Traffic is one of the most crucial factor for the success of any blog making readers to read all your blog posts, is a tough task. Bounce rate is a great measurement for the success of your blog. Maintaining a lower bounce rate is very tough but not impossible. I will share few working tips here, which worked for me to lower down the Shoutmeloud, bounce rate:
Recently we shared the news that Shoutmeloud’s bounced rate is decreased to 30%. I won’t say that it was an easy task, but with little extra effort it’s not hard to achieve. If you are facing a major ups and downs in your blog’s bounce rate then it is always better to analyze the reasons.
Bounce rate is the best way to analyze your blog’s visitor’s activity. It is the percentage of visits, when a visitors lands on your blog post and leave the same page without visiting any other page. There are visitors who bounce soon after landing on your blog post. It’s up to you how you welcome visitors to your blog and attract to other blog’s pages also.
Credit : Flickr
Here are 5 strategies for reducing your blog’s bounce rate:
Design and load time
First impression is last impression, it goes for blogging also. When a visitor lands on your blog, the first thing he notice is your blog’s loading time and design of your blog. If you promote your articles on social media, make sure that your landing page don’t take much time in loading otherwise you might lose your new visitors. Design is another aspect of attracting visitors, go for smooth and professional theme.
When I switched to Thesis WordPress Theme, SML bounce rate moved down to 17%, and that was an unbelievable thing for me. I realize the power of typography and neat and clean layout. After I changed Shoutmeloud design and bounce rate again increased, after determining lots of typography and post formatting issues, Shoutmeloud bounce rate is close to 30% at this moment.
Recommended reading:
Easy to read articles
There are many bloggers who don’t write articles in points. If you won’t divide your articles in parts, it will be more like reading a newspaper and others have to read line by line to get the idea about your article. Other bloggers and visitors land to your article because they need solution for that topic, they don’t have time to spend on reading line by line. Make your article scanable and easy to read for your visitors. Try to give a style to your heading (H2, H3, H4) , and use it to make your content scannable. This will also help you to drive traffic via social media sites.
Show path
It is important that you show path to your visitors, they don’t know where to go after reading your article. Including links to relevant articles is the best way to tell visitors, where to go next and where they can find more information about relevant topic. It is best way to decrease your blog’s bounce rate and also visitor can get all the information about the topic he is interested in.
My best and working strategy is interlink with lots of related articles, and also add 2-3 links in between which are relevant to the article.
Easy Navigation
Your blog should be easy to navigate from one page to another. Visitor should not get confused about the blog’s navigation. If they won’t get what they are looking for, they will surely leave the blog. Give try to plugins like Linkwithin , Landing site , insight or related post to decrease your bounce rate.
Also Read:
Search box and relevant links
It’s always recommended to have a search box which is easily visible by visitors. Visitors always prefer to search for articles they are looking for. If you want to decrease your bounce rate make sure that you link only relevant articles with each other. Irrelevant articles might irritate your visitors and they will leave blog soon.
One thing which I will suggest to Shoutmeloud readers is: Try to maintain a niche blog, if you will notice from the month of April, most of articles posted at Shoutmeloud are related to Blogging and bloggers targeted articles. This also played a major role in decreasing bounce rate.
Bounce rates shows how many visitors likes to read your blog article and find your blog interesting. Thus, make sure that you use above strategies to decrease your blog’s bounce rate.
Don’t forget to share your strategies for decreasing bounce rate.
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{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
me just dying hard to decrese my blogs bounce rate. Its right now 60%
I wud say rather bounce rate is less tahn tech blogs and more of general news blog from my exp
ATUL
@ Atul – there is no bound rules that tech blogs have bad bounce rate…
Generally in a Reader’s point of Veiw … I read more posts on blogs which show a high reader count.
For eg. 2 yrs back When I visited Labnol for the first time … my jaws dropped to see someone having 55000+ readers… Since then I have become a fan. Not becoz of the posts. but becoz of the huge no. of fans.
Well 60% is not a real bad thing. The good news is it can be reduced very easily.
Do this for s starter, Remove the featured post plugin on your blog
@NpXp: Thanks for the suggestion. Removed the Featured posts
ATUL
Useful Tips Ruchi, I guess I have to working hard nw on the bounce rate of my site, its near 80 nw
Don’t worry Loveish, You will surely decrease your bounce rate, just follow above tips
It seems a great tips. I will try it since my blog bounce rate quite high.
Do try it Dana and let us know the results, as m sure they will be g8
Ruchi, you just game me good fresh air. I really try to control my blog bounce rate as you know it’s hard for software reviewer to take control in bounce rate but I’m trying my best to control it. Thanks for your tips.
Glad you found the post useful Arafat.
You’ve covered almost everything. Liked the tip: “Divide your articles in part”
That’s most important part while writing articles. Readers always want a quick view of post and its contents. Diving post in points is best way to attract visitors.
Internal linking is also a great way to reduce bounce rate. Try to link back as many as possible to our related posts or old posts that push readers to read them. This can also be good for ranking. That is my experiences, your suggestions are awesome too. Thanks
Internal linking is most vital factor for reducing bounce rate, it shows your visitors what to read next.
I need to work to decrease my blog’ bounce rate. Its around 81%. Thanks for sharing this post
i am lucky when it comes to bounce rate….it has never gone beyond 20%
That’s cool Tushar….Do share your strategies with us.
Agree with your landing page point, Landing page plays an important role in everything whether it is normal blogging or affiliate marketing. It is important! As landing page would be directing all your traffic.
Right Ankit, but unfortunately many bloggers ignore landing page on their blog.
Thanks , for these tips Ruchi
. Since , i have started a new blog i will follow and see how it works .
Wish u luck Shabnam
Thanks Ruchi for such a excellent tips, as a Blogger I have to agree that Blog should needs related Post option which is best way to decrease your bounce rate. I have new blog and my Bounce rate is lower from 92% to 68% within few days and it daily going down.
I would also agree on interlinking system, where we can redirect readers to particular page by giving link within post!
Thanks for great tips.
Great going Shaswat, That’s good that you reduced your blog’s bounce rate
I like the tips Ruchi. Just added a search box yesterday after it was absent for months. It’s vital to make your blog readable. Even with great content if the reader can’t scan the important points quickly they’ll bounce.
Glad you like it Ryan….Search box really gives good result, hope it work for you too.
The link-within widget and a very light theme seem to be working just fine for me. Though this blog is new and most of the visitors are first timers, they visit almost all of the pages!
Searches haven’t quite worked out for me though.
Thanks Samir for sharing your experience and tips which are working for you for reducing bounce rate.
Very nice tips Ruchi. This article is very help full for me and others also.
Glad you found it useful Ruchita
Pretty nice points you have listed out there..
You could have enlisted more points like using plugins like:
Yet another related post plugin and Wordpress Insights plugin.