Are You Creating Long Clicks from your Google Search Results?

Did you know that Google uses “Long Clicks” to determine the overall quality of a search result? This is a lesser known ranking factor that you need to know and understand. So, first off what’s a “Long Click?” 

When a user does a Google search and ultimately clicks on a result, the click is classified as either a long click or a short click. It’s a very simple concept – a user either stays on the page or they quickly bounce from the page and goes back to the search results page to find another site or search for something else. While Google tips it’s hand to the classification, they don’t share the time needed to change the class of the click.

Google sees a long click as a positive and a short click as a negative indicator of how effective the website is and how relevant the content is in relation to the keyword phrase used to search for content.The next logical question should be, “How do I get more long clicks?”

First off, your website needs to be organized efficiently. Each page should be very specific and relevant to the content – a very common theory yet one that is not put to work often enough.

Next, you can build more links from relevant pages. Building more quality back links is typically considered the best way to boost your organic rankings and not necessarily as a way to drive traffic, but it certainly can. If the other page ranks well for the user’s search query, there is a chance they may click a link containing a relevant search phrase on that page as well.