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There are a lot of statistics that can help you see whether you are going in the right direction with your blog. The number of visitors and the page views probably play the most important role for most of the bloggers. We are not going to concentrate on these usual suspects this time though.

Another measure, which strangely often gets disregarded, is average time on site. (You can see in the main stats page of Google Analytics, right after the number of visits.) That one holds a huge importance, as it indicates whether visitors really find something useful in your blog or they have just clicked on it accidentally and are quick to leave.

Getting good results on that paragraph undoubtedly shows that you are one step further than the average blogger and have something of value to offer. Stick with me to discover some great ways to keep visitors longer on your page.

Quality Content

That is by far the most important ingredient to consider if you want visitors to stay longer on your blog. You need to remember that good articles can not be replaced with anything. After all people are coming to your blog because of your content. They expect to see something new, something that offers different perspectives – that is what makes for a better blog. Nor the shiniest design, neither the best widgets on earth are enough to compensate for the lack of this. If you believe that content is what holds you back, consider taking a look at a previous article of mine: “Writing Tips – 3 Ways to Squeeze the Most from Your Articles”. There you can find useful advice on the structure and the length of your articles.

Widgets and Using Them Properly

A variety of widgets can help you increase the stay of your visitors. Adding a list of related posts under each of your articles is strongly recommended. LinkWithin is a great service that allows you to do just that. Getting the code and installing it requires just a minute or two and it works on all major blog publishing platforms (Blogspot, WordPress, etc.) The sidebar of your blog is a great place to add similar functionality as well. For example a list of the most viewed posts can prove a great addition. As you can see that very same approach is used here and it works pretty good. Remember to not make the list too big though – it might scare people away. Keeping it to around 4 or 6 articles is more than enough.

Loading Time Reduction

Huge loading times are always a BIG problem. People are far too busy to be waiting half a minute for a site to load. Before you know it, they will be reading the information they were looking for, some place else. PageSpeed is a great tool that analyzes your site and shows what you can do in order to reduce loading times. The most common problems include bad HTML coding, too many links or badly formatted images (see blog optimization for more information).

Great Design

Design – even though I have written a lot on the subject, there is no way not to include it in that list. You can tell whatever you want, but I will not stop believing that a good-looking blog is going to keep visitors longer on the page. Don’t know (honestly don’t care as well) whether it only makes a visual difference or it has a deeper impact on the visitor’s mind, but design should always be a priority, right behind content though. To learn a few tips and tricks on improving your layout and making your blog more eye-catching, check out the following resource – “Great Design and Its Importance in Blogging”

Additional Resources

Adding links to helpful tools and articles is yet another good idea. You have found something useful to back your information up? Don’t hesitate including a link to it in your article. Readers will surely appreciate it and will most likely visit your blog again. Applying that approach is definitely good in the long run, since it will gain you more regular visitors, which in turn means longer stay on your blog.

That was it for today. Hope you found something useful in the above tips. Can you come up with additional tips on the subject? Share with us in the comments section. Be sure to leave your thoughts – feedback is highly appreciated.