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Most new marketers & bloggers ask this question: How can I reduce bounce rate of my WordPress website? When I was also new in the SEO industry, I was thinking about: How Google gets to know whether the content is great and fulfilling the users’ intent! 

Later, I found one of the mysterious Google metrics called “The Bounce Rate” that examines the overall user experience of a web page. 

A high bounce rate shows:

  • There must be something wrong with your content marketing strategy
  • The traffic you get on your page are not interested in what you are offering
  • Your content is not much more effective or 
  • Maybe there is something wrong with your site design & layout
how to reduce bounce rate
how to reduce bounce rate

But don’t need to worry, because it’s not like breaking big rocks. And in this guide, we will discuss different foolproof methods to reduce bounce rate of your website quickly. 

What Is Bounce Rate?

It is a big SEO ranking factor that lets Google whether to rank the page or not. 

According to Google,

“The percentage of single-page visits (i.e. Navigate away after viewing only one page).”

This means if the person visits your website and leaves it without reading the full content, visiting the other pages, or without clicking on the CTA button, then it will be counted as a bounce.

A high bounce rate indicates that you are targeting the wrong audience or the way you are engaging with them is not as effective as it should be.

What is A Good Bounce Rate?

To put your mind at ease, here I want to mention that there are many blogs and websites that exist in-universe with the bounce rate even 80%.

So why decrease the bounce rate?

Because the more you focus to reduce your bounce rate the more Google loves to rank your content on top.

Also by doing this, you will be able to engage with your readers, will get more page views, and thus more conversions as a result.

On the other hand, a high bounce rate is a sign of poor user experience in the views of Google. So there are more chances of losing the SERPs rankings if you have a high bounce rate.

Although the bounce rate depends on your niche and type of your web page.

what is a good bounce rate

(Image Source: Backlinko)

On the above screenshot, you can see an average bounce rate by industry.

However, the general rule of thumb is…

If your bounce rate is more than 80%, then it is considered to be bad, 70-80% poor, 50-70% is the average, and 30-50% is considered to be good.

9 Methods To Reduce Bounce Rate

Underneath are a few strategies to implement that will surely minimize your website bounce rate and help to boost your traffic & conversions as well.

1. Fulfil The User Intent

Especially when it comes to SEO campaigns, user experience is one of the topmost factors that shouldn’t be ignored.

Almost every startup online business wants to convert the big part of their website traffic into successful conversions. 

But, will they purchase from you? OR take any other serious step after reading your guide?…

Unfortunately, most of the startup businesses fail at this.

The simple reason behind this is, they fail to fulfill the intent or target the wrong audience by optimizing the content with the wrong keywords.

For instance, if you ranked for a keyword ‘how to get sales for free’, but in a guide, if you have written about getting sales with paid advertisements, then consumers will jump to another website after reading a few lines.

To analyze the searcher’s intent correctly before creating content, you must be aware of the stage of funnel your targeted audience is in!

Always look for whether your prospect is looking for information or want to buy something? What queries are they looking to be solved in your guide? 

However, this can be easily done correctly by understanding the whole customer journey process.

So I highly recommend you have a glimpse at your web content and look for whether it is meeting the searcher’s intent properly or not!

2. Make Your Copy Readable

Other most important things are quality, formatting & flow of your copy. 

Most people leave the website fastly because they don’t love to read plentiful pages & large paragraphs.

So shortly, keep it simple.

content formatting

Focus on the readability of your content and use simple words. 

I generally try to write my articles between 8th to 10th-grade reading level.

For this, I use the Hemingway editor to check the overall readability score of my copy.

You can start the content with the story or the eye-catching intro, which lets the reader read your whole article.

Also, add stats and facts to clear your points, this will also generate more flow in your content.

The best way to interact with the readers is to write in a conversational tone. Write as you talk normally with people.

You can use the words like “I & You” that makes your reader feel as you are directly talking with him.

Break down your content into small pieces with eye-catching headlines, also use bullet points, bold, italic and underlined words within your content for the perfect formatting of your content

And most importantly, avoid making grammatical and punctuation errors in the content. For this, you can use any best Grammar checker tool like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Hemingway, or Ginger.

3. Improve Loading Time of The Website

Many successful marketers believe that the slow loading speed of a website can impact search engine rankings, but some of them don’t.

