How to Lower Your Website’s Bounce Rate (Part 2)

On the previous post, I explained to you what is bounce rate, why you need to keep your bounce rate low, and the different ways to keeping bounce rate at a minimal level. For this post, I will discuss more tips on how lower your website’s bounce rate. Are you ready to learn more? Read the additional 4 tips especially for you:

• Add Newer Posts on the Sidebar

  • This is similar to adding related post as discussed in part 1. Another way to entice readers to stay is add your new blog posts or latest updates on the sidebar.
  • If they like to finish the article they are currently reading, they can find related topics at the bottom. However, if they don’t like to continue, they can drop it and find new topics on the right side.
  • This allows your readers to explore more of your published content. You can even feature popular posts