The more loyal your readers are the worse your bounce rate will be. Why? Because they already read your previous posts and are less likely to click on more pages. (Bounce rate is usually defined as only reading one page.)
The entire concept of bounce rate as defined makes little sense. If you write a comprehensive post about what someone wants to read, they have no need to go to another page. So the better you target your pages, the worse your bounce rate will be. You CAN do something about it.
Bounce rate is one of two reasons why so many sites major
sites break up content into 2, 4 or even 10-12 pages.Every page view increases advertising income and
time on site, and reduces bounce rate.
This issue may also affect ecommerce stores. If someone does a search and lands on the right product page the first time and your site has great trust and free shipping, that person may not need to see anything else until later when they come back to buy. But still a bounce.
Change How Google Analytics Tracks Bounce Rates
Adrienne Smith’s post today about multiple things Google mentions a fix for bloggers to implement that uses either time on page or whether someone scrolls down on the page instead of whether your visitor clicks on another page.
Lisa wrote a post on Website Bounce Rates on InspiretoThrive.
Tim Bonner shared his thoughts on improving bounce rates here.
Go to Mike Fulcher’s post to copy the code for his “scroll technique” to implement adjusted bounce rates. It is the center section of code for set timeout that changed. The top and bottom sections stayed the same.
If you use Genesis you can use my post How to Add Analytics or Verification Codes to WP Blogs Using Genesis Themes to find this code. Other WordPress themes may have something similar, but you need to be considering moving to a mobile responsive theme.
While all WP sites will display on a mobile device, mobile responsive themes format your content based on monitor sizes.
You can see how your site looks in mobile devices and compare it to blogs running mobile responsive themes by using the FREE mobile responsive tool at Genesis.
I did run Thesis for years, but now that it is really important to be visible on mobile devices because their use has grown enormously, the serious bloggers I know best have moved to mobile responsive Genesis themes.
I use Prose; Kristi Hines uses Focus; major blogs like CopyBlogger and Problogger both use Genesis. If you’re serious about your blog, Genesis is “the” theme to be using now.
Adrienne also shared this great video from Lisa Irby of 2 create a blog: an entertaining way to understand the recent Google changes.
Collaborate with Us on Twitter and Skype
We’re all always so busy, but we need to take time out to collaborate. Connecting first on Twitter and then on Skype is the method that works best for me. And I make sure I support my favorite bloggers by feeding their new content to @GrowMap on Twitter.
Using Twitterfeed has served us well for many years now. It got a dozen of us recognized by Cornell University and Yahoo! Research and it still benefits us all today. I feed over 80 blogs to my account and never get anything but compliments on the quality of the content I share. You can too. Full how-to in How to Use Twitterfeed.
Want to meet other bloggers who support each other?
Send me a regular tweet @GrowMap.
Or add me on Skype (username growmap).
