Many people believe that Bounce Rate is one of the Google ranking factors. It shows Google the quality of your site.
Today in this article, I will tell you about how to reduce bounce rate.
But before telling how to reduce the Bounce Rate, I will tell what is Bounce Rate, what should be a good Bounce Rate and how is it calculated.
What is Bounce Rate?
When a user comes to any page of your site and leaves your site without going to other pages, then it is a bounce. Bounce Rate is the percentage of users who visit your website and exit from the same page without going to another page.
What should be a good bounce rate
The less the better!
But would you like to know how much? Well, the bounce rate varies by the type of website:
- 80%+ is very bad
- 70 – 80% is poor
- 50 – 70% is average
- 30 – 50% is excellent
Generally, a blog has a high bounce rate. Because, visitors scan the content first and if they do not get the information they need, then they exit the blog.
How To Find The Bounce Rate
You can check the bounce rate of your website by logging into your Google Analytics account. As you can see in the screenshot.
- Behavior >> All Pages >> Bounce Rate
- Acquisition >> Channels >> Bounce Rate
- Acquisition >> Source/Medium >> Bounce Rate
- Acquisition >> AdWords >> Campaigns >> Bounce Rate
How to Reduce Bounce Rate
It is a great thing that you are working hard to increase your site search performance. But you should also focus on keeping your bounce rate low.
High bounce rate, which shows that there is something wrong with your strategy due to which you are not able to attract visitors or visitors are not getting good user experience on your site.
Below I have told about 20 ways to Decrease Bounce Rate:
1. Improve the Quality of Your Content
The biggest reason for the high bounce rate - the lack of quality content
If your content is not useful, then visitors will leave your site immediately.
Always write unique and quality content. Also, your article should be interesting so that people read your content with pleasure.
Quick Tips to Write Quality Content:
- Content-Length – Your article should be at least 1000 words and should be well explained. Long content ranks well in search engines.
- Do not do keyword stuffing – it makes your content unnatural and puts a bad user experience on the reader. Keep keyword density 1.5% – 2% in your content. Apart from this, use related keywords along with focus keywords in your content.
- Write Catchy Title – After writing the article, optimize your title well. Because more than 50% to 60% of people first see the title of the post and then click on it. Always add your focus keyword to the tile.
- Optimize Meta Description – This is the short description of your blog post that appears below the title in search results. It helps to increase CTR on your blog posts. In this also add your focus keyword.
- Keep paragraphs short – Long and thick paragraphs scare the reader. Readers prefer short and clear paragraphs. So always try to keep your paragraphs short.
2. Make Your Website Faster
Fast loading gives a better user experience to the visitor.
No one likes to visit slow-loading websites. If your site loads slowly, visitors will leave your site immediately. And as a result, it will increase your website bounce rate.
In addition, speed is a Google ranking factor. Due to this, the fast-loading site ranks well in Google search.
That's why to improve the loading speed of your site. Here are quick tips to improve the website loading speed
- upgrade to PHP 7.2
- Optimize your image size
- Keep only useful plugins
- Delete unwanted media
- Minify CSS and JS Files
- Use a good Cache plugin
- Minimize Redirects
- Use a Lightweight theme.
- Use CDN.
- Use a good web host.
3. Keep Your Blog Clean and Simple
Keep your blog design simple and clean. The colorful site distracts the reader. Select a clean and responsive theme for your blog/website.
Also, make sure that the fonts are not too small. People will not focus much on fonts. That's all they will exit your blog (no matter how good your content is). Use a font that the visitor can easily scan.
If you want to change the font size of your body, you can change it by going to the theme's style.css. Otherwise, simply add the following code to the CSS section of the WordPress Customizer.
body {
font-size: 18px;
}4. Use Related Posts
If you want to keep visitors to your site for a long time, then Related Posts can help you a lot in this.
Related posts are often displayed at the end of the content.
If you are a WordPress user, there are several plugins available in the WordPress repository that can help you add related posts to your site.
5. Fix Broken Links on Your Site
Broken links greatly affect the user experience. By fixing these, you can reduce the bounce rate and also improve the user experience of the visitor.
When you move or delete any page of your website, then the problem of a broken link arises. When visitors click on such links, they see a 404 page not found error.
But don't worry, WordPress.org has a free Broken Link Checker plugin that helps you fix broken links on your blog. Also, this plugin automatically sets 'nofollow' tag for Broken Link so that search engines do not follow them.
6. Open External Links in New Tabs/Windows
You link to another website – that's great. It makes your content more useful. In addition, it helps search engines better understand what the content is about.
Linking to high-quality external links is beneficial for SEO. But if you don't open them in New Tabs/Windows, then visitors will leave your site.
So always open an external link in a new tab/window. This strategy helps in reducing the bounce rate of your website to a great extent.
