How To Reduce Bounce Rate
In this article, I am going to show you how to reduce bounce rate. I am taking a bit of a different approach with this post as I have found a great video about the subject and have put it to a quiz. The video contains all the answers to the quiz and you can take the quiz as you watch.
When you visit an unknown website, what happens if you are uninspired by what you see? You either hit the back button or find another way out, like typing in a different URL (website address).
Well guess what happened that site that you just left? You helped increase that website’s bounce rate – you bounced out of there. This article is going to show you why you want to decrease your bounce rate. But first take a look at the following video which gives a great overview of bounce rate as well as tips on how to decrease it:
Why Bounce Rate Matters
Google ranks websites based on quality content and user engagement. User engagement means that your visitors stick around to your website and use it. If visitors get to a site and don’t stick around, Google views this website as not being very useful and marks it accordingly. This will affect your search engine positioning negatively.
It's all about engagement. Google rewards websites that keep visitors engaged. This means that you want content that rocks. As you can see from the video, you also want to show your visitors what the purpose of your site is and why they should choose to stay with you rather than go to some other website. This can be challenging.
One way to increase the time that people stay on your website is by increasing the rate of internal links. An internal link is a link to another page or post on your website.
How To Find Your Bounce Rate
As the video discusses, the bounce rate can be obtained by using Google Analytics. If you aren't using this tool, you need to start implementing it into all of your websites. It gives you so much valuable information about how users are interacting with your website both good and bad. This gives you great ways to hone in on fixing the weak areas of your website. Bounce rate is a really big component of ranking. Fixing this can mean all the difference in the world.
You will need a Google account in order to take advantage of the Analytics tool but that is easy and free. The tool can be a bit overwhelming to the uninitiated but they have many tutorials that you can and should take advantage of.
Once you have signed up and created your Analytics account, you will need to hook it up to your website. If you are using WordPress you can put the Analytics ID right in your All-In-One SEO plug in (check the preferences section). That is all you need for WordPress. If you are using something else you will need to figure out how to add a script to your website. Don't worry, there are plenty of online tutorials (including YouTube) that will show you how to do that.
Answers To The Quiz
Click on each plus sign to get the answers to each of the questions of the quiz.
When a Visitor Leaves Your Site Without Visiting Other Pages, Your Bounce Rate
What Can You Use To Find Your Bounce Rate Base Line?
A High Bounce Rate Tells Google That People Are
The Page That Gets Visited The Most On Your Website Is Your
What Is A Major Goal When Trying To Reduce Bounce Rate?
One Thought Sequence Visitors Typically Consider Are
The First Step in Optimizing Thought Sequences is
Your headline should be
The introduction paragraph should be
What is the Phrase That Bill Used At the End of the Video?
I hope you had fun with this. I enjoyed making it for you. I always find it a much easier way to learn through interactivity. That's why I thought tying a quiz to an instructional video is a great way to learn while reinforcing the concepts. What did you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments - or if you just want to say hi or have a question, please feel free!
Enjoy!
