Seven Top Tips for Reducing Bounce Rate

When trying to bring people to your blog, business website, content page, or anything in between, bounce rate is an essential concept to have a grasp on. As technology evolves, search engine optimization and all who utilize it have become increasingly competitive. The online world is becoming just that – a universe of its own!

The content you upload is just as important as your methods of bringing eyes in to actually view it. You could have the most groundbreaking content on your website, but if no one is happening upon it, then what is the point? This is where bounce rate serves a fairly important role in the success of your brand or business.

You may be wondering what bounce rate is and why it is so important. If this is a question on your mind, you are already taking strides towards improvement. Read on to learn more about tips and tricks to lowering your bounce rate so that your content never goes unseen.

What Is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors to a website who decide to navigate away from the website after viewing only one page. It’s safe to say that as a website or content creator, a low bounce rate is the goal. Although it is an analytics term, the concept of bounce rate is something you should be very aware of.

The relationship between bounce rate and SEO is a bit of a complicated one. If your goal is to improve your search engine optimization circumstances, it may be difficult to find a straight answer when it comes to bounce rate and its effect.

Google, for example, does not use bounce rate as a ranking signal. There is not much evidence that Google has a sort of engagement signal for SEO that the public does not have access to, which is why it is difficult to determine if bounce rate is an indication of SEO.

This is why most people view bounce rate as a proxy signal for satisfaction and engagement of their viewers. Many are just thankful that they can accurately measure daily, monthly, and yearly engagement in such an effective way.

Bounce rate can force you into making proactive decisions about your business’s digital presence rather than waiting for things to go wrong to fix them. Bounce rate provides direct information on what someone is clicking and liking about your content and product.

It also allows insight on whether your marketing campaigns are working correctly or if they need to be adjusted to fit the clientele and target audience. When your business or brand is trying to break through a highly competitive market, information like this can mean the difference between sinking or swimming.

Why Bounce Rate Is Important

Bounce rate can measure many things and give crucial information about the analytics and marketing of your brand or business. Whether your numbers are down, or you are looking to make improvements, bounce rate can point you to the most irrelevant and relevant parts of your website.

If you find that there is a high bounce rate on your homepage, this is a clear indication that people are not interested enough to explore other parts of your website. They see the homepage and immediately click away without giving anything else a chance.

Information like this is essential if you want to effectively cater to your target audience and new customers. If you find that on the call-to-action page people are clicking away, this will let you know that something needs to change in order to keep them engaged. All of this is crucial when trying to strengthen your business’s online reputation.

Bounce rate is important because it clues you in on how your clientele and potential new customers feel about your content. Without directly telling you, they are letting you know where you are exceeding their expectations versus where you may be lacking.

How to Lower Bounce Rate

Luckily, there are a few tips and tricks that you can utilize to reduce bounce rate and get your site back to where you want it to be. It is important to note, though, that setting out to reduce bounce rate is a reactive mindset that may cause a mix up of priorities. Bounce rate, after all, is just a mere number. In looking at the statistics and analytics of your website, your main priority should be accurately and effectively communicating your product or business.

Your goal should be to improve and increase engagement to increase the satisfaction of your website visitors. Maintaining a headspace like this can serve you proactively when you are building your website and creating your content. This will propel your business or brand in the digital landscape in the ways you are hoping it will.

Rather than considering specific ways to lower bounce rate, try to look at it from the angle of improving your site so that visitors will want to spend more time on it the moment they navigate to it. Here are a few tips and tricks that will serve you in the long run when it comes to reducing your bounce rate.

1. Take a Look at the Speed of Your Pages

If the goal is to make users happier with your website, there is one thing that you can count on that will always act as an indicator for either a high or low bounce rate: the speed of your pages. If you have ever been on a page that is taking too long to load, you know exactly what slow pages entail.

You are guaranteed a lower bounce rate if your page speed is fast. This is because more people will be able to access your content if they are not waiting for it to load. As well, it will keep people’s attention on your site. It is also proven that speed is considered a Google ranking factor.

By improving the speed of your website, you will most likely experience a downstream effect on the wider SEO implications. Not only will you keep your visitors’ attention, but, in the long run, your SEO ranking may improve as well.

It may seem like something that is out of your realm of knowledge, but improving your website’s speed comes down to a few key features. Once you’ve improved the speed, don’t be surprised if you see your bounce rate lower drastically.

2. Deliver to Viewers

When people search for something online, they are typically looking for a specific answer or piece of information that you, hopefully, can provide for them. After honing in on the speed of your page, it is important to critique the content you provide through the eyes of a potential customer.

If someone searches for “Apple MacBook”, you want to rank for “Apple MacBook” but without knowing the intent of the person searching, it is a bit difficult to do so. If you can broadly satisfy the intention of a visitor on your website or through a hyperlink, your bounce rate and engagement will speak for itself.

You can do this by performing a deep competitive analysis. This is when you see what is already ranking under these specific terms, your ideal search term, and then analyze all the ranking results to see what is working that satisfies the customer’s intent. You must offer similar content and information as the top 10 ranking results to match up to them.

