Do you care about your bounce rate?
Do you care about your reader’s happiness on your site?
Do you realize they are the same question?
Many people don’t care about their bounce rate. Bloggers are more often than not content to be concerned with page views and subscriber counts.
However, by lowering your bounce rate, you will be increasing your page views, follower counts, and SEO ranking.
This post will contain an action plan for ensuring your bounce rate decreases and the ability for search engines to find your site goes up.
What Does Bounce Rate Mean?
The term is called “bounce rate” since it refers to how quickly your readers will bounce off, or leave, your blog.
Why is a Low Bounce Rate Important?
It actually refers to a reader’s happiness on your site. If a reader is unhappy, he or she will leave and go to another site.
This tells Google and other search engines that you do not have a valuable blog.  Search engines will bury your it. They won’t want their users to find sites that aren’t quality.
This post will explain how to keep your readers on your site longer. This in turn will enable you to get more visitors found through search engines, permanent readers, and ultimately followers.
Action Plan for Lowering Your Bounce Rate
This post is taking a before and after approach. Before you start implementing the tips in this article, you should know what your current bounce rate is.
This will enable you to know if  the tips are working and your bounce rate is decreasing.
Step 1: Go to Alexa.com, and put in your website.
Step 2: Record your current bounce rate and readers’ time on your site.
By looking at the screenshot, you can see my Alexa.com statistics.
Daily Pageviews Per Visitor:Â Ideally, that number will be 2.0 or higher. You want your reader to leave from a different page or post on your site.
You do not want them to “bounce” to another site from the first page they viewed. If that number is 2.0 or higher, search engines are convinced you do have a quality site, and your blog will rise in the search engine ranks.
Daily Time on Site: You want your readers to be so engaged, the average reader’s time on your site will increase.
Write down both numbers, so you can tell if your bounce rate is decreasing, and your SEO is improving. If both those numbers rise, your bounce rate falls, and your SEO goes up.
[bctt tweet=”Search engines will be able to find your blog if your bounce rate drops.”]How to Lower Your Bounce Rate
- Learn the names of your readers. Many readers have interesting blog names.  However, if you can learn their first name, and refer to them by their name, they will feel a connection. I want a rapport with my students, so I learn their names. You want a rapport with your readers, so they feel a connection. Blogging is about connections. If they feel a connection, they might be more likely to stay longer on your site.
- Insert a video into your blog posts. Not only will it help you inform your reader, but it will take them a while to watch a video, and they will stay on your site longer.
- Make your blog easy on the eyes. Don’t have colors so unsightly people will want to leave right away. Don’t have a font-size so small, readers will be unable to stay and read your content even if they wanted to.
- Have a post longer than 1,000 words. According to elanblogstudio.com, posts longer than 1,000 words are better for SEO. Also, it will keep your reader on your site longer since it will take your reader longer to read the article. Research shows readers are so impressed with longer articles, they are more likely to share them.
- Have a search bar. Readers will definitely leave your site from a second post or page if they can find it. A search bar enables them to do that.
- A Categories or Tags cloud in your sidebar. Make it easy for readers to leave from a second page by having your Categories or Tags in view for them to click on. (If you look at my right sidebar, you will see that I have a Tags cloud.)
- Have a Call to Action for readers to answer when they are done reading your article. Answering it will keep them on your site longer.
- Embed links to other articles on your blog. You can embed up to 100 without Google getting wise to you! You want to entice readers to click those backlinks to leave from another page or post on your blog. Inserting hyperlinks to your older articles ensures this if you click “open in new window” when you insert the link.
- Have photos, infographics, or screenshots. It will take your reader so long to scroll past these, especially on a mobile device, they will stay on your site longer. Also, while scrolling past those graphics, they may decide to put their Email in the “Subscribe” box.
- Subscribe to the 60-thenew40.com/building-blocks blog. Every Friday Kathleen, the admin blogger, has a unique linky party. It is designed with the dual intention of increasing SEO by lowering your Alexa score as well as the usual networking opportunities that linky parties bring.
The mandate of the linky party is clear. You must leave the post clicked on at the party from a second page on the site, and you must spend at least 30 seconds on each page or post while you are there. This increases both numbers at Alexa– readers are leaving from a second page on the site and spending at least a minute on your blog.
11. Have a Related Posts section. If readers see an article to offer them more information on your topic, they may click on it bringing them to a second post on your blog.
12. Reduce ads. Although they function with the intention of putting money in your pocket, ads are designed to make your reader leave your site.
13. Reduce external links to other people’s sites. Like with advertisements, external links increase the chances of your visitors leaving your site and going to other sites.
14. Have strong content and mechanics. 450 million blogs exist. If you don’t care about your content and mechanics, your reader will leave your site and find a blogger who does.
15. Have a linky party. When your visitors click the link, they are going to another page on your site.
In conclusion, the success of your blog is determined by your Alexa ranking. Even if that doesn’t matter to you today, it might in the future.
Also, it is important to consider all aspects of your reader’s experience. Following these tips is win-win-win. Your bounce rate goes down, your SEO ranking goes up, and your reader is so much happier, he or she is spending more time at your blog.
Despite the headline, there is one tip for lowering your bounce rate– keep your readers at your site longer. This post was designed to help you do this.
Readers, please share, so other bloggers and site creators know how to increase their search engine traffic.
What do you do to increase your SEO rankings? I look forward to your views.
Related Posts:
How to Easily Get Your Blog Found on Google
7 Warning Signs that Google Can’t Find You
How to Increase Blog Traffic Like an SEO Expert
12 Best Tricks to Get More Eyeballs on Your Old Posts
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