What is bounce rate? And why YOU should care about it.
Bounce rate is a metric that shows what percentage of readers are navigating away from your website after viewing a single post/page. This metric measures your readers interest in your blog and its ability to captivate. This can be tracked by using Google analytics.
Why you should strive for a better bounce rate?
1) Smaller bounce rate, more visits = More earnings.
2) By engaging readers, you can create an impression on them and make them subscribe to your blog and create a follower base.
3) Last but not the least Google’s new algorithm is designed to rank quality websites only and demands a good bounce rate. Google now considers a high bounce rate to directly correlate to a quality website and will translate into better rankings.
Factors that affect your bounce rate and how to decrease it:
1) Content: “Content is still King”
This is something that you cant put a deaf ear to. Providing unique, well written and user friendly content is crucial if you want to succeed online. The quality of your content will determine how low or high your bounce rate will be.
2) Design: Your blogs design/theme also plays a vital role…this is a no brainier, an aesthetically pleasing web page is more likely to draw people in than a poor one. A good looking web page can often compensate for poorly written content….
BUT don’t over do it! No body wants a rainbow colored or glittering template, keep it simple and modern and elegant. A white background and black font is still very much acceptable.
3) Outbound links” Think twice when placing outbound links in the body of a post or in and around your blog. I am not saying don’t put any links down but be sure its worth driving your visitor away from you, AND more importantly, make sure it opens a new tab.
4) Speed: Surveys show that if a website takes more than 5 seconds to load the user just closes the tab and leaves. So act accordingly.
5) Interlinking: Interlinking your posts not only serves well in terms of SEO but also increases your page views thereby decreasing your bounce rate.
6) Related Posts: Last but not the least be suggestive. Suggest that your readers check out some other relevant info on your site. This can be done by setting up related posts via contextual links or thumbnails. There are also some sexy plugins in WordPress that will attach related posts at the end of each of your posts. My favorite is the nRelate plugin and the YARPP plugin for thumbnails and contextual links of related posts.