloadable content. White Pages and Case Studies can provide a lot of very detailed, on-topic information that can be extremely beneficial. It should also inspire them to look around your site a little more, and take advantage of other information that you have to offer.”
Cindy Mallory of Worldwide TechServices says, “I saw a huge boom in pages per session as well as duration spent by building a project calculator tool. By slightly modifying native shopping cart functionality through CSS and basic HTML, I was able to create a 30 page tool that allowed users to scope out the development price of putting together a custom software team. This also highlighted the specialties we have – whether it be machine learning or the many modalities necessary for web apps or cloud-based digital products. This feature drove engagement up on all our case studies as well as time spent on service landing pages by providing actionable value.”
“To increase the average pages per session, I recommend inserting links that redirect your readers to other content on your website,” says Aurelien Sacaze of Seonity. “Be careful, however, to insert the links in a natural way and that they bring additional information about the content they are reading. An eCommerce website, for example, may include links to related products, customer reviews, etc” .
Pim Coffeng of Poki recommends, “Decrease the loading time of your website, so fewer people bounce and you get higher average pages per session.”
Andrew Ruditser of Maxburst agrees, “One way to increase your pages per session is to increase your page speed. Nowadays users don’t have much patience when it comes to finding information on the web. If your site loads too slow for that user, they will have no problem leaving your site and finding another that will give them a better user experience.
Erico Franco of Agencia de Marketing Digital adds, “A good and free strategy for increasing average page speed is improving user experience optimization.Google has a good tool for this purpose called Google Optimize. Google Optimize is a great feature for improving user experience and increases average page speed. remember to set your goal as time on page for better effect.”
“The most effective way to increase average pages per session is to stop allowing third-party cookies on your site,” says Tiffany Johnson of Wunderman Thompson. “Every time a user hits a site and the first pop-up is standard cookie agreement, you lose half of your traffic while they try to navigate through that consent form. Make it simpler, more transparent and people will stay.”
“At first, our content marketing team only used to craft in-depth descriptions of our products,” says Werner Jorgensen of HeatXperts. “However, now we also add “comparison” links below our product description. Moreover, we provide a comparison of the most relevant products after searching the volume of “vs.” queries from premium tools to know the potential queries. Because of choosing the right comparison products, the click ratio of these links is 85% on average. Moreover, we display the comparison table at the top for the ease of readability and give a detailed comparison below it. We also update the comparison section as per the arrival of new products in the market. As a result, now our loyal visitors and clients know that they will get the short as well as extended comparison of products, so they do not search them separately on Google.”
“For site layouts that include a sidebar, we’ll create custom sidebars that make sense for the topic of each specific post,” says Ilir Salihi of FreedomRep. “This helps keep visitors on our site and improves the overall number of page views per session.
Dylan Gordon of HustlerSource adds, “One of the best ways I’ve found to increase the average number of pages per session is to add useful, relevant content in the sidebar. Instead of using banner ads, adding links to popular pages on my site has improved this a lot! Due to short attention spans being more and more common, it gives them another place to click.”
“Internal links WITHIN your content are a great way to increase your pages per session,” says Tim Courchaine of Local Spark Marketing. “Guiding the reader to even more relevant content while you have their attention is the key. But of course, these links need to flow naturally and be truly relevant, not just there for the sake of having a link.”
Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers Digital adds, “When people visit your site, you want them to consume your content, stay on your site, interact with it, and visit multiple pages. I found that the best way to increase the average pages per session is by adding internal links. You can add:
Chris Gadek of AdQuick says, “One important thing to do to keep visitors on your site longer is to be sure to include valuable links to other pages within each piece of content. When you’re writing about marketing, link to other pages that include valuable tips. If your topic is email, then include links that lead to pages with how-to guides on newsletters, subject lines, and more.”
Colin Mosier of JSL Marketing & Web Design adds, “If someone is very interested in a particular topic, they want to learn more – and you can help them learn more by linking to a page of similar content. As long as you are linking to content that is relevant and attention-grabbing, you should be able to keep your readers on your site for longer and increase your pages per session metric! Internal linking is also a major factor for SEO purposes so you really are able to have 2 benefits in one!”
