One of the top factors that any business looks at when deciding what to promote or to improve is the return rate (which is NOT the same thing as the “rate of return”). The quantity of returns is a key indicator of customer satisfaction.
If customers keep returning a toy or a gadget to the store, it most likely means that the product doesn’t work as expected or that it breaks easily. On the other hand, if people are buying it up in droves and nobody is returning it, let’s put that toy at the front of the aisle!
If searchers keep returning to Google from your website to seek another result, what does that tell Google about your website?
Maybe it’s broken.
Maybe it doesn’t meet people’s expectations.
Maybe it should not be placed up front. Maybe it should be placed farther down in the search results.
Bounce rate is a key indicator of the quality of your website. Click To TweetThe bounce rate with any given search is an indicator of not just the quality, but also the relevancy of your website to that particular search.
Do you think that Google and Bing (owned by Microsoft, don’t forget) fail to notice such obvious indicators? Let me rephrase that – do you think that two of the world’s biggest computing companies fail to notice the most obvious data that tells them if your site sucks?
What can you do to crush your bounce rate?
In its most simple form, bounce rate means the percentage of visitors to your site who hit the “back” button to return to the search results, as I explained on Kingged. Those are the single-page visits, and that’s what Google tells us it calculates. At least, that’s the “bounce rate” it shows us as webmasters.
However, Google is more than just a handheld calculator; the bounce rate it calculates for ranking purposes might be significantly more complex. For instance, Google might decide to place a time limit on its calculations; bounce rate might become the percentage of visitors to your site who hit the “back” button to return to the search results within one minute of visiting, for example. It can get even more complicated if Google adds a sliding scale with different values depending on how long it takes for people to bounce.
If you are concerned about the bounce rates Google is showing you, try adjusting the bounce rates in Google Analytics, removing scrolls from the bounce rate or removing returning visits.
Google won’t tell us exactly how they calculate bounce rate behind closed doors. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is to serve your users and engage them.
Leo Welder of ChooseWhat.com says, “One of the most critical steps to reducing bounce rate is to put yourself in the shoes of your site visitors by actually recreating their experience.”
To crush bounce rates, all you have to know are two things:
- You want people to visit more than one page of your website.
- You want visitors to be engaged, so as to remain on your website as long as possible.
There are many strategies to keep people digging deeper into your website. Start with the user in mind, and you can’t go wrong. Leo Welder takes a step-by-step approach to this:
Create a scenario where a person would be conducting a search and perform it yourself. In the search listings, what does your site’s title and description say? When you click through to your site, are you able to rapidly confirm that this site will provide you with what you need? You only have a couple of seconds to keep a person from abandoning your website. You need to make sure that the user experience is smooth and that your content immediately communicates to your targeted visitors that they are in the right place.
Speed up load time
One of the biggest wastes is that never even sees your website because they get impatient waiting for it to load. Those bounces could be good customers. So the most basic way to crush your bounce rate is to speed up the loading of your website.
Pop-ups can slow load times, and also really piss people off when the page finally loads. Click To TweetOr just as they start reading or start scrolling, up pops a barrier between them and what they are reading. Some people will hit the “back” button. Double the reason to ditch the pop-ups.
Load speed is important for your rankings, too, especially for mobile searches. So this is a high-value fix with virtually no down-side. It is on my list of top things I plan to address over the next couple months on my own websites.
Urge them on
Whatever your revenue model is, chances are that your bottom line benefits from your visitors spending more time on your website and visiting more pages. So a second very important tactic is to urge your visitors to visit more pages of your website. There are a number of ways to do this.
Contextual links encourage visitors to click for more information on various elements of your content. However, these are passive; there is no call to action.
Explicit links are more aggressive; there is a call to action urging people on. Click To TweetHere are a few examples of wording you might like to use:
- Read also [NAME OF RELATED ARTICLE]
- If you liked this post, here are some others you might like:
- Don’t miss out on this:
- Read our most popular article.
- For more tips on [TOPIC], click here.
I used the “Read also” approach at this post on ghostwriter contracts.
Neil Patel is blunter than I am:
“Remember that great calls-to-action will improve usability, and when that happens, your ideal customers will gladly stay put on your site. Every second spent on your site due to an enhanced CTA will improve your conversion rate, and lower your bounce rate.”
Bribe them
“Bribe” is such a dirty word, but it’s done all the time in Internet marketing. Offer a freebie and when they click submit, send them to a thank-you page. That page in itself removes their visit from the bounce rate, but you can go one better.
The thank-you page can list 3-5 popular pages that you would love them to visit. Done right, you can even get two visits out of one, plus get their names on your mailing list for future contact.
