Reduce bounce rate blog – what is bounce rate?

Before we go on how to reduce bounce rate blog more further, i am sure, that if you are new to blogging, you want to know what a bounce rate is.

If you analyze your website performance with Google analytics, (see my post: where to paste Google analytics code) you will find informations about bounce rate, and if it’s high you may want to reduce bounce rate blog.

When i first found my bounce rate, at that time was 45%..i wanted to know what does bounce rate in Google analytics mean..

So after analyzing for quite sometimes, to me, bounce rate is the amount of your blog’s visitors that visit your website, and then leave or “bounce” to another website without checking another pages.

Reduce bounce rate blog – ideal bounce rate?

If we are talking about bounce rate, it points to our content relevancy with the associated keywords and the website’s structures, such as navigation, and linking between pages.

Ideal bounce rate will be around 20%, and i have 85%. Yes, this blog have high bounce rate. I could reach at 70% a few months ago, but because i mixed my content with technology news which mostly promoting amazon products, my rate goes up again.

Why would i not care on how to reduce bounce rate blog of mine? It is because i focus on traffics, and monetizing blog.

Explaining why i don’t really care about how to reduce bounce rate blog, everyone has their own goals to blog, and i do too.

Does website with high bounce rate means this site is bad? no..To understand better, if you have a site, to sell a product, or encourage people to click advertisements, you will have really high bounce rate. They do click “buy” buttons to go to your affiliate websites, which means more chance to make a sell, and it is good to make money, but then your rate will be high..

In my experience, high bounce rate does not effect page rank or search ranking.

This is i know, because a few months back, my bounce rate was under 40% and my PR was 0. It has been months i have up then 70% rate, and i am on PageRank 4 right now. So proof that it does not affect PR. (no idea if Google will change their regulations someday, but that’s the fact for now).

Reduce bounce rate blog – How did i decrease my bounce rate

As mentioned earlier, i have decreased my bounce rate to 70% from 80% by experimenting this method to reduce bounce rate blog a few months ago..

Here is what i did to reduce bounce rate blog:

1. Choose a theme which is decent.

I mean if your theme is nice, people also like the looks of your website. If a website has a poor theme, they will leave right away.
I use and recommend Thesis theme, because this theme is extremely clean and nice to look at.

2. Stay relevance on your topic and content.

In my case, i should stay on wordpress tutorial, but since wordpress gives “lower” rate on AdSense and the traffic drops horribly at the weekend, i mix my content, so it is not really relevant, this is why i have very high bounce rate.

My recommendation? choose between traffic or bounce rate, if you care about traffic, then you have to create contents that people search..though those are not relevant to our topic.

3. Easy navigation.
Make your menu bar appealing, menu tabs to pages to make people navigate inside your blog easier. Giving category navigation is a good idea too.

4. Avoid using excessive pop up script.

I am sure you are a site visitor yourself, so ask yourself, “do i like a pop up in a blog that appears many times?” I doubt you don’t.

So if you have like a popup domination or some kind, get the setting to appear once only, i have left a site immediately if my screen bombarded with pop up to force me entering my email address.

• Is my site loading fast? I use this shared hosting
• Try my theme >

5. Take care of your website loading speed.

Having slow blog encourage people leaving your site. I personally close a web page which loads very slow, and make me waiting for long.

People do not want to waste their times. You have high competitions, of course they go to the faster site. (related: use cache plugins, video review w3 total cache vs wp super cache)

6. Get popular post, random post, and related post widgets in your sidebar.

Feel free to check my best wordpress widgets 2011, on how to get it. Those widgets are made to list your older posts, which may take your visitors interest, to stay a little bit longer in your page.

7. Related post with our without plugin is a must in wordpress blog.

When i visit a page, under a post, i usually look at related post section, i am sure you do too, and your visitors as well.

9. When you post a link in your post, keep your visitors stay on your site.

Make it to target=”_blank” or if you use Thesis theme, strict DTD onclick=’target=_blank’  should be use, because Thesis has strict DTD, see more in this there is no attribute target html strict post. (yes, i care about validation in w3c).

This is when people click a link, a new window will come up, at the same time, your page is still on their browsers too.

10. Analyze your site in Google analytics account.

Test, test, and test, always testing then applying, and change here and there will make everything easier, including this bounce rate matter.

11. Engage your visitors to comment, and be a good host.

Having commenters are benefit for it, but really good commenters and not people who just want to have backlinks..

That’s what i have done to reduce bounce rate blog..

Do you care about your bounce rate? what have you done to reduce bounce rate blog?