Mitch Chailland of Canal HR agrees, “To increase our average pages per session, we’ve found it useful to build a more comprehensive strategy for internal links. Internal links help users engage with our content in a more meaningful way, as they are more easily directed to the pages relevant to their interests. Increased internal links also allow Google to better understand the structure of our website, such as which pages are related to one another, and makes us more likely to appear in relevant search results.”
For example, Iain Miller of Unique Ascent says, “I have increased my pages per session rate by giving internal links to suggested alternative pages relevant to the landing page being visited.
To give an example of this, https://uniqueascent.ie/cruit_island_guide Cruit island is a very popular free download due to the beauty and relative ease of access to the location. In the location description, I give internal links to two further neighboring islands Owey Island (https://uniqueascent.ie/owey_island) and Gola Island. (https://uniqueascent.ie/gola_island_guide) approximately 60% of visitors to the Cruit Island page will visit and download the two other island pages suggested in the links. These suggestions work as it gives visitors to the area options of different places to visit.”
Or, Lee Frame of The Audit Lab adds, “For some of our retail clients, linking through to similar products, buying guides and relevant blog posts has really helped boost those numbers, especially from product pages.”
This internal link-building strategy is particularly important for search traffic.
David Bell of COUNTRYVPNS says, “If you have created an awesome content piece on a topic and you manage to bring traffic to it through ranking it on SERPs or other sources, you will never be able to see an increase in the number of pages a customer visits during a session if you haven’t done relevant internal linking properly.
So if you are willing to increase average pages per session on your website, look for all the possible internal linking opportunities in your content and link to the most relevant pages accordingly. You can also add links to other relevant articles at the end of your content piece at the bottom.”
Jasz Joseph of SyncShow adds, “If a website has no internal links, we start with the pages with the highest bounce rate and pageviews and add them there.
Internal links are important because they lead visitors to related pages on the site. If they land on a website page from Google, they may just read it and exit. Adding internal links provides users with opportunities to continue on the site.”
Rick Wallace of Tackle Village says, “We use https://linkwhisper.com/ – a paid tool – to make sure we exploit all available internal linking opportunities.”
“There are simple ways to increase the average pages per session on your site,” says Dylan Zsigray of Kiwi Creative. “One of the easiest is to just add links! While SEOs talk about the importance of internal links for Google, they are great ways for your users to be shown additional content. Add 3-5 internal links to each page, with relevant anchor text, so users have the opportunity to explore your site further.”
“When we started using organic, natural interlinking in our blog posts we saw a 21% increase in the average page views per session,” says Stephen Greet of BeamJobs. “We’ve all read blog posts where it’s clear that the author is trying to include as many internal links as possible. For example, if you’re writing an article on average page views per session then there likely shouldn’t be a link to a post you wrote about best SQL practices.
Keep your reader in mind. If you reduce the number of internal links in your posts but make them more relevant, you will likely see an increase in the average page views per session.”
Nikola Roza of Nikola Roza- SEO for the Poor and Determined adds, “These links need to be relevant, i.e. lead to content that’s connected to the post the user is on.
They also need to have keyword-rich anchors, which, besides being good for SEO, are also good for users as they inform them what’s on the other side of that link.
These links also need to be longish (5-8 words) so as to jump off the page and be almost unavoidable to both the eye that reads and the eye that’s rapidly scanning the post.
Finally, these internal links need to be spread out strategically throughout the post, and I try to have them at a rate of one link per 200 words of content.
200 words isn’t an arbitrary number. That’s the typical section of content user sees before they have to scroll up or down.
So, not every visitor will click on these links, but many will, thus driving your page views percentage up.”
“The best way to catch a fish is to choose the right bait for it,” says Shiv Gupta of Incrementors Web Solutions. “In my observation, I have seen a drastic increase in average pages per session when the user is getting precious information with images, quotes, video graphics content, and more.
If there is a magazine and a textbook, most people would go for a magazine right? Just try to nurture your content based on the target customers, switch from old school design to modern UI for your web pages and have them work properly on all types of devices.”
