Lower Your Bounce Rate by Engaging Your Visitors

You’ve just taken a look at your Google Analytics and are a bit surprised to see that a majority of traffic to your site are departing within a few seconds. This is what’s called your bounce rate, and if you’ve got one that’s around 50 percent, then you need to take some action.

So why is your bounce rate even important?

First of all, Google is making the bounce rate a part of its search engine ranking algorithm, and a site that has a high bounce rate can certainly have its pages driven down into oblivion. What’s worse, since everyone is departing shortly after they arrive, odds are your site isn’t accomplishing what you’d like it to. There are certainly cases when a high bounce rate can be a result of your site’s pages loading slowly, but assuming that’s not the case, we’re offering up three tips to help you keep people from exiting your pages quickly.

• Use video - The usage of video or other multimedia content can create a dramatic difference in many ways. For starters, video has proven to be a factor in not only reducing bounce rates, but additionally in increasing user engagement, increased traffic, (YouTube embeds help your rankings) and increased sales and preferred actions. The same content of some 1500 to 2000 words conveyed in a video, audio or slideshow will very often be viewed in its entirety.
• Make better and more easily readable content - All too often content is posted onto a web page as one big blob. Do your best to split your content into shorter, more readable paragraphs, and use subheads, bullet points or lists to break up the monotony. Images help convey points also, and are visually appealing to the eye.
• Have related content within your pages - It’s a good bet that you’ve got content on your site that is more than a little related to what you’re posting. Make sure you link to other content on your site that people could find interesting, and give them a terrific reason to stay. For people with a WordPress blog, this can be as simple as using a Related Post plugin.