The Ultimate Guide To Reducing Your High Bounce Rate
Every day, concerned internet marketers research ways to cut down their website’s high bounce rate, but unfortunately, many of them still haven’t found out just how.
Like you, I went on a merry-go-round search for the right tricks to use for reducing my site’s bounce rate. And after a tedious time, I finally found out some things. Here I will be sharing with you just how you can also pull off the same trick with your website.
First, let us check out the meaning of bounce rate.
Google defines this as:
Google also mentions that, “A rising bounce rate is a sure sign that your homepage is annoying or off-putting.”
Similarly, Joshua Ledgard defines bounce rate as: “The percentage of visitors who come to your landing page and leave without engaging with any content, filling out your opt-in form, or clicking through to another page. It’s people who just saw the page they landed on and said “nope… that’s not for me.” You want this to be as low as possible. You want to keep people around, get them to engage, and take the next step down your sales funnel.”
Going by those brilliant definitions from Google and Joshua, you know that you should get serious with your blog the moment you find out that your website’s bounce rate reaches 80% or higher.
What that means is that people are not finding what you share interesting, insightful, or useful to read, and they certainly are not willing to take action.
Let’s look at some of the reasons why bounce rates get so high and why you should avoid it like the plague…
#1 Reason: Slow Page Load Time – People leave your site the instant your page refuses to load up fully (in 4 seconds or less). There are loads of other useful websites that write about the same topics as you, and if they have faster websites, you will lose your traffic to them. If you do not want your audience to be taken away by your competitors, be sure to invest in a good, reliable, and speed-oriented web host.
#2 Reason: Too Many Intrusive Advertisements – Some people are here to make money online, but focusing too heavily on that distracts your audience. Readers will get annoyed by too many ads.
#3 Reason: Annoying Pop-ups – I don’t know about you, but I hate pop-ups. I especially hate those that don’t relate to the post I am trying to invest my time in. Whenever I lay eyes on such pop-ups, I almost immediately hit the X button. If you must enable pop-ups, ensure they are useful and relevant.
#4 Reason: Terrible And Unhelpful Content – Sadly enough, many internet marketers fail hugely in the business of writing quality-filled and helpful content. What they do is just regurgitate the content already shared on other blogs, and in the process of editing these pieces, they trash the most useful parts and serve their users half-baked material.
Now, I know what’s on your mind…
You’re already wondering how you can easily cut down your website’s bounce rate.
If that’s correct, then consider yourself lucky because I’m about to show you 7 easy steps to fixing your high bounce rate.
Just be sure to grab a seat, pour a cup of coffee, relax, and pay attention.
But before I jump into sharing how to reduce your site’s bounce rate, I’d like you to take a quick stroll to your Google Analytics dashboard.
Reduce Your High Bounce Rate With Interactive Content
1. Improve Your Site Readability
I hate to be the one to break this news to you, but trust me, your site’s content probably looks crappy on the eyes.
I am guessing you are not writing for yourself (i.e. you are writing to get a reader to take action). So if my assumption is right, please strive hard – really hard – to make your post scannable and skimmable for your reader’s sake.
People don’t like to read long posts that are not well-formatted. The average internet user wants to scan through a post. They don’t want to read a lot of jumbled text. So, in your best interest, be sure to format your content the way your readers would want it.
For me, I make sure to keep my sentences and paragraphs short – up to four (4) lines per paragraphs is typically OK.
Also part of maintaining my website’s content readability is in knowing how to keep my newly learned vocabularies to myself.
Here are tools that would help to improve your writing:
Learn to communicate in a simple and easily understood way, and you will never have to worry about getting a high bounce rate.
2. Use Creative And Eye-Catching Infographics
Infographics are an excellent way to get visual, and engage your audience in real-time.
What are infographics?
According to Google, “A good infographic is worth a thousand words.”
Look at the top sites you read every day; why do you read them?
It’s probably because they are engaging, and they share all kinds of different content, from standard text content, to videos, to podcasts, and yes, to infographic content.
Check out this post from VWO about the anatomy of a perfect checkout page to see an infographic in action:
Infographics are a combination of short texts backed up with relevant images to express a thought or an idea that a reader can quickly relate to. They are quick and to the point in comparison to long blog posts like this one.
Interestingly, over 80% of internet marketers make use of infographics as an interactive way of reaching their audience and getting them to take desired actions. This means that your chances of getting a useful result from this technique are quite slim.
However, you will quickly turn this fact around if you’re able to tell a great story and get readers engaged.
The good thing is that if you do this the right way, you can be sure to say goodbye to a high bounce rate.
3. Start A Mini-TV
A “mini-TV” simply means recording your own educating, informative, and inspiring videos for your fans on YouTube.
