How to Increase Page Views in 6 Steps

Website publishers need to increase page views for the simple reason that more page views will lead to more revenue.

Page views serve as one of the most important metrics in achieving website success.

Google Analytics and other website analytic programs have page views as one of the three most prominent metrics along with sessions and users. (Google used to call them visits and unique visitors.)

Page views reveal how much of a site visitors consume. The more pages they consume, the more the visitors are demonstrating they like the site’s content and find it easy to find what they want. Likewise, the more pages they consume, the more site publishers can promote advertising, brand, ecommerce and other business needs.

What are Page Views?

A page view is simply a page that visitors view, such as the homepage. The visitors usually don’t have to scroll down a page and view all of it. They only have to view enough and long enough to trigger the analytic software and count it as a view.

In the advertising world, a page view is important because it usually results in ad impressions if the page has advertising code on it. More page views mean more ad impressions and more ad revenue for the site publisher.

If a visitor comes to a site from a search engine, views one page and leaves again, analytics will show the visit had “one page per visit”.

In the case of a single page visit, analytic software registers it as something called a bounce. The number of single-page visitors divided by all site visitors is called a bounce rate. A low bounce rate is good; a high one is bad.

6 Ways to Increase Page Views

1 – Increase Pages Per Visit

Sites increase pages per visit with better navigation, prominent and well-placed links, and fast performance.

Good sites try to increase their pages per visit as much as possible. A high PPV number usually leads to more sales, more advertising revenue, better branding or increases in any other metric that a business considers valuable.

A site that averages two pages per visit and that increases it to three per visit will have a 50 percent increase in total page views. Such a big increase can have a major impact on site performance for the business.

An increase in pages per visit and a decrease in the bounce rate is one important way of increasing total page views.

A business only needs to focus on one because the other metric always moves in the opposite direction in response.

Increasing pages per visit is a metric or goal. It’s a way of judging how well the next steps perform.

2 – Increase Site Speed

A slow site always results in lower pages per visit and page views. It’s not a big problem with desktop visitors because they often come to a site on a high-speed network. It is a big problem with mobile users who usually have slower access.

Several steps result in higher site speeds:

1. Highly optimized images that load faster.
2. Fewer content management system plugins.
3. A bigger, faster and usually more expensive hosting account.

Tools that measure site speed and offer suggestions are common. Just do a search on “site speed test” on one of the major search engines to find some popular examples.

3 – Improve Site Navigation

Good analytic software will show how people reached a page on the site from another page on the same site.

If an important page isn’t getting much traffic, then poor site navigation is a possible cause. Some studies show that drop-down lists in navigation bars don’t get many clicks. So try making links to the important pages more prominent.

Navigation or menu bars offer only one way to get to a page. Links within articles also help as well as promotional boxes scattered throughout a site.

4 – Post More Content More Often

It’s both obvious and necessary to say that a big site generates more page views and usually more pages per visit than a small site.

Visitors to a small site may simply not see any links worth a click because the site doesn’t have many pages to link.

Search engines also respond positively to larger sites and to any site that posts often. They reward new content with more visitors and higher rankings in search engine results.

5 – Increase Repeat Visits

Visits divided by unique visitors equals frequency, retention and loyalty. A site that averages one visit for every unique visitor each month is not getting people to come back.

Sites that average two or more repeat visits a month are doing much better.

Some websites have a natural ability to get repeat visitors such as news sites. Others such as travel struggle to get repeat visitors.

A fast, informative and well-designed site is likely to have repeat visitors simply because people like what they see.

Social media and email newsletters are two of the best ways to attract repeat visitors. People sign up for them if they like the product.

So having a great product matters quite a bit for increasing website page views.

6 – Increase Unique Visitors

A total marketing effort that includes search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media, email marketing, video marketing and other tactics will lead to more total page views.

But again, it’s all for nothing if the product isn’t fast loading, attractive, informative and easy to navigate.