11 Secrets to Reduce Bounce Rate Dramatically
Knowing more and more about how to reduce bounce rate is one of the severe headaches in every blogger’s mind. No one wants his words to be looked over and ignored. A blogger writes because he wants to be read. He wants to help out people. Is it how you are? Then, you must be worried about your bounce rate and how you can control it. While reading some goofy tricks of making a blog more productive, some bloggers do really horrible blogging mistakes that result in nothing else, but failures. Most of new bloggers hate to listen the next line that I’m going to say, but that is 100% true.
Blogging is not all about making money, but helping and serving the people. If you have this thought in your mind, you are most likely to have a lower bounce rate, but still to make it even good, keep reading. But if you think for money only, its time to get changed and make some right moves that are below.
1. Loading Time:
A heavily loaded website or blog that takes ages to load is really unacceptable no matter how good and worthy content there might be. Simply no one comes online to wait.
We are not in 1990s its 2013 and there is not just one website that can give you information on a specific topic, but there are thousands and thousands. If one blog is taking longer to load what do you do? You definitely do exactly what I do. Hit the exit/back button and get out of there.
Click on other blog’s link and read what I need to read. That can happen to you to which will result in high bounce rate and high-level headache of course.
2. Attractive Design:
First impression has a lot to do with what someone thinks and says about you in this life and blogosphere. That is why having an attractive design for your blog is must in order to survive and reach your goals in this competitive world where hundreds of new blogs are created everyday.
Hence, try to make it as professional and good looking as you can to reduce bounce rate. But make sure you are not killing your blog’s design while trying to improve it.
3. Proper Navigation:
Everyone likes to know where on the blog they are and where they can get what they need. Which is the reason proper blog navigation is very important to make your readers feel comfortable while trying to digest your words.
This will encourage them to explore more and more content instead of reading one article and running away with bad thoughts on their minds about you and your blog.
4. Sneeze Pages:
What is a sneeze page by the way? A sneeze page highlights your best efforts so far. For example, most popular post, most commented posts and so on. Creating a sneeze page can really help when you are serious to reduce bounce rate of your blog. It has multiple other benefits too.
• People love to see how far you can go in bringing the best to your readers.
• It shows the brilliance of your mind and your blog too.
• It encourages your readers to check why those posts were listed on the page. Hence, causing more pageviews and less bounce rate.
5. Plugins:
The world of WordPress is improving day by day making everything much more easier for bloggers and webmasters. The best part about WordPress are plugins.
There are plugins to do almost anything a blogger may need to do. Editing your theme, improving search engine rankings, etc. But what we are going to talk about right now are the plugins that can help you reduce the bounce rate.
• Related Posts: There are more than one plugins to show related posts to your readers on almost every part of your blog. So go get one and stop allowing your readers to go away without exploring around.
• Popular Posts:This is another good way to gain more page views by every reader. Unlike sneeze pages, you don’t have to go and link the posts that are going viral. These plugins automatically track the most read posts and show on sidebars or anywhere you want and as much you want.
• Sharing Buttons: It would be really hard to pick one plugin for doing this job since there are so many already and number is increasing day by day. Pick one that suits your needs and enjoy the free promotion along with more page views.
6. Images:
There is a reason why Stumbleupon, Reddit and Pinterest are so popular. That reason is simple. Images. Everyone loves images since they make content more appealing.
Having attractive and relative images in your blog at right places allow your readers to stop, look at something and continue reading. How images increase pageviews? Nice question.
Most of plugins (related and popular posts) allow to show thumbnail to your readers. The more attractive and appealing a thumbnail is, more are the chances of getting extra pageviews making the bounce rate going down and down.
7. Headlines:
It is necessary to choose best post titles for your blog posts because they are not only going to represent your thoughts forever, but they will attract the people both from search engines and those who are reading your other posts and see the links in popular, recent or related posts widgets.
8. Inter Linking:
While reading any post, there are terms sometimes that readers may not understand or want to read more about. Hence, Linking to your old posts wherever needed not only gives you SEO benefits, but makes your articles look more appealing and professional and generates more pageviews.
9. Mobile Friendly:
Technology is changing the world rapidly and its time to flow in the direction of technology for bloggers too. A huge number of readers these days are using Tablets, Mobiles and Smart Phones. Hence, in order to save those guys from trouble and get the most of them, you can do two things.
1. Install a Responsive Theme:
Responsive themes are those that have the ability to show up in good outlook on multiple devices including Computer, Mobiles, Tablets and smart phones, etc.
Or you can go with option number two.
2. Install Mobile Plugin:
Install a plugin that makes your blog mobile friendly and increase the pageviews. Have a happy fight with bounce rate.
10. Ad Placement:
Do you love to make money from your blog? Oh! Stupid question. Everyone loves to make money blogging, but there are few limits in this business. If you cross those, you start to get harms instead of benefits.
What I want to say is don’t use pop-ups on your blog. Not even one. And, the rest of your ads should be placed at good places like Sidebar, below posts and header, etc and not just everywhere.
11. Avoid Keyword Stuffing:
That’s right that search engine boots cannot feel your words, but humans do. Don’t just keep repeating a keyword again and again and again for sake of getting good search engine ranks. It is hurting your readers. And, when you hurt readers, they hurt back by exiting your blog and never coming back.
Do you know any way to reduce bounce rate that is not mentioned here? Make sure to add it into this post using comments section below. Your response will be appreciated and don’t forget sharing is caring and that’s the bottom line.
Twitter: coolcash4live
says:
All the points mentioned here are perfect as far as I am concerned Saqib. I normally link to older posts with viable information for readers to check out and in this regard, those pages get ranked well on search pages.
I also have sneeze pages on my site except my popular technology news site because news site doesn’t focus on such kind of strategy
Thanks for your post
Olawale Daniel recently posted..Google Zebra Update Ready to Wipe all Websites off from the Web
Its good to have you here.
Thanks for this valuable stuff, now a days my blog is suffering from this problem of “Bounce rate”, hope these tips will help me
hamayon recently posted..How To Increase Internet Speed In Your Computer Using Windows
Try these things and let us know the benefits.
well, I think that if you keep the user interact on your website via any method then your bounce rate will be less !
Thank you
jackson recently posted..Spice Herbal Incense: Patchouli Blend
Of course.
awesome tips given thanks for sharing ! useful for me
anis chity recently posted..Your Website On WordPress – Is It Worth It?
Twitter: geniuskick
says:
Valuable tips! But I still wonder what actually should be the bounce rate? Is 70-75% ok?
There is no limit of what is high or normal bounce rate as it varies Blog Niche vise. But on average, bounce rate over 80% is considered high. 60-80% is normal while less than 60% is very very good.