If your google analytics shows a bounce rate of 80% or above then your business is in danger. This means your competitors are getting a huge amount of search traffic. They are making more money and sales while your business is struggling for survival.
But the good news is that you still have time to reduce the bounce rate of your website. A few important tweaks can lower your bounce rate up to 40%.
Below is the complete guide on how to increase search traffic and reduce the overall bounce rate.
Before the core part let’s first understand more about the bounce rate. And how it is different from the exit rate.
According to Google, a bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits. Where a visitor left your site from the entrance page.
In simple words:
When a user types a keyword in the search bar and hit enter, he/she gets some results on google’s first page. Let’s assume he/she choose your site from the search results to visit.
He clicks on the page link and enters your website and stays there for some time. Then he closes the browser or hit the back button without visiting your other pages. This is called bounced user because he left your site from the same page he enters.
The percentage of these visits or users is called the bounce rate percentage.
In some cases, it is a good thing because the user gets what he is searching for and close the browser, or left the site and starts a new search.
This is true in informational blogs where you just provide valuable information to users free of cost.
But in other cases where you want visitors to fill the form or enter their email address or buy your products or services. This behavior of visitors is not good for business.
In this case, you need to do something to convenience them to take action and buy your product.
Note: Local business sites should have low bounce rate than the blogs where you run ads.
What is the difference between bounce rate and exit rate?
A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that exit your site from the same entrance page without visiting your other pages.
Whereas an exit rate is the percentage of users that are entering your site, clicking and visiting another page, and then leaving your site without further interaction.
Exit rate tells you how many people left your site from a particular page.
12 Proven ways to reduce bounce rate in a few days.
1. Build more landing pages
You cannot predict the entry point of your website. Sometimes only a few people enter from the home page. The rest of them are entering through a blog.
To find out your website entry point you need to visit google analytics and check the behavior of the targeted audience.
There you will get the complete information about your top landing pages.
Make a list and then log in to your website and optimize those pages for mobile audiences and add some internal links. To hook people for a long time.
Make a new marketing strategy and keep following your audience.
2. Reduce Page Loading Time
If the bounce rate of a website is high most of the time owners think that there is something wrong with the content.
But in 75% of the cases, the reality is different. If your site loading speed is slow then you will definitely face high bounce rate issues.
Your pages should load in less than 2 seconds if you want more visitors. Because most visitors do not wait more than 2 seconds for a page to show its content.
This clears that site speed is as important as genuine site content. To measure your website loading time you can take the help of google page insights or visit GT-Metrix.
3. Add Relevant Internal Links
To reduce bounce rate adding internal likes to every single page of a website works like a miracle. By adding relevant internal links, you are navigating the visitors further into your site content.
This technique will lower your bounce rate by 15% to 19%.
You should only add relevant links. If your page is about dog care then you can add internal like dog food, best dogs for small places, etc.
Having 2 to 3 internal links on a page is sufficient.
Do not add irrelevant links for example:
Your page is about the best cat food and you add a link to a page that has information on finance or birds. This is a wrong practice and will increase your bounce rate and reduce the site authority.
Note: If you want us to do internal linking for you. Contact us right now and start attracting more traffic.
4. Optimize your pages for Mobile Users
Nowadays everybody is having a smartphone with good data speed. The smartphone makes it easy for users to search Google while traveling, shopping, or hanging with friends.
Millions of mobile users search on Google every day.
Google also puts the mobile index first and this clears that you need to target the mobile audience also.
If your website is not optimized for small screens then you are losing thousands of customers. Mobile optimization is a difficult task you must hire an SEO agency to do it for you.
5. Create compelling content
You may hear that content is King in every online business. The way you present your website content directly impacts the sales and bounce rate.
Poorly written content with tones of spelling mistakes will never rank on google.
People hit the back button after reading the first few lines of such a page. Because they take it as spammy content. That is published on the web to cheat users.
On the other hand, well-formatted and relevant content encourages people to trust your business and take action.
If you are not a good writer then hire someone to write for you. Before that, you should check your website content deeply and this service is free for all website owners from our Content Editors.
6. Create Easy to Use Call Action Button
Sometimes we do everything right but forget to add the call-to-action button on the landing pages. Without call-to-action people do not find a way to contact you or choose your services.
Therefore, add a clear CTA that is easily visible on the top part of the page and also in the middle portion.
Do not add it to the end of the landing page because nobody will notice it there.
7. Remove Pop-ups Immediately
We found that more than 73% of internet users hate pop-ups. These pop-ups disturb the visitors while they are reading your content.
You can set the pop-up to display when a user read more than half of a page. This makes sense and is a good practice to collect email addresses.
8. Improve the Readability of each page
This is one of the primary reasons that users are not engaging with your piece of content. Users do not like to read large chunks of text.
Split large paragraphs into small text paragraphs of 2 to 3 lines.
Before changing your text format visit your site on a mobile device. I am sure you will be shocked to see those large paragraphs of 6 to 8 lines.
To hook readers:
Use bullets and small text paragraphs.
Use more subheadings to divide large text groups into small readable forms.
Use lots of images, statics, screenshots to make reading enjoyable
Bold some important questions and sentences.
Always add a conclusion at the end of the page. The conclusion contains a summary of the entire page that a visitor can read in no time.
9. Easy Navigation Bar
Add a navigation bar on the top of the page for users to easy interaction with your website. This makes it easy for visitors to go to a specific part of your website.
Let’s say a user land on your landing page and within 2 to 3 seconds he decides to check about your company profile. But there is no about us page on your website or you did not link it on the top bar.
This pushes back the visitor and he/she will choose another brand instead of choosing yours.
List of the important page that must be on the top navigation bar:
- Home
- Services
- Products
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Our team
- Prices
You can add any relevant page that you want your users to see at first.
10. Use Excellent Design
To increase the visitor’s interaction, you must choose a brilliant color scheme. Users do not stay long on ugly-looking websites.
Therefore, choose a mobile-friendly theme that gives you the opportunity to design your website perfectly and pleasantly.
11. Remove Broken Links
Every website has some broken links. Most of the time these are external links. When a user clicks on the source that you linked on your page and gets a not found error.
This creates a poor experience and users get frustrated. They immediately close your site because they do not find it trustworthy.
In the world of internet business gaining the trust and interest of users is the real game.
12. Links always open in New Tab
While adding internal and external links make sure that all of them are opening in a new tab. This action will increase spending time on a website.
Because now a user has multiple pages open in different tabs.
Conclusion
Now that you know the top causes of high bounce rate. I am sure that you can reduce it by following this guide. If you don’t have good knowledge of content and web development skills. Then you must hire an SEO agency to do all the work for you.
For more information on reducing bounce or get a free check-up of your website. Contact us anytime.
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