Did you know that lowering your blog’s bounce rate can get you more subscribers? Or that your Google page rank might be partially determined by your bounce rate?
Unlike regular or ecommerce websites, blogs tend to have higher bounce rates because of several reasons, including the nature of blogs (readers only find value from a single post), affiliate marketing tactics (encouraging users to click ads to external sites), and methods bloggers often use to promote their blogs (social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon). As such, bloggers tend to overlook the value of implementing tactics to reduce their blog’s bounce rate at all.
First, let’s cover the basics:
What is a Bounce Rate?
Bounce Rate is a percentage of visitors to your blog that “bounce” away to a different site before visiting a second page on your blog. The formula looks like this:
Bounce Rate = Total Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Visits
A visitor can bounce from your blog the following ways:
- Clicking a link to an external website
- Closing the window/tab for your blog
- Entering a new URL
- Clicking the back button to leave your blog
- Session timeout (30 minutes of staying on the first page and leaving the browser open on that page)
Why You Should Lower Your Bounce Rate
1. Visitors Will Consume More Content
You should focus on tactics to lower your blog’s bounce rate to keep visitors on your site and consuming more content. The more pages they look at, the more interested they will be to ultimately subscribe to your blog and come back for repeat visits. The lower your bounce rate, the more valuable and loyal readers your blog will inherently have.
2. Increase Viral Growth
The more content your visitors consume, the more likely they will be to share your content with their connections. This personal endorsement for your content can be more effective at bringing in traffic than some of the tactics to increase page rank, such as link sharing or buying.
3. Increase Engagement and Blog Comments
Once visitors read more content on your site and read other users’ comments, they will become more likely to comment themselves. And again, subscribers and repeat visitors will be more likely to comment on your posts.
4. Increase Conversions
The longer a visitors remains on your site, the more opportunities the visitor will have to click on those Google AdSense ads or affiliate links. Or perhaps you’ve written an eBook; the more interested a visitor is in your content, the more likely he will be to purchase that eBook to find out more. Additionally, getting a user to become a fan of your Facebook page through your Facebook Fan Box or follow you on Twitter is still a valuable conversion because of the free advertising opportunities later.
5. Improve Search Engine Rankings
It’s been speculated that your bounce rate can affect your search engine rankings. According to this article on Search Engine Land – Do Search Engines Use Bounce Rate As A Ranking Factor – a website’s ranking can be impacted by significant changes in bounce rate. Search engines like Google want high-quality sites to appear higher in their search results, so sites with a higher bounce rate might indicate low-quality content or a poor site experience. Again, this is a big MAYBE, but it’s still worth keeping in mind.
In a couple days, I’ll cover some ways you can improve bounce rate on your blog. Have you implemented any tactics on your blog to decrease your bounce rate?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Avinash Kaushik defined Bounce Rate the best- “I came, I saw, Yuck, I am out of here”. For most web analytics systems (including Google Analytics) Bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who stay on the page for a small amount of time (five seconds or less in GA).
Hi Mike, thanks for commenting! Yep, I read that… another good one from him: “This means that… website visitors came to the site, “puked,” and left. Ouch.” Didn't realize there was a 5 second rule, it's good to know how little time you have to impress your visitors.
Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!
You're welcome!
Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!
You're welcome!
Great points! I'm definitely looking into various ways in lowering my bounce rate, although it hasn't been that easy.
Great points! I'm definitely looking into various ways in lowering my bounce rate, although it hasn't been that easy.
I came across your website, I think your blog interesting and useful for me. Thank you for writing a good article. I intend to take your website to recommend to my friends.
I came across your website, I think your blog interesting and useful for me. Thank you for writing a good article. I intend to take your website to recommend to my friends.
Content is the king, content is really the key to reduce bounce rate. Most of the time we provide a title not relevant to the content just to improve our search engine ranking.
Great tips. I have always wondered how to change high bounce rate. Now I know. Thanks for sharing.