7. Internal Link
Internal linking not only improves your website SEO and pageviews, but it also makes your content more useful to visitors and helps reduce the bounce rate. Linking one page to another on the same domain is called internal linking.
Add fewer and more relevant links to your content. Too much irrelevant linking can really have a bad effect on your SEO and bounce rate.
8. Check Cross-Browser Compatible
Check Cross-Browser Compatible for your site. It is very important. Assuming your favorite browser is Chrome, it doesn't mean that your visitors are using it.
If you open your site in Internet Explorer, your site will appear as Broken. Here below I have mentioned two tools using which you can check that your site looks great in all browsers.
9. Make Your Site Responsive
Is Your Site Responsive? When visitors come to your site from their mobile, does it look perfect on their mobile?
If your site won't show up perfectly on mobile, visitors will leave your site immediately. This will increase your bounce rate.
To check whether your site is mobile-friendly or not, you can use Mobile Testing Tool developed by Google. If your site is not mobile-friendly, then you need to install a responsive WordPress theme on your site.
10. Show ads on your site carefully
If you have placed ads on your site, then try to place them in the right place.
But many sites show a lot of ads to make money which slows down their site and distracts the reader – especially popup ads. This greatly affects the bounce rate.
If you use pop-up ads on your site, it redirects the visitor to another URL. And such ads visitors do not like at all.
11. Use Proper Heading Tags
Heading tag helps you to create a readable blog post. Suppose you have a blog post that is 5000-6000 words in length but has not used Heading Tags properly, then the visitor will find it difficult to read.
The H1 tag helps search engines understand what your page is about and boosts your ranking. But never use the H1 tag more than once.
There are many WordPress themes that do not use the H1 tag for the title. If you use such a theme for your blog or website, then you should use an H1 tag for your title.
12. Use Images for Articles
An image speaks a thousand words. And keeps the visitors on the website longer. If your content is very long (4,000 words), use images so visitors don't get bored.
But one thing I would like to say, you cannot use Google Images. They can be copyrighted and cause copyright problems later.
There are many websites in the market ( FreeDigitalPhotos , MorgueFile , Pixabay , Pexels ) that offer free stock images.
Use high-quality images for your content and don't forget to compress and resize them before uploading.
13. Add a Search Button to your site
If a visitor comes to your site and doesn't find the article they were looking for, the search button is the last thing a visitor will try before leaving your site.
By default, WordPress provides a search widget that you can place in your footer or sidebar. Also, many themes provide an inbuilt search button which you can show in your menu items.
14. Target the Right Visitors
When you get the wrong visitors, obviously the bounce rate will be higher. Because they will come to your webpage and exit from the site without going to another page or reading the content.
Therefore, it is very important to attract the right visitors to reduce the bounce rate. And in this, keyword optimization plays an important role.
For example, if you optimize your posts for shoes, use keywords related to shoes. With this, visitors searching for shoes will be happy with the result. But, don't optimize it for socks and shoe laces that you sell them too. This will increase the bounce rate.
15. Use Video
Videos are powerful tools to reduce bounce rates.
Videos grab more attention than text or images. You can make a video of your blog post and add it to your blog post. This will greatly reduce your bounce rate.
16. Update Your Old Content
If you have old high-traffic posts, update them with fresh information and images. It reduces the bounce rate of your website.
Update your old content with new keywords and the latest information and images. Then share them with your new readers and social media sites.
17. Use Pop-Ups With Chili
Pop-ups (opt-in forms or others) create a poor user experience for the visitor. But, there are many users who fill their site with popups which affect their bounce rate. Because users do not like it at all and may leave your site.
But opt-in form is very important to growing an email list. So use it wisely on your site or blog. Also, set a timer for it.
And even in the early days, I have used a lot of popups on my site. As a result, the bounce rate of my site was greatly increased. But when I removed it, the bounce rate decreased from 89% to 68%.
Currently, I don't use any popups on my site. you can see.
18. Move Your Site to HTTPS
Chrome 68 and above are marking all non-HTTPS sites as "Not Secure".
So this can also be a reason, visitors are leaving your site. That's why HTTPS is so important!
If you're still using HTTP on your site, move it to HTTPS immediately.
19. Create a “Table of Contents” for the content
It grabs the attention of the visitor and shows quick information about your content.
There are many free plugins available in WordPress using which you can add a Table of Contents to your site.
20. Use Black Text and White Background
Do not use colorful colors for the text and background of your blog. Because it will hurt your bounce rate. However, it will look good but the reader will not like it.
When a visitor visits a blog, he prefers a clean and simple blog. Therefore, always use black color for your text and white color for the background.
conclusion
In this article, I have told you about 20 ways to reduce the bounce rate. But without high-quality content, you cannot reduce it.
If I have missed any strategy, do let me know in the comments.
A small request, if this article has proved to be helpful for you, do not forget to share it!