Here’s 12 Quick Ways to Lower Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

For personal blogs, the objective of your website is to gain more pageviews, as more pageviews lead to more income. For business blogs, the objective of the blogging side of the website is to draw customers in with the hopes that they will travel to other pages and eventually make a purchase. In both cases, having traffic flow to multiple pages is part of the process of making money.

That’s why bounce rate is such an important factor for any type of blogger. “Bounce rate” refers to the number of visitors who leave your blog after viewing only one page. You can find your blog’s bounce rate through Google Analytics. Lowering your bounce rate not only keeps traffic viewing your ads and earning you money, but it can also affect your SEO – Google uses metrics from Google Analytics to determine the usefulness of your site. Website’s with low bounce rates are seen as more useful to the Google user, and so are given more SEO weight.

What steps can I take to lower my blog’s bounce rate?

Keep in mind that every blog is different, so the reasons why your bounce rate might be high will be different – which means the solutions you need to lower your bounce rate are going to be different. Try multiple methods and see what works for you!

Here are a few simple suggestions to start out with:

  1. Inbound links – Set up links within your blog post to other blog posts that relate to your text. WordPress and BlogSpot both have functions that allow you to make the link open in a new page. This allows your visitor to simply close the extra window once they’ve finished instead of back-clicking or closing your blog completely.
  2. Related posts – Share another blog post that is related on the bottom of each blog post.
  3. Popular posts – Many bloggers set up a function in their sidebar that automatically shows the most popular posts. Use a picture to really draw traffic in.
  4. Calls-to-Action – Use CTAs within your post to direct traffic to other posts or webpages within your blog.
  5. Author photo – Use a professional looking picture of yourself and include it in your sidebar. Readers like to see the person behind the blog and it’s a quick way to establish trust.
  6. “About Me” Page – Your “About Me” page is one of your most visited pages. Many readers want to see the person behind the writing after they’ve finished a blog post. Create an “About Me” page that is easy to find.
  7. Navigation – A common reason for a high bounce rate is that your traffic has a hard time finding the pages they want. Make sure your navigation is intuitive and clear.
  8. Speed – Web surfers generally leave a webpage that takes longer than 10 seconds to load. If your website is having difficulties, find a way to speed it up.
  9. Traffic source – Your traffic may leave your blog quickly because you weren’t what they were looking for. Eliminate this problem by only promoting your blog in spaces that are related to your topic.
  10. Clickbait – Another common reason why visitors quickly leave is because promises made by your headline were not kept. If your headline promises “new solutions” or “this amazing video,” make sure your content delivers.
  11. Social media buttons – Having social media buttons on your post has been shown to lower bounce rates.
  12. Tag clouds – Tag all of your posts so that readers who want to explore more about a specific topic or issue can do so easily. Create a cloud or other navigation device and put it in your sidebar.

What methods have worked for you in lowering your bounce rate? Share in the comments!

Sources:

John, Becca. “Blog Tips Tuesday 1: How to reduce your bounce rate.” http://www.amuse-your-bouche.com/blog-tips-how-to-reduce-your-bounce-rate/. (12 March 2014).

Goldberg, Steve. “7 Simple But Effective Tactics To Dramatically Reduce Your Bounce Rate.”http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/7-simple-but-effective-tactics-to-dramatically-reduce-your-bounce-rate-0558038#!zrTWH. (12 March 2014).

Chapman, Cameron. “How I Keep My Bounce Rate Under 2%.” http://blog.kissmetrics.com/2-percent-bounce-rate/. (12 March 2014).

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