Three of my last 5 articles were focused on showing you some ways so that your readers don’t leave your blog quickly.
You will see in each of them that the “bounce rate” is always mentioned as something important for your blog.
I think the vast majority know that a low bounce rate is very important to the health of a blog. However, when we try to know exactly how it affects our blogs, because we should take care of the bounce rate and above all, what can be done about it to lower its percentage, the great confusion begins.
So in this article I am going to talk to you about the bounce rate, its importance for your blog and, I am going to give you 11 tips to lower your bounce rate in yours.
WHAT IS THE BOUNCE RATE?
Bounce Rate, Google Bounce Rate, Bounce Rate… Are all terms used to describe a single thing: the quality of your site’s traffic.
In essence, the bounce rate will give you a good idea of the number of visitors who come to your blog and leave it quickly.
This is not good at all.
Bounce rate is measured in 2 different ways:
- The number of people who come to your blog and never make a “click” that takes them to another article or page.
- The amount of time a visitor stays on your blog. Usually, any period less than 5 seconds counts towards the abandonment rate.
WHY IS THE REBOUND RATE SO IMPORTANT?
Because it will basically show how engaged your visitors are with your blog and how good your blog is at connecting with people.
A low percentage in your bounce rate means that you are doing very well. A high bounce rate on your blog means that you have to start reviewing your blog strategy because something is not working the way you wanted.
11 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate
The following tips will help you reduce the abandonment rate on your blog by having your readers view one or more pages on your blog.
1.- Encourage your visitors to comment.
The comments on your blog will make the abandonment rate lower.
When someone leaves a comment on your blog, they are either redirected to another page on your blog (if you configured it that way) or the page simply reloads. And in case you haven’t noticed, that means that your visitor has visited more than one page on your blog.
And getting your readers to comment on your articles doesn’t have to be so difficult. Some time ago I wrote an article that will show you 10 ways that I use to generate more comments on my blog: 10 Ways to Get More Comments on a Blog.
You can also use CommentLuv Premium to reward readers who share your opinion with a comment. Everyone has the ability to display a link to their latest article below their comment, at least, among other things.
2.- Encourage your readers to subscribe to your blog
The idea is similar to the previous tip, but you get a bigger benefit: you build your list while lowering your bounce rate.
When someone subscribes to your list, they are redirected to a page where you tell them that they must confirm their subscription or thanking them for having done so (if you do not have double opt-in configured).
3.- Make “Internal Linking” on your blog.
You should always link to other related articles on your blog when you are writing a new one. It is a practice that I do in almost all my articles and that not only helps me lower the bounce rate of my blog, but also helps me to have a better ranking in Google for the keywords that I chose.
4.- Open the external links in a new tab.
This is a fairly common mistake.
If you have links that lead to other sites, either in your sidebar or in your articles and / or pages, always make sure they open in a new tab (or new window).
Doing it on your blog is very simple.
If it’s links in your sidebar like affiliate links or social media icons, always make sure to add the attribute target = “_ blank” to those links.
Setting all external links to open in a new tab is one way to ensure that your readers don’t leave your blog; Your article will remain open in the browser and one way or another they will have to return to it.
5.- Use your sidebar wisely.
The sidebar is a great resource in a blog since you can add some links to your best articles or the most popular ones, for example, thus achieving that your readers have links to click when they are exploring your blog.
But I have also seen many bloggers that provide too many options. They add too many widgets in their sidebars
To know what you should take into account when adding widgets to your sidebar, I recommend this article:
If you want to reduce your bounce rate, it is best to show the most popular articles on your blog. Visitors will want to see your best articles or at least the most commented ones.
In the following article I show you how to use the plugin “WordPress Popular Posts”to prevent your readers from abandoning your blog:
6.- That the search box of your blog is well visible
I do not know how many times I have come to a blog in which I want to search for something but it does not have a search box or it is simply not visible. And this is a big mistake, because if a blog is not easily navigable, people end up leaving.
So make sure you have yours clearly visible on your blog. Your visitors and the bounce rate will thank you.
7.- Use the extracts on your Home page
One way for your visitors to evaluate your blog and finally decide if they will stay reading more or not is by checking your Home page to see what your latest articles are. That is why it is always better to provide more than 5 articles on your Home page than just 2 or 3 complete ones.
Make sure to use the excerpts instead of displaying the full articles on your Home page. If your articles are too long, your visitors will get bored scrolling down and will end up leaving your blog.
8.- Avoid distractions.
Pop-ups, toolbars, Twitter streams, etc, etc, all are distractions that will ultimately affect your traffic conversions and increase the abandonment rate on your blog.
Text ads (Adsense style) also fall into this category, and also reduce the number of page views.
9.- Configure a 404 page that is attractive.
Perhaps by mistake you deleted an article on your blog or changed its “slug”, so they will reach the page of “Error 404”.
And when this happens, it is important to capture again the interest of the visitor who came to that page and redirect them to where they can find the information they are looking for.
Place some links on that page that may be of interest to the visitor. For example, the category pages of your blog. And if you can, add a search field on the page as well. Do not allow that visitor to leave your blog to look for the information in another.
10.- Show related articles.
This is another great way to lower the bounce rate on your blog. And the truth is that it is very simple to do since there are a large number of plugins that you can use for this purpose.
In my previous article I recommend a very versatile, effective and above all, easy to configure. You can see the article in the following link:
11.- Create an “About Me” page
Believe it or not, this is one of the most visited pages on a blog. And since it is normally in a highly visible place and also, your visitors will want to know more about you, it is more than likely that their next “click” will be on that page, thus reducing the bounce rate on your blog.
Set up your “About Me” page and display it in a prominent place on your blog.
Bounce rate is detrimental to SEO and traffic conversions. The tips that I have shown you in this article will help you maintain a low abandonment rate on your blog, as long as you get to work.
What else do you do to keep a low bounce rate? Leave me your comment below.
And if this article has helped you, share it with your followers on social networks.