Riddhi Elsner of Elsner Technologies says, “Add more visual elements in your content to make your content enjoyable and interactive for your users. Nowadays video marketing is trending to gain more traffic to your website, and it is becoming popular among online users. Millions of users are watching videos on YouTube for almost everything, including information, learning, tips, tutorials, movies, and TV serials, entertainment, advertising, and more. It is the most engaging form of content. Adding videos to your pages can boost user engagement and will increase the time users spend on your website.”
For example, Alena Schowalter of Nutriciously adds, “That’s one of the main areas we’ve been working on over the past months.
Our website is focused on recipes and lifestyle posts and despite having many in-depth articles and free resources that are tremendously helpful to our readers, we found that visitors were quickly abandoning our site before even getting a glimpse of what we have to offer.
So, this is what we did:
Instead of just hyperlinking certain keywords in our articles to our cornerstone content, we inserted highly visible buttons and image grids to our related articles all throughout the blog posts..
We found that people tend to have a blind spot for areas such as the sidebar of the blog and are much more likely to click on nicely-formatted related posts that are embedded in the content area of the blog post and stand out even when just skimming the article.
This increased the average page per session metric by 14% in just one month!”
“Insert a ‘have you read’ section,” says Yoann Bierling of Help Smartphone. “About a year ago, I included all my articles in a have you read section, and in the middle of the article, included 3 text links to other articles of my website that are related to the content. This simple trick does not take much space, is not invasive, barely stops visitors to stay focused on the content if they want to, and increases my average page per session by about 20%.”
Meg Marrs of K9 of Mine agrees, “My favorite hack for increasing average pages per session is to include 2-3 recommended also reads at the bottom of each post. If you actually recommend relevant articles, this can really go a long way to boosting the amount of time a user spends on your site.”
“Add an internal search engine,” says Steve Johnson of Too Much Marketing. “Google offers a free internal search at Google Custom Search Engine (cse.google.com). It uses Google’s search index and allows you to create a search engine that searches only your site, or several of your websites. It also lets you tailor that search to specific pages. You can change the colors of the search results to match your site’s colors.
When you embed a search form into your home page, your users can use the search to find what they need fast, instead of having to navigate through a tree directory. If you have the ability to create a custom 404 error page, you can embed the search into the page and salvage those visitors. You can also place the search at the end of an article, with teaser text like, ‘Did this article not answer your question? Search for something more specific.’”
Josefin Björklund adds, “I have found that adding a site search bar on a website can increase the average page per session by 45%. A low number of page views per visit indicates that the site is difficult to navigate, and the audience would get confused and might leave the site. If your site is easy to navigate, you can get more page views as the audience will find it easy to get around your site. Being able to search on your site for particular topics is a big convenience and can noticeably increase page views. It is easy to add a Google Search bar to your website and customize it according to your website’s design.”
“As a consumer review platform, Best Company allows users to compare industry-specific companies side by side,” says Rebecca Graham of Best Company. “On our company comparison pages, we weigh one company against another based on specific attributes, including review metrics.
How does this increase average pages per session on our website? When readers visit these comparison summary pages, they are motivated to visit the individual company pages after their interest is piqued.
The compare page model could be applied to different websites and platforms, too: produce a comparison summary blog post highlighting key takeaways from two existing blog posts with opposing viewpoints or complementary information. Readers hungry for more will visit one or both of the initial blog posts.”
“I saw an immediate change in pages per session when I upgraded my “Start Here” page,” says Jesse Cramer of BestInterest.Blog. “I explain to my readers:
That simple page gives my reader a direction through my site, and the average pages per session skyrocketed after I made that change.”
“Pages per session may be an indicator of engagement, but it may also be an indicator that users can’t find the right content, or that key journeys are too long or even of bad tagging set up – context is everything,” says Matt Bentley of Loop Horizon. “By using what we know about the user and dynamically altering the landing page accordingly, we bring the right journey to the user straight away, better resonating with their intent.”
“Using Catchy Infographics,” says Samuel Kane of The Money Pig. “Infographics play a key role in increasing the average pages per session of a website. This is simply because readers/visitors tend to spend extra time interacting with them maybe because they’re trying to understand the message in it or they are just admiring it. This isn’t the case on a website where web pages have no infographics. Going by the rule of the thumb, I have seen this hack works perfectly.”
