17 Most Advanced Tips To Reduce Bounce Rate In 2019
How To Reduce Bounce Rate 2019: While increasing the traffic to your blog is of utmost importance, what you cannot and should not ignore in the process is how visitors behave and engage in your site. Analyzing this can give great insights into how useful your content is and where you should improve.
Poor user experience can break your site eventually. If people come to a particular page of your site and leave it from there itself, that’s not a good signal to Google. That visitors hit the ‘back’ button from the first page they landed on is interpreted by Google as a bad user experience, probably because the content was not useful or relevant.
This, in turn, will hamper your page’s ranking. Therefore, it is highly important that visitors coming to your site go to another page.
This article will deal with this particular aspect, called Bounce Rate. I will also tell you how to reduce Bounce Rate. Read on to find it.
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What Is Bounce Rate? How To Reduce Bounce Rate?
Bounce Rate is the term used to describe the percentage of visitors to a site who left from the entrance page itself.
Let me elaborate it.
Let’s say a person searched for something in Google. A certain page of your site shows up in the search results and he clicks on it. This particular page is the entrance page for him – the page through which he entered your site. Now, if he doesn’t go to any other page from the first page he landed on, then that’s not good.
So, if a total of 1000 people visited a particular page on your site, out of which, let’s say, 300 people left from the that page (i.e. they did not go to any other page), then the Bounce Rate for that particular page is (300/1000) X 100 = 30 percent.
Therefore, Bounce Rate = (Number of visitors who left the site from the page they landed on)/(Total number of visitors to the site)
How To Reduce Bounce Rate?
Bounce Rate, as explained above, is a ranking factor. Higher the Bounce Rate, the worse it is for your site.
A higher Bounce rate means visitors did not find relevant information in your site, which means a poor user experience.
It can also mean you do not have well-organized content with a proper strategy.
Whatever may be the reason, you need to reduce Bounce Rate. Here are a few tips to reduce Bounce Rate:
1. Provide Relevant Information
The most important thing to do is to provide the right content to your visitors. You must provide the information that users are seeking. Google’s ultimate goal is to ensure users get what they are looking for. Keep this in mind as you create content. Also, make sure you update your content regularly to maintain its relevancy. And do not over-promise in your title and meta description. Users read your title that appears in the SERP first and then the meta description before they click on it. If they get disappointed with what they come across, they will go back. Keep in mind your target audience and make sure they are satisfied with what you have to provide.
Find Out Everything About Meta Title Tags Here
2. Improve Readability Of Your Content
No matter how relevant or useful information you are providing, if visitors do not find it easy to read your content, they will hit the ‘back’ button. Your content should be such that visitors do not have to put effort to read and process it. Read this article to know how to improve readability of your blog.
3. Use Images & Infographic
Your content could be highly informative and relevant. And maybe you have written it in an easily understandable way. But if it is about a complex topic or has a lot of numbers, readers will find it difficult to process the information. So, it is always good to use images and infographic, to simplify stuffs.
4. Improve Loading Time Of Your Site
If a page loads slowly, users get annoyed. Why would they wait for a page to load when another article is just a few clicks away? They just go back and click on another article from the SERP. So, in order to ensure, people stay on your page, you need to ensure your site’s loading time is less. Remember that a page might load fast in your system, possibly because you use a fast Internet connection. This is not the case with others. Many of the users are using mobile Internet which could result in slow loading. So, you need to ensure, from your side, that the site loads fast. Optimize the images. Use CDN to reduce loading time. Because, if the users do not stay on your page in the first place, there is no question of them visiting another page on your site.
Find Out How To Speed Up Your Website Here
5. Keep Your Site Design Appealing
Like I always say, the look and appearance of your site is very important. If visitors are not impressed by the way your website looks, if it doesn’t look professional enough, they will go back. So, take the design of your website seriously. Keep in mind your target audience before designing your website.
6. Keep Navigation Easy
If visitors find it easy to navigate from one section of your site to another, they are likely to visit other pages. So, do not complicate navigation unnecessarily. Keep it as simple as possible.
7. Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Imagine mobile-users visiting your site from the SERP discovers that your site is not optimized for mobile screens. Let’s say they have to zoom in and out to read the content and go to the different sections of the page. That won’t be a good experience for the users, right? They will go back from that page itself and probably never come back. And a large majority of the visitors are mobile users. You do not want to lose them. That’s the reason your site should be mobile-friendly. Using a responsive them can solve this problem easily.
8. Keep Social-Sharing Buttons
This too is very important. People on social media, especially, on Twitter, have a tendency to share useful and interesting things they come across. So, if you are writing interesting and useful content and if there are social sharing buttons on your pages, your visitors are likely to visit other pages, because, they are always looking for shareable content.
9. Keep Less Number Of Ads
Having too many advertisements on the page is distracting and annoying. It gives an impression that you do not care about user experience. While earning from ads might be one of the reasons you are blogging, keeping too many ads is not going to help you achieve your goal. If anything, it will repel the visitors from clicking. Also, make sure you put the ads in places which do not make it difficult for visitors to read the content of the page.
10. Avoid Using Pop-Ups
People come to a site for a reason. Now, if you interrupt them midway, that is going to annoy them. Pop-ups, most of the time, do exactly this. Probably, the visitor is busy reading something and something pops-up in front of him all of a sudden. Of course, they can close it and read the content, but in all likelihood, to avoid another pop-up, they will not visit to another page.
11. Interlink Properly
Interlinking properly plays a crucial role in reducing Bounce Rate. If you link wherever necessary, link to the relevant page, and use the right anchor text to do it, people are likely to click on it. But remember, it should be relevant and hence, useful to the visitors. One of the ways I do it is by including a unknown concept (but relevant) in the post and link it to the relevant page.
12. Set Links To Open In New Tab
Make sure links, both internal and external, opens in new tab. Otherwise, visitors will have to go back if they want to see the original page again. This consumes a lot of time and can even annoy the users.
13. Add CTAs That Are Really Actionable
Visitors need to be told what is the next step, what needs to be done now. So, include Call-To-Actions. Make sure they are relevant and are actionable in the truest sense of the word. Make them compelling and create a sense of urgency. Also, use a CTA in the meta description as well.
14. Customize The 404 Page
Customize the 404 page with a proper message directing your visitors to another page where they might be interested in visiting. The common 404 error messages are boring and annoying. Your visitors don’t want to see that.
15. Reduce Broken Links
If there are too many broken links, you must fix them. Broken links give users a poor experience. It makes it difficult for them to get to the page they want to. If your website has an image of having too many broken links, your visitors will avoid clicking on the links.
16. Keep Search Box Visible
If the search box is easily accessible, your visitors are likely to use it to search for other topics and hence, visit other pages in the site.
17. Show Related Posts That Are Really Related
If you are showing related posts on your pages, make sure they are really related. If people see posts that are truly related, they might get interested in them and click on to visit those pages, thereby, decreasing Bounce Rate.
I hope these 17 tips on how to reduce Bounce Rate helps you. If you have any question regarding how to reduce Bounce Rate, ask me in the comment section below and I will try to explain at the earliest.