Make your content irresistible
In the end, of course, content is king. If your article sucks, or if it’s mostly amazing but the headline or the first few lines or the layout really sucks and nobody ever gets to the really amazing part, forget about crushing your bounce rate.
You need top notch content on your blog or website, for so many reasons. For our purposes, this will help with bounce rates in a number of ways:
- People won’t hit the “back” button in horror.
- If people like your article, they are more likely to be curious about what else you can do, and wander off along the garden paths of your website.
- If people like your article, they are more likely to click a contextual link for more information.
- The longer people are on your website, the more likely they are to click a sidebar link.
You’ll like that, and so will Google and Bing.
Make your pages more readable
No matter how good your content is, it has to be readable. That means using a font that is big enough to easily read and breaking up your text into readable chunks.
Try using bullet points when appropriate, make lists and use subheadings. And add images. Everybody like to see visuals. In short, don’t just make it worth reading, make it easy to read, too.
Reducing your bounce rate is not a holy grail. There might be good reasons for people leaving your website quickly and directly. For instance, they might have found what they are looking for in ten seconds, and they head back to Google to find something else. But in most cases, you will benefit from visitors spending more time on your site and visiting more pages.
Latest posts by David Leonhardt (see all)
- 11 Ways Promoting the Arts Can Help Your Business - August 9, 2016
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Hi David,
Thank you for posting this article on how to lower bounce rate for your blog. Your readers can rest assured, they are in good hands with you. Because, following the EXACT advice you laid out here, my bounce rate plummeted to an unheard industry low of 6 PERCENT~!
The technique of using Contextual Links to lower bounce rate in a new idea to me. Do you have any post that deal with this?
And lastly, if I may add one more bullet in the arsenal, my bounce rate feel about 8-12 percent after I added a Table of Contents.
Great to visit again,
Bubbie
Hi Bubbie. Congratulations. I can’t believe the tips here could lower a bounce rate that much! Very impressive. I am glad these tips worked so well for you.
Seek to decrease the instances of visitors leaving your site disappointed. As you say, focusing on readability is important. Also, avoid using user hostile techniques including popups etc.
John would love you to read ..Train Transportation Between Johor Bahru and Singapore
I love the tip about using a thank you page to reduce bounce rate. I never thought of that as a good reason to make a thank you page.
Amablogger would love you to read ..August 2016 Blog Stat Reports Review
This blog adds to the effectivity and provides some great ways to make your pages engaging and increase visits and user acquisition rate. Additionally, you can add some interesting ways like, designing cross-browser compatible websites, designing an eye appealing CTA which compels users to click, invest in a great design, make your navigation intuitive, design internally linked pages, and so on.
David, can you tell me that how to increase my blog traffic, I am struggling in receiving good amount of traffic.
Hi Vijay.
There are soooo many ways. You can read about them in dozens of articles on this blog and on plenty of other blogs, too. My favorite ways are:
– grow your social profile and keep sharing your posts.
– grow your network of friends, so that they will share your posts.
– make comments on other blogs in your niche, adding value to the discussion
Of course, it helps to have totally unique ideas and perspectives.
David Leonhardt would love you to read ..Top 10 most common business grammar errors
this is very useful article, before reading this article my blog bounce rate was 48.58 and now it is only 20.58
Wow! It sounds like you have the makings of a great blog post, by documenting what you did.
David Leonhardt would love you to read ..Writers, just write
This article is very necessary for a SEO campaign optimizer, who is working on Google Analytics. Bounce rage is not small kind of thing for avoid that. It’s a major part of a website optimizer. Really this blog is very helpful to gain about bounce rate decrease. Thanks you very much.
Thanks for all of the great information about how to reduce bounce rate. I agree that in most cases you want to reduce your bounce rate. But not in all cases.
First, according to support.google.com, a bounce is simply a single-page session. It could be that they hit the back button and returned to the search results. It could also mean that they closed their browser or clicked a link that goes to a different website.
My primary website is a collection of product pages. If someone chooses to order then they leave my site to go to the actual product vendor’s website to place their order. If I’m doing everything exactly right, everyone converts to place an order, then my bounce rate would be 100% and I would be raking in some serious money. The trick is to let Google know that it is a good thing. I attach a Google Analytics event to each of my money links so that Google knows that there is value to that action.
Ben would love you to read ..Do You Know Where Your Drinking Water Comes From?
Hi Ben.
You are correct that a high bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing. The bounce rates that Google would be negatively concerned about would be people who hit the “back” button, because that would in most cases (but not in all cases) be a sign of dissatisfaction.
hiii david This is so very important! I know I love the page views that Stumbleupon sends my way but convert them over to keep my bounce rate low, is another issue in itself. Thanks for late us know in explain about crush bounce rate. This is very helpful for all person who facing these kind of situation.
