3 Easy Ways to Keep Visitors on Your Site Longer

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

Why is your bounce rate important?

First of all, Google made the bounce rate a part 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 immediately after they arrive, it’s likely that your site isn’t achieving 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 three good ideas to keep people from exiting your pages swiftly.

• Use video - The use of video or other multimedia content can create a remarkable difference in many ways. First of all, video has shown 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 identical content of some 1500 to 2000 words conveyed in a video, audio or slideshow will frequently be viewed as a whole.
• Make your content more readable - Resist the temptation 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 split up the visual look of it. The prudent use of images will help you get your points across also, and are nice to see.
• Have related content within your pages - It’s a good guess that you’ve got content on your site that is more than a little related to what you’re posting. Be sure to link to other content on your site that people could find interesting, and provide them a terrific reason to stick around. For people with a WordPress blog, this is often as simple as using a Related Post plugin.