10 Actionable Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate
By Mike Cynar
Are users leaving your website too quickly? Here are 10 actionable ways to reduce bounce rate and increase engagement. Apply these simple steps and increase conversion rates by as much as 10%.
Did you know that mobile devices have the highest bounce rate?
Like an improperly optimized website on mobile devices, the smallest thing can make your product obsolete for mobile users. Today we will talk about 10 actionable ways that can help reduce bounce rates and get more visitors to stay on your site.
First, the basics.
What Is Bounce Rate?
A bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits to your site. It generally refers to visitors who:
- Visit a specific page on your website and then leave without interacting with any other pages, or
- Leave after viewing just one page from start to finish (in contrast with “bounce”)
The higher your bounce rate, the less engaged visitors were in reading your blog post.
A low number here indicates that people spend time engaging in more content than if they had left quickly. You want this number as low as possible because it means you’re providing quality and relevant content for readers at all times!
Why Bounce Rate Matters?
First, I want to point out that pogo-sticking is much greater of a concern than bouncing. It is possible to have a high bounce rate, but not be impacted negatively. This is usually the case when people find what they need on the page they land on.
Pogo sticking refers to someone searching for a product or service, landing on one of your web pages, not finding what they were looking for, and as such “pogo-sticking” back to Google to perform another search for the exact same term.
So for example, if I searched for “best replacement windows”, then landed on your website, only to click back to Google and perform the exact same search again, this would tell Google that the results they returned did not answer the user’s search query. If this happens too many times, Google recognizes that rendering this web page for that user’s search term is not a good idea because it’s not what the customer is looking for. This is why it is extremely important to make sure your content is very helpful at addressing your website visitor’s needs.
The bounce rate still matters because it tells you how engaged your visitors are with the content on each page, which can help inform your editorial decisions.
We mentioned earlier that a bounce is when someone visits one of your pages and then leaves without viewing any other pages after it’s loaded in their browser, or they leave after viewing just one page from start to finish.
If this happens more than once for some reason, such as if there was an error loading the next few pages due to low connectivity speeds or something else…then the person will have been counted twice!
A high bounce rate means fewer people stayed on your site long enough to read through all of the information provided by its creator. As a website owner, blogger, and creator, you want the audience to engage with your content. The reader must read the text; the viewer must watch videos; audio must be listened to.
Bounce rates are also a great metric for measuring how well your landing pages work. If you are split-testing a webpage, bounce rate can help you determine how well one performs compared to the other.
The bounce rate can help you grow your business, given that you utilize it for the sake of improving it. Anyhow, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can reduce your bounce rates.
These tips are universal, and they don’t exclusively apply to blogs, videos, or social media.
1. Use Compelling Headlines
Please don’t waste a visitor’s time by giving them an uninteresting headline that doesn’t catch their attention and entice them to read your blog post. Add in bold text, or focus on something controversial for the best results.
Headlines are most likely the first thing the reader will see. If they don’t find it intriguing, they will not stay.
This is a more broad approach to reducing bounce rates, but it will always be relevant and important for the readers.
Put yourself in their shoes: What do they need? How are you going to help them or answer their questions? Consider what your visitors want and expect from reading your blog post.
Headlines are an opportunity to tease readers about what they will find inside your post or tell them something unique that you want them to know and remember from the experience of reading it.
2. Provide Relevant Content
Make sure you’re writing about topics that are relevant to what people want to know about!
If someone searches for how to reduce bounce rates, they’ll most likely be looking for advice on reducing bounce rates themselves, not information on dog food brands or inventions from centuries ago.
You might also find that if visitors land on a page discussing one topic but then are led to another unrelated topic, they’ll quickly bounce.
3. Optimize Your Media
Engaging photos, videos, and graphics get a lot of attention because people are naturally drawn to them. This helps your posts stand out on social media feeds, so more people will likely click through and read what you have in store for them.
Images are a big draw for blog posts and social media content; remember that the text might be too small or blurry when people share it on their page if you don’t optimize them. If someone shares an image from your post but can’t read what’s written because of poor image quality, they’re likely not to bother reading the article either!
Your visual content mustn’t be too pixelated or blurry when people share it on their page. If someone shares an image from your post but can’t read what’s written because of poor image quality, they’re likely not to bother reading the article either!
4. Create Summaries
By writing summaries for your content, you tailor to the quick-fix audience. Not everybody has time to read a 5000-word article, but they still might want to get the gist of it. This is where the summary comes in.
A good summary will reduce your bounce rate because it gives people the information they need without overwhelming them. Your summaries should be short and to the point, providing key insights as well as a link back to your article for more detailed reading.
Summaries can also help with SEO by ensuring that Google indexes all of your content rather than just one version.
5. Create Engaging Captions
Captions can really help engage viewers with posts because they provide context about what’s being shared in the photo.
Captions can reduce your bounce rate because viewers are more likely to want to know what’s happening in the photo. Not to mention, you tailor to individuals who might require additional accessibility.
Not everybody can clearly see images, but they might still want to know what is displayed.
6. Keep It Short
Short sentences, paragraphs, and titles work best on social media because they’re easier for readers to process quickly. Less scrolling is required before clicking through from one post/link to another.
This also helps with reducing bounce rates by keeping people engaged with the content they’re viewing.
7. Build An Audience
Building a strong online presence is important, so do not be afraid to ask followers questions about themselves or their lives. They will feel like they have some connection with you and share more often because of it!
Having an audience that visits your website often will reduce your bounce rate globally because you can expect a certain number of daily visitors who will balance your bounce rate. However, if you are tracking bounce rates for unique visitors, this might not apply.
8. Use Links
Readers are more likely to click through on links if they are relevant to the topic. Oddly enough, links don’t add to your bounce rate; they improve it by providing readers with more information.
Your link to your own website will improve overall engagement on the website because the audience might be more interested in learning in-depth about a tangent to your content.
Make sure that you also include tags of other related web pages in your post. If someone is interested in one article, they may be curious enough about what else you’ve published or shared!
9. Monitor Bounce Rate
Without monitoring your bounce rate, you cannot reduce it. If you don’t know what the percentage is, how can you expect to affect it?
To reduce your bounce rate, you must monitor it regularly. You can then use this information to make changes that will help you improve your bounce rate.
Let’s imagine for a second that we want to reduce the number of people who are bouncing away from our website after reading one article. We know what percent they’re leaving at, and now it’s time to do something about it!
10. Experiment
Finally, you want to experiment. Just because there are direct ways to affect your bounce rate, that doesn’t mean there are no indirect ways to do so.
You will be surprised by some of the ways bounce rate is affected. Some of the bizarre ways bounce rate can change as follows:
- A change in the layout of your website
- Adding a pop-up to get people’s email address or phone number, with an incentive for doing so (like a discount)
- Changing some copy on one page and seeing if it affects other pages as well
You may find that not only does it affect bounce rates, but it also affects conversion rates. Try new things. There is much to experience.
Bounce Rate Reduction Made Easy
Now that you know how to reduce bounce rate, you are well on your way to doing so. It might seem daunting at first, but it’s rather easy if you know what to do.
If you don’t want to bother yourself with knowing what to do but still want results, you might find use in hiring a marketing team to do it for you.
If you’re interested in full-scale marketing services, bounce rate reductions included, get in touch with us now.
Mike Cynar
Mike Cynar is the CEO of Peak Marketing Service and holds over 20+ years of experience running SEO campaigns. He presently manages over 50 lead generation websites and collectively captures over ½ million leads per year. Peak recently earned the BBB Torch Awards for ‘Business Ethics”.
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