Rameez Ghayas Usmani of Pure VPN adds, “Highly attractive and compelling infographics sustain the attention of your readers and help them get engaged with your content even longer ultimately resulting in a low bounce rate of your website.”
“We use Google Trends on a monthly basis using the focus keywords of our main category pages,” says Jon Horsfield of Smash Casinos. “In doing so, we add a paragraph of fresh content or tweak our outdated content on a monthly basis to interact more with trending phrases in our vertical and to ensure that visitors who end up on our site are getting concise and up to date information. By doing this we have found that not only has our average pages per session increased as visitors find more relevant articles, but visitor numbers have increased. And, that we’ve ranked for multiple additional keywords which have brought in more visitors.”
“I make sure there are as few distractions as possible on my blog,” says Alejandro Rioja of So influential. “If you keep your content easily accessible, readers will remain engaged. Make sure there are no ill-placed or gaudy sidebars, opt-ins, or popups. A crisp and neat blog layout and to the point content greatly increases the average page per session.”
Andrea Gandica of Official Models adds, “Remove anything that could be seen as intrusive: Space your ads out and don’t have so many ads that people can’t enjoy what they’re reading.
Make your website simpler: A simple website is a website that is easy to use, by eliminating distractions, the content is front and center, this gives people a chance to engage with what you have to offer..
And, if they enjoy what you have presented them with, they won’t mind poking around other parts of your site to see what else you can impress them with.”
“I have found the key way to get users to view more pages per session is to have effective calls to action placed strategically on the home page,” says Joanna Moss of Joanna Moss Photography. “Knowing your ideal clients, and knowing how they navigate through your website is key to knowing what calls to action to use and where to strategically place them on your website.”
Ian Kelly of NuLeaf Naturals says, “One thing I’ve seen work really well for increasing pages per session is the Johnson Box, which is a little bit of html inserted in the middle of a blog or article to highlight a call to action.
The call to action can be anything, but if you’re trying to get people to visit more pages on your site per session, entice them with relevant and juicy content on another page with a hyperlink.”
Ronnie Edwards of Geek Powered Studios adds, “Site users are always seeking valuable information that can be helpful to their situation. Linking heavily to informative pages on your site gives users the opportunity to enhance their understanding of a topic and learn more about your business’s offerings, all while moving through your site more seamlessly. Sometimes, including pages in the main menu or primary navigation just isn’t enough. As long as all pages give users the opportunity to convert, increasing the number of internal links and CTA buttons can be a win-win scenario for site users and owners.”
“The one effective way I have found for increasing the average pages per session is to answer the main question that the user is searching for, but spark new questions in the user’s mind that are relevant for the current page subject,” says Abel Pruim of Chordify. “An example that we used on our website. If the user wants to know more about guitar chords, we will tell them the most important stuff about guitar chords, but the blog post about guitar chords has many internal links to in-depth articles for each chord. This helped us to increase our pages per session for users that land on the guitar chords article by 300%. This obviously requires a good internal linking structure. For blogs, this means linking to other relevant blogs on your website or other additional information that helps a user to answer the question they have.”
Anna Barker of LogicalDollar adds, “The best way I’ve found to increase pages per session on our website is to partly address a critical question in a piece of content, acknowledge that there are other aspects of this question to consider, and then include a link to a different article that the reader is told will answer the question in full.
This way, you catch their interest and make it seem like they need to know the answer to this question in order to have the full picture of the relevant issue. Giving a little bit of the answer acts a bit like dangling a carrot, in that it helps to show them how this point is relevant to the larger issue. This, in turn, further suggests that they need to find out all the information on the query – which, conveniently, is at another page on my site.”
“Put related articles on the email sign-up confirmation page,” says Marc Prosser of ChoosingTherapy. “I always found that marketers tend to neglect the Confirmation Page following the sign-up for an email subscription. Those that make the decision to sign-up for your mailing list are already interested and engaged. On the page where it confirms the person has signed up to be on the mailing list, I like to suggest a couple of articles or resources that they might immediately find useful or helpful Instead of leaving the site, they may continue to look at new content.”
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Jessica Malnik is a content strategist and copywriter for SaaS and productized service businesses. Her writing has appeared on The Next Web, Social Media Examiner, SEMRush, CMX, Help Scout, Convince & Convert, and many other sites.
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