If you use Google Analytics to monitor your blog traffic, surely you have noticed that parameter called Bounce Rate. In the English-speaking language, it is referred to as ”
Bounce rate” and its value shows the percentage of users who leave your blog after visiting only one page and without having performed any further action.
That is, no clicks on other posts or internal pages.
Improve Website Bounce Rate
For this reason, a very high bounce rate is seen as a bad indicator and, according to some, it would negatively affect the blog penalizing its positioning in Google search results.
But is it really so?
In reality, the value of the Bounce rate must be analyzed with the right distance since there is no proof that Google penalizes blogs with a high bounce rate. Indeed, sometimes a high Bounce rate can even indicate good results:
If, for example, a user leaves the pages of our blog by clicking on external links represented by AdSense ads, Landing pages hosted under other domains or affiliated sites, he has nevertheless taken a useful action on our blog.
Obviously it is necessary to analyze in detail which are the main “exit pages” of the blog and which raise the average of the global Bounce rate.
However, if the Bounce Rate coincides with fewer conversions on your site and less traffic then you need to understand the problem and get busy to improve the performance of the blog.
But what are the Bounce rate values that indicate a scarce interest on the part of readers? It is normal for an article to have a higher Bounce Rate (even around 80-90%) because most of the time a valid and interesting content exhausts the interest and need of the user who read it.
While the home page of your blog should have a Bounce Rate of less than 70%. Otherwise it is advisable to review some of the elements of this page: loading time, ease of navigation, layout …
Once analyzed the data related to the Bounce Rate it is possible to start acting to improve user involvement through various methods:
Increase site upload speed
Page loading speed can have a huge impact on Bounce Rate. Users are in a hurryand won’t wait more than a few seconds before looking for what they need on another site.
Use Pingdom Speed Test to measure the performance of your blog. It is an online service, free, which analyzes the loading time of the pages of any website. Simply enter the main address of your blog to learn about its performance.
Always try to make your pages fast to load, to help your users’ browsing experience. Such as? Limit plugins, avoid uploading images that are too “heavy” and never use poor quality themes for your blog.
Eventually evaluate whether to change hosting to rely on a faster one ( like Siteground ).
Improve the layout
Make sure your blog is easily navigable even from smartphones and tablets and that the design makes it easy to use the site. Remember that the cleaner and tidier your Home page will be, the better the user experience will be.
It therefore limits the banners, the advertisements, pop-ups and all the invasive elements that disturb the reading. Remember to use captivating images for your articles and take care of copywriting to entertain the user while reading.
Review your target
The reason your blog has a high bounce rate could be the fact that you are attracting the wrong audience. Remember that you must precisely define your target and write to meet the specific needs of a specific audience.
Knowing your users well and providing them with valuable content is a strategy that always pays in the medium to long term.
Hold your readers
Another useful trick to adopt is to add a list of related articles at the end of each post. If you have a good theme, you will find this function already present by default.
Otherwise you can use plugins to implement this function ( here is a list of plugins suitable for the purpose ).
Remember to set the links that point to other sites so that they open on a different page and not within the same page that the user is browsing. In this way the user can go back to reading your blog after consulting the external page.
Conclusion
Bounce Rate is an important parameter to study and keep under control. However, don’t let yourself be influenced too much by its value, but rather concentrate your efforts on improving the content of your blog and the browsing experience of your users. The results will come anyway.
