Lower Your Bounce Rate by Engaging Your Visitors

What is your bounce rate and why should it matter? Your bounce rate is the rate at which visitors depart from your web pages. A peek at your Google Analytics may reveal some rather sobering information for you. If you are suffering a bounce rate anywhere around 50 percent, then it’ obvious you need to make some changes!

Why is your bounce rate important?

First of all, Google made the bounce rate a component of its search engine ranking algorithm, and a site that features a high bounce rate may have its pages driven down into oblivion. What’s even worse, since everyone is exiting shortly after they get there, odds are your site isn’t achieving what you’d like it to. There are certainly cases when a high bounce rate is attributed to your site’s pages loading slowly, but assuming that’s not the case, we’re offering three ideas to help you keep people from leaving your pages swiftly.

• Use video - The use of video or other multimedia content can make a spectacular difference in a number of ways. For starters, video has proven to be a factor in not just reducing bounce rates, but also in boosting user engagement, increased traffic, (YouTube embeds help your rankings) and increased sales and preferred actions. The same content of some 1500 to 2000 words presented in a video, audio or slideshow will frequently be viewed in its entirety.
• Make your content more readable - Resist the urge to plop large chunks of content on a web page. Break it down into shorter, more consumable paragraphs, and be sure to use subheads, bullet points and lists to break up the visual look of it. The prudent use of images can help you get your points across as well, and are nice to see.
• Highlight related content within your site - Often you will have content on your site that is related to the piece in question. Make sure you link to other content on your site that folks may be interested in, and offer them a reason to stick around! This can be as simple a fix as using a Related Post plugin for those who have a WordPress blog.