Well, your page loading time should not be longer than 2 seconds.

Because

Around 50% of users abandon a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Have you ever checked your website speed? 

You can check it easily with the help of Google speed checker or the tool called GTmetrix can help you.

Well, the question is… 

How do you increase speed to reduce bounce rate of your site?

To speed up your website, make sure to switch on the fast & secure hosting server like Siteground, Dreamhost, or A2hosting (they all are good & affordable).

If you are a WP user then consider using an image optimization plugin like ‘Imagify’, or even you can do this with the help of free online tools.

And Don’t forget to use a good content delivery network (CDN), this will surely work for you.

4. Focus on Internal linking

If your internal linking structure will be powerful, then there will be more chances to minimize your bounce rate easily.

Help your visitors to engage with your website and let them navigate your guides without searching for them on Google.

internal linking benefits
How To Do Internal Linking For SEO

In the above screenshot, you can see the perfect internal linking structure example. 

This seems to be amazing, but for this, you must have plenty of articles and guides on your website.

And that can be only done with the perfect content marketing strategy for your blog.

Apart from reducing your website bounce rate, this will help to improve your user experience, improve SEO rankings & result in more conversions & sales.

On the other hand,  set all of your external links to open in the new tab, this will help the consumers again come to your website easily by switching a tab.

5. Good Website Layout

Be unique and simple!…

People don’t love unwanted ads, banners, and other content on the web page, they want to see what they are looking for.

Build a simple layout that lets your visitors read your content and navigate your website easily.

If you keep this in your mind, this will not only help to reduce the bounce rate but boost your conversions as well.

6. Use Media and Images

Especially for long pieces of articles, people feel laziness when reading it. Because they want to learn things ASAP.

Otherwise, they will instantly jump to another website.

Images help to produce more flow in your copy and make your content easier to understand.

That’s why somebody rightly said: A picture is worth a thousand words!

If you optimize your page with attractive images, videos, and infographics… This will help the readers to read your whole content without getting overwhelmed.

You can use images from stock image websites like pixabay, or can create your own with the help of online graphic designing tools like Canva.

7. Avoid Using Unnecessary Pop-ups and Ads

Among site owners, it is a controversial topic, whether to use pop-ups or not!

Even though most marketers never recommend this.

However, the case study shows a 1,000% increase in email subscribers over a month of using popups.

But in my case, when I used message popups for collecting details of my visitors on my educational niche blog, I saw a massive increase in the bounce rate over a week of using it. Later, I removed it and things got back to normal again.

So, this totally depends on your niche whether to use popups or not. 

Like in the marketing industry people love to immediately hit their emails (including me) to subscribe if it will help to transform their life.

However, it doesn’t work at all…

Similarly, site owners also add unrelated advertisements on their websites that do nothing but only result in increasing the bounce rate.

8. Optimize 404 Pages & Reduce Broken links

Fix as many broken links (or remove) as you can. For this, you can use tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or screaming Frog.

To provide better user experience, optimize your 404 pages as well, which helps the readers to find other alternative options to navigate on your website.

9. Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

Do you know? 

More than 50% worldwide visitors generated from mobile devices and around 60% of people prefer using mobile while purchasing any product or service online.

mobile page speed

No matter how powerful and informative your content is, you won’t rank higher or generate as many leads until you make your site mobile-friendly.

And if you don’t optimize your website for small devices then probably you will be going to lose many sales and conversions.

Because around 45% of the consumers immediately abandon the website if they see an unfriendly layout.

Conclusion

I believe this guide must give you some useful tips about how to reduce high bounce. And I am sure by implementing these strategies you will start getting results.

But the main thing to focus on is the quality, power & the searcher’s intent of your copy. If your web page includes all the things that a consumer is looking for, then there will be less chance of getting a higher bounce rate.

Look for the things that are disturbing most! And fix them ASAP. Also, there are plenty of other tools to use, especially Google Analytics, which lets you check for the bounce rate, pages per session, time on site & much more. 


Muhammad Usman

Author: This is a guest post by Muhammad Usman, a digital marketing consultant and author. He loves to write guides that help to generate sales and income online on his blog Techylearners.com.

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One Comment

  1. These are some great tips Muhammad. I have observed that including well placed CTAs to internal pages can also lower the bounce rate.

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