Blogs can be a great way to get more deeply in touch with customers, visitors, and prospects, but they’re not without their challenges and minimizing the bounce rate of your content can be a big problem.
The truth is that there are many reasons people jump off your website, including impatience (e.g., they don’t want to read through long posts), boredom (e.g., there is nothing new or interesting on the page) , Confusion (e.g., navigation menus are cluttered), or simply distracted by something else that generally attracts your attention elsewhere online while browsing blogs in general.
While it’s difficult to create content that will keep readers on the page, it’s not impossible. It has to be fun, but not so much that it is difficult to read. To find out more about the bounce rate and how to minimize it, we asked the experts for their tips on how to make your posts more engaging and how to reduce the bounce rate.
What is the bounce rate?
According to Google Analytics, a bounce is “a single page session on your website that lasts less than five seconds”. A bounce occurs when a session only triggers a single request to the Analytics server – e.g. For example, when a user opens a page on your website – and then exits without taking any further action during that session. However, there are other reasons your visitor might have bounced off. Oleh Sorokopud, Head of Digital Marketing at Softjourn from Fremont, CA shares some of them.
- The visitor’s session time has ended.
- The visitor returned to the previous page to view the search results
- The visitor has closed the browser window or tab
- The visitor left the page by clicking on an external link within the page
- A new URL has been entered in the address bar
You can calculate your bounce rate by dividing all of your single page sessions through all of the sessions. Then you will get the percentage of all sessions on your website in which users only viewed a single page and only made a single request to the Analytics server.
Why do marketers need to worry about bounce rates?
Most companies want to reduce bounce rates because they want more people to come to a page and then interact with the website to convert a customer. According to Meg Sakakibara, VP of Marketing at Unbounce, Vancouver, Canada, “Bounce rates affect a company’s website score, which then increases ad costs and page rankings. This is where the bounce rate comes in, and an increased bounce rate correlates with customers and lost dollars, which is a challenge for digital businesses. “
Related Articles: How To Use Cohort Analysis In Google Analytics GA4
Improve your blog’s bounce rate
Typically, blog posts have higher bounce rates compared to other sites. The reason for this is simple: if a visitor does not find the information they are looking for, they will be taken to the following page on the search engine results page. Here are 8 tips our experts shared.
Keep your posts fresh and friendly
In order to reduce bounce rates on your blog posts, you need to make sure that you are providing all relevant information to visitors as quickly as possible while keeping the post friendly and fresh. Make sure that it is legible and that it gets to the point quickly and still convey the hard facts that make your contribution actionable.
Adapt your title and meta description to the content of the post
“The main goal of a page is to ensure that customers land on a page that meets their expectations, whether they clicked an ad or an organic search,” said Sakakibara. Make sure visitors made the right decision by tailoring their content and design to match the look of the post in organic search results.
Make sure the post has only one call-to-action
Every blog post needs a call-to-action (CTA) – a short sentence that guides visitors to take the action they want. Sakakibara recommends avoiding primary CTA distractions. “Cluttering the page with too many actions can distract the user who may click away from the page and not convert as they are following a different cookie path away from the original website,” she said.
The bottom line is that it’s best to stick with a laser focused CTA to make it easy and help the visitor move around on their journey.
Write clear and concise content
Your content should be clear and simple. Avoid overstuffing your article and keep things tight and concise. In the first 100 words of your post, give users actionable information to keep them from leaving your site. If it takes too long to answer their query or communicate the benefits of your posts, your visitors will head to greener pastures.
Reduce the loading time of your website
Google’s Page Experience and mobile-first updates have highlighted the need for fast pages, among other things. Page loading speed is an important factor to consider in order to reduce the bounce rate. Sorokopud warns us of the dangers of slow loading websites by saying that “websites that load slowly can force a customer to return to the search engine’s search results page and select the next website instead of staying on your mobile devices that don’t always have high-speed internet access, “optimize the speed of your blog posts by compressing your images and optimizing your entire site architecture.
You can use tools like Google’s Lighthouse to see how your website and blog posts are doing and what you can do to fix them.
Related article: Preparing for Google’s Page Experience Update via the Core Web Vitals Report
Optimize your blog for search intent with tools
New tools like InkforAll, MarketMuse, and others are helping authors optimize their content for search intent. They offer tips like headline improvement, difficult to read sentences, overuse of keywords, and more.
Final thoughts
Remember, your visitors came to your blog post because they were looking for information on a specific topic. Make sure the topic of your post is clear by providing relevant information to your visitors. If you can do this, your visitors will stay safe once they land on your website.
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