Creating irresistible content can really help reduce bounce rate as readers will be willing to read other posts on your blog if they’ve found one irresistible. Great post
Seun would love you to read ..7 Reasons Why Marketing Strategy Is The Heart Of Any Business
Hey David,
Great to see you here at Gail’s home and I think we all can appreciate what you shared. Oh and thanks for including a link to one of my posts here, that was pretty cool to see. Oldie but still a goody.
I know with all the changes that Google continues to implement, I’m wondering if the bounce rate will be one of the next things to go. Page rank seems to be going out the window but I never really pay that much attention to those things anyway. Of course we definitely don’t ever want anyone who comes to our site to click away quickly. We want them to find what they came here for the first time and then want even more. It’s up to each of us to make sure that happens.
You know I haven’t checked my bounce rate in awhile now so you’ve got me curious. I guess I better stay on top of that now since I’ve changed the way I’m writing my posts now. Okay, off to check that but will be sure to share this baby while I’m here.
Thank you both and enjoy your day and weekend now.
~Adrienne
Adrienne would love you to read ..How to Stand Out and Stop Worrying About Your Competition
Hi Adrienne. I don’t think PageRank has ever gone. Google has just stopped showing us a representation of it. But all the factors that comprised PageRank are surely still there. Whatever Google shows us of bounce rate, one thing is for sure – Google is paying attention to our bounces and any other engagement stats it can get its hands on.
David Leonhardt would love you to read ..Writers, just write
Thanks David,
I found the article to be very informative and I appreciate that. I read articles with much more in mind than just what the content has to offer me. I am studying the structure of the article, the flow of the article. What are the emphasized point at quick glance, etc.
When I find something that hold my interest all the way through I know I need to take notes. This article did that for me so thanks for sharing.
Indeed, it’s mostly about TSC – total customer satisfaction. Give them what they want to stay longer and visit more pages, make it easy for them to do so, and make them smile as they do it.
David Leonhardt would love you to read ..Writers, just write
Thanks, Gail.I really wish there was a way to find out. When I first started blogging, everyone was about page views. Then a few years later, bounce rate came about. Oy vey…..Happy Friday!Bren
Wonderful article ! Really reducing bounce rate is one of the biggest factor to get good traffic for site, most;y keep moving user to one page to to another page for reading or getting contact details is another tough job. Mostly these results more than one and half hour for writing the good article with key points it took but to make it post in a better way that visitors can stay connected and revolve through site chances are very less.
Thanks for shearing your knowledge with article 🙂
Hi , Really Informative one and I was search engine for solutions to reducing my website bounce rate and i thing i got best answer in your blog , thanks for informative post
Thanks for late us know in explain about crush bounce rate. This is very helpful for all person who facing these kind of situation.
Alice Wright would love you to read ..MYOB Hosting Solutions by SageNext
As both a marketer and a consumer, I really appreciate this quote you included by Leo Welder: “…You need to make sure that the user experience is smooth and that your content immediately communicates to your targeted visitors that they are in the right place.” As you point out, it all comes by putting yourself in the user’s shoes and seeing the experience from their perspective. Great article!
Joyce Anderson would love you to read ..Blogging for Business – What’s the Big Deal?
Leo’s a bright guy. It is surprising how few people in marketing at any level think like a user. You even see this all the time in traditional advertising,. Big companies tire of their own ads, having seen them so much, so they switch for newer ads just as the message was starting to have an impact. If they put themselves in their target market’s shoes, they would realize that the market is not yet tired of their ads.
David Leonhardt would love you to read ..Writers, just write
Hi David,
This is so very important! I know I love the page views that Stumbleupon sends my way but convert them over to keep my bounce rate low, is another issue in itself. I know many bloggers love using Stumbleupon because it amps the views. However, with a high bounce rate, are we really hurting ourselves?
I’m happily passing this along as “bounce rate” is a topic that comes up very often in FB groups and such.
Thanks for sharing this with us!
Hi Gail!
Brenda
Brenda Pace would love you to read ..Are You Ready to Hire a Freelance Writer?
Hi Bren,
I had exactly the same question and have asked multiple SEOs – so far without one of them testing to find out whether StumbleUpon traffic helps or hurts us in the long run. I wish I could find one who would figure that out.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Solving Pesky Computer Issues for Bloggers and Social Media Marketers
Indeed, Gail and Bren, StumbleUpon is a double-edged sword. I think if the topic of the page is serious enough, then all those views might lead to social shares and maybe even some good blog links. But if the topic is less serious, all you’ll get is drive-by traffic (and your site will look like a trampoline). On the other hand, do Google and Bing factor SU shares in their algo? Hard to tell.
David Leonhardt would love you to read ..Writers, just write