You can also choose to link to any related content. Placing related articles, links, and information on your website to be in a more visible place may just keep your viewers from looking someplace else. By doing this, their intent is satisfied, and you have a lower bounce rate. It’s a win-win!

3. Use Thought-Out CTAs

CTA stands for call-to-action, which is one of the aspects of a website that can make or break your marketing campaign. A call-to-action is essentially what you want a viewer or website visitor to do upon landing on your page. This can be filling out a survey, buying a product, or even just navigating to a different page.

A common mistake people make when including a CTA on their website is not utilizing their available resources. The best way to improve your CTAs is by including your ranking keyword within the call-to-action itself. First, find out what your pages are ranking for and then insert the top keywords in the CTA.

By doing this, you psychologically tell the customer that they have happened upon what they were searching for. Rather than having a page about credit reports by using a CTA that simply says, “Add to Cart,” try a CTA that is more specific and uses keywords like “Get my credit report.”

Although it does not seem like much, this can drastically improve your website’s engagement. In improving engagement, you will also be lowering your bounce rate.

4. Use Inverted Pyramid Writing

Whether they know it or not, someone visiting a website is looking to be engaged no matter what. That engagement can come in a lot of different ways, but there is a strategy that has been proven to maintain engagement.

When you include writing on your website, it is typically information that is necessary for whoever is scrolling through your site. This can be dangerous, though. If you do not have experience with writing strategies that maintain engagement, your writing may bore a customer away from your website.

Inverted pyramid writing was introduced by Dr. Pete Meyers as a method to keep readers engaged in your content. This means that you want to hook them early and slowly bring them into your content. The method in copywriting and content writing was inspired by journalism.

To do the inverted pyramid strategy, all you have to do is begin with a quick, straight to the point answer. This pulls them in because of the assumption that you have all the answers they are looking for. After that, you can elaborate and expand on details. This strategy has been proven to grab and keep a reader’s attention. Bounce rate is likely to lower when you use this method.

5. Simplify the Process

Site search can be a headache sometimes, leading people to give up on the process altogether if they are not immediately appeased with the results given. If a person has not found what he or she is looking for on your site, that person will most likely redirect to the trusted, all-knowing Google. So, to reduce bounce rate, make finding a search solution easier than using Google.

By doing this, you are giving visitors more reason to remain on your website as opposed to returning to Google where they can guarantee an eventual answer. If they instead choose to search for their answers on your website, this is a clear indication that your engagement has improved.

All you need to do is make everything fairly simple. For example, by making site search obvious for your customers, they are going to be satisfied with the ease of their experience. This is especially true if your website is resource heavy and people believe that they can find exactly what they are searching for on your website.

Instead of making them resort back to Google, try your best to serve as that all-knowing resource that they do not need to click away from. This lowers bounce rate and puts your site at an advantage.

6. Include Pics and Vids

Any sort of media on websites has been proven to grab the attention of viewers more than anything else. Whether we like to believe it or not, humans are rather easily entertained. By including a video, images, and different types of media, you may see your highest engagement page yet.

A video can do what a long paragraph can do in a shorter amount of time and yield tenfold results. People are more likely to seek out a video or image explanation of a complicated process rather than directly read it. Although this may be the case, it is still important to mix up your formats.

If you decide to use a video, you should also include images and the transcript along with it so that your visitors feel like they are getting all the possible information they can in one place. Adding a video or images is a game changer but mixing the media has been a proven strategy in increasing engagement.

Pages with media on them are typically not bounce pages. This indicates just how effective it is to use a mix of media on your pages, but it is important not to overdo this strategy. While we want to make the customer feel comfortable and fulfilled on your website, resource overload is a sure way to get him or her to click away sooner rather than later.

7.Make Rage Clicks and Dead Clicks No More

There are many moving parts to a website that can cause people to tire of a site and navigate someplace else, but rage and dead clicks are two of the more damaging perpetrators. You may be wondering what rage and dead clicks are. Well, they are not as scary as you think, but they are more common than people typically take note of.

Rage clicks refer to when people click on something that they believe is supposed to be a button or link, and it does not work. Dead clicks are similar, whether it be an image, special text, or potential CTA that the visitor clicks on that leads them nowhere. If it is a simple technical problem, that can surely be fixed. On the other hand, if something on your website appears like a button or hyperlink and it is not, more damage can be done than not.

Every single website has something along the lines of rage clicks and dead clicks. Not only does this give visitors false hope, but their frustration with not being able to find a direct answer from their click may lead them out the door with their services. Luckily, there is a simple solution. Fix them!

By fixing dead and rage clicks, people are more likely to click the elements and features on your site that are actually functioning. People navigating on your website will feel more clued in and comfortable while looking around if their assumptions are confirmed with workable buttons and links.

Final Thoughts

Your question on how to lower bounce rate is not easily answered without understanding all that is necessary to keep viewers captivated. A combination of amazing content and a perfectly crafted web page do not mean much if no one is deciding to click on it. This is where these tips can come into play.

Next time you take a look at your high bounce rate, consider pivoting to a new strategy. It may seem like a daunting task, but following these tips to reduce bounce rate may just save you from a whole lot of disappointment.

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