Do you know what your site’s bounce rate is? How about your average time on site or number of page views? Are you even taking these into account when it comes to your SEO efforts?

Google is relying more and more upon websites that engage active users. And Google quantifies user activity in terms of average time on site, average page views, and bounce rate – and the reason is simple. It’s the only truly reliable ‘put up or shut up’ method a search engine can judge a website’s worthiness. If people search for “web design tips” and end up on your site, but only stay for an average of just a few seconds, then that tells Google that either your site is not focused on “web design tips” or if it is, then it does a bad job talking about it. On the other hand, if your competitor’s website is attracting those same users, but keeping them on the site for upwards of 5 minutes, then Google knows that those users found what they were looking for.

So keep an eye on your user behavior metrics. Make sure the keywords you’re targeting are keeping users on your site. If they’re not, you’ve got some work to do!