Yesterday I posted 10 Must Do Things After Starting a New Blog and Today I'm back with another useful guide for Bloggers in which I will list some killer tips which will help you reduce your Blog's Bounce Rate.
If you are a new blogger then it is obvious that your blog's bounce rate will be high, which is not good. You should always work to improve bounce rate if you want your blog to rank high. Read the article to know more about bounce rate.
What is Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that land on your blog and leave after single page view (Without visiting any other pages). In simple words it means that the rate of visitors leaving your blog after only one page view.
The Lower the bounce rate the better is your blog performance; The Higher the bounce rate the lower is your blog performance.
How Bounce Rate is Calculated
If you have Google Analytics Installed to your blog then you can simply Log in to your Google Analytics Dashboard and check your bounce rate.
If you don't use Google Analytics then you can still calculate Bounce rate manually. An Easy way to calculate your blog's Bounce Rate is using the below formula:
Bounce Rate = No. of visits containing one page view / Total No. of Visits and then multiply it by 100.
For example: If a blog received 20,000 visits / per month and 12,000 of them left after one page view then the bounce rate will be : 12,000/20,000 = 0.6*100 = 60%, Therefore the bounce rate is 60%
What is Ideal Bounce Rate
For Bloggers, The Bounce Rate between 40% to 70% is considered ideal, But if your bounce rate is above 65-70% then it is not a good sign and you must work to improve your bounce rate.
10 Tips to Improve Your Blog's Bounce Rate
If your blog had very high bounce rate then you must take the following measures to improve it, So that you can make visitors stay longer on your blog. Below are some killer tips which will help you improve your Bounce Rate.
1. Make Blog Load Faster
The main factor affecting bounce rate is your blogs loading speed. Blogs which take very long to load tend to have higher bounce rate as many internet users have slow connection or they don't like to wait for content to load.
If your blog take time to load then that's the first thing you need to fix. Blogs which load faster gets more page views and have less bounce rate.
Tip: Remove useless widgets / script from your blog. Use Templates with Auto Read More script.
2. Blog Design
The Design of the blog plays a very important role in making visitors stick to the blog, It doesn't matter if you have good content but you'll still lose traffic because of bad design. No body would like to visit blogs with bad design and boring template.
Tip: Always choose a clean and professional looking theme for blog with light colors, Avoid choosing themes with black post background and boring looks.
3. Quality Content
Content is very important, That is the thing people visit your blog for. If you blog does not contain high quality unique content then your visitors will leave your blog in search for some other place. It is very important that you have good quality content on you blog, So that your visitors stick to it.
Tip: Write Articles more than 600 words and Try to post content which is unique and cannot be found anywhere else.
4. Attractive Titles
'A Catchy Title can even make a Low Quality Post Popular'
Title is very Important, Most of the Internet users judge content by its title. If your article does not have a good title then no matter how well written that article is, most of the people will just ignore it. So Always try to add catchy titles to your content, so that visitors get attracted to it.
Tip: Do some keyword research before choosing a title, Try to add at least 1 keyword to the title (better to use targeted keyword), Make title sound attractive.
5. Related Posts Widget
Related Post widget under blog posts are known to Improve Bounce Rate very fast as visitors can find some posts related to their search and they may like to check them out. So to improve your bounce rate drastically, Add a Related Post widget or a Random Post Widget to your Blog.
6. Limit Advertising
Some people are very desperate for money that they put advertisements everywhere on their blog. This is very bad as it will irritate visitors and they'll have no option but to leave your blog. So always limit the number of ad units on page to minimum and place them as they don't distract people.
Also See: How to Place AdSense Ads for Optimum Earnings
Also See: How to Place AdSense Ads for Optimum Earnings
7. Limit Pop-Up Widgets
Believe me, Pop-up widgets are very irritating especially those which contains advertisements. So try to avoid pop-up widgets, However pop-up widget like Facebook Like box / Subscribe etc is okay and if you want you can keep it but try to avoid as far as possible.
8. Make Navigation Easy
Many website have great content but just because of the layout / Navigation the website don't do well. Always try to make your website easy to navigate, Use drop-down menus, Label widget, Archive widget etc.
9. Link Older Posts
Internal linking is very important, For SEO and for improving bounce rate. You should make a habit of linking previous or related posts to your newer posts.
10. Make External Links Open in New Tab
This is often ignored by bloggers, Whenever they add external links to their posts they often forget to make it open in new tab/window. Always make external links open in new windows, This will make your visitors come back to your blog afterwards.
Final Words
So if you follow the above listed 10 tips then you'll soon see a big improvement in your blog's bounce rate. A Bonus tip for improving bounce rate would be 'Update Blog Regularly', This will also improve your blog's page rank.
I hope this article was helpful, Please share & bookmark it if you liked it. Don't forget to leave a comment below.
About Jimmie Luthra
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