How you can lower your bounce rate is your interest now? If so, then you will be happy to land on this post. Today I like to share how you can lower your bounce rate based on personal experience on this blog. There is no fixed formula to decide on how far bounce rate should drop but in this post I like to share how I manage to reach 10 to 15% bounce rate in average from January until April 2014.
Before we go to the tips here is a screenshot from my Google Analytics :
Honestly, I am still unsure whether low-bounce rate is good or not but there are many questions related to this come to me recently, that is why I decide to make this post. So I am not going to debate about how good or bad. I am going to show you how.
How You Can Lower Your Bounce Rate
Combination of Long and Short Post
In the beginning of this blog I am always commit to only write long post. As time goes by, I just realize that it is easier to say than do. I am also analyze my readers comments and behavior until I finally realize that I can’t make them (readers) all happy and there will always pros and cons.
I understand that not all my readers love to read long and detail post some of them do fast-reading. Some are happy with short and right-to-the-point post (and often times share it through their facebook or linkedin accounts). With this simple fact, I’ve tried a combination of long and short post since January 2014 to look how good this plan to grab readers attention. The result? As you see on the screenshot above ….. This simple strategy manage to hold readers for 4 minutes (at least) and bounce rate 11.09%
Provocative Headline
Headline takes important role since this is what visitors see for the very first time they land on this blog. One of guest bloggers (Edward Olson) has elaborated this matters profoundly, so I think all I need to say is already explained in his guest post here.
On-Page Promotional Plugins
Plugins? Well, because I have used wordpress then plugins are common word to me. On-page promotional plugins are those who enable you to show more of your contents to visitors. Something like “recent post”, “top comments”, “popular post” and “related post” are must have tools if you like to hold visitors longer than normal time readers can spend.
the Amount of Contents
Until the end of 2013, this blog manage to produce 293 contents. I believe the amount of contents contribute a lot on this blog bounce rate. Remember that it takes time to create contents to certain amount. The best thing you should do is consistency. Find your best rhythm in producing contents and try your best to be consistent on that rhythm.
One Topic for Many Contents
If visitors come to your blog to learn how to make money with facebook, there is high chance they love to read how to make money with youtube, how to make money with twitter and so on. You get the point?
Split one topic (make money) into many contents (on facebook, on youtube, on twitter, and so on). If visitors don’t have enough time a day to read all of your contents they will come back for the others. To make this happen, make sure you have informative and interesting contents.
Does Above Tips Still Works?
I can say it is. Depends on content you have and update on the content. Here’s the update on recent bounce rate:
Ready to Lower Your Bounce Rate?
These tips are what I have done. I can be mixed, modified or what ever you need to reach your goal …. Reach lower bounce rate than before.
When a bounce rate is low a business opportunity might happen such as making order of your services, buying your products, taking time to see “advertise here” page, clicking on PPC ads, and so on. I think this (business opportunity) is the reason why bounce rate matters.