If you are truly worried about your site’s high bounce rate, and you are committed and serious about solving it, I’d advise that you start giving out tremendous value to your audience by recording a video tutorial to teach them a thing or two.
This way, you will improve your blog’s visibility which will get your audience to stay on your blog for a longer time as they consume the great stuff you publish.
This also has a hidden benefit: As you improve your blog’s bounce rate, you also get a chance at making more money online by showing ads.
Now, recording a video doesn’t have to be hard. It only requires your smartphone’s camera and your ability to share your knowledge in a simple, clear, and understandable way. Just make sure your videos are very interactive and will help your viewers be even better at what it is you are teaching.
4. Take Your Blog Content’s Format To A Whole New Level
Correctly formatted content will almost instantly get you more views and committed readers.
When I started my first blog years back, I recorded a lot of success from the large volume of people that visited the blog and shared their beautiful thoughts with me. My blog was relatively new, but it didn’t stop people from visiting and commenting on it. In fact, on a typical day, I would get over 70 comments per post.
Now, that’s a lot, right?
So what did I do to get such a large amount of success for a new blog?
Well, it’s simple.
I made structured and appropriately formatted blog content.
This type of content makes your work appealing, and it invites the average reader to stick around to consume your content, no matter how long it is.
Your blog’s content is well-formatted when the headlines and sub-headings are in bold letterings. You need to spell out how you want your audience to consume your content. Remember, they are on your blog to follow your lead – they will do as you say.
Typically, bullet points are also a good thing to take note of while preparing blog posts. It makes it easy for a reader to skim through important points quickly without getting bored from filler words.
For an overall great content format, you might want to consider using a lot of images, screenshots, and mind-blowing quotes. They all work like magic in retaining your blog readers, which in turn will help you reduce your blog’s bounce rate.
With tools like Recite, you can easily create great looking quotes on your blog to make your posts more interactive and appealing.
See Recite in action below:
5. Make It Easy For Your Readers To Share Your Content
Internet users, especially the ones that frequent Twitter, enjoy sharing content on the web.
I know this because I spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook reading tweets and statuses. And once I stumble onto a post that gets me excited or one that motivates me from a state of boredom, I don’t hesitate to hit the share or retweet button.
People will share your stuff if it is interesting, but you’ve got to provide them an easy way to do that.
Luckily, there are loads of plugins on the WordPress plugin directory that you can quickly leverage to help you achieve this.
In the past, I used Co-Schedule, and now, I use the Social Warfare plugin. It helps me to easily embed quotable quotes within my content, which makes it incredibly easy for my readers to help share my content with their friends on Twitter.
If you do this well, you will also get a chance at growing your Twitter following, becoming a celebrity marketer, and getting even more blog readers to come and consume your well-cooked content.
6. Use Expressive Images To Aid Your Content
Look, if you are going to make your blog audience to stick around, consume your articles, and of course, decrease your blog’s bounce rate, you will want to consider using a lot of striking images to aid your blog’s text.
If you check some of the top blogs in your niche, you’ll realize that they often use lots of interactive images and screenshots that further explain the ideas in which they are trying to communicate to their audience.
To also get the same result, you will have to either create or go in search of some expressive images to help your content shine in the blog-o-sphere.
Doing this will definitely take your bounce rate way, way down.
7. Write Longer And Informative Content
Google loves long posts. In fact, this is one of the most correlated metrics in deciding how helpful and useful the content is (i.e. getting ranked higher).
In the image below (from serpIQ), you’ll see that longer form content ranks better on SERPs.
Blog posts, aided with quality images, videos, and quizzes, help them build a loyal following of people who end up paying to have a copy of their books or video tutorials.
In one of his posts on Forbes, Josh Steimle gave some great suggestions on how to write longer form content:
Long posts, though, don’t work for everyone. But trying it a few times on your blog wouldn’t be a bad idea. In fact, if you make it highly informative, educating, and entertaining, you can be sure to become an authority in your niche.
But remember:
Make it informative!
Bonus Point: Ask A Question
At the end of each post, ask your readers some questions and let them provide their answers in the comments section of the article.
Trust me, this works great in terms of getting engagement.
Watch me do it. I don’t joke around with comments. In fact, I take my readers’ comments more seriously than I do with my entire post!
Personally, this idea has been the principal factor for me to come up with better and better content each week to serve my loyal blog audience.
Reduce Your Blog’s Bounce Rate – Actionable Tips
Please make sure to put these tips to use. It’s not helpful if you just read this post and don’t act.
The action you put forth toward the things you are learning is what counts. Your action is what will eventually help you cut down your high bounce rate.
Keep trying, record your success, and improve!!
So here’s my question for you: What do you do to keep your blog’s bounce rate low? What tips can you share with me? Let me know in the comments below!
Did you find this guide useful? Share it with your friends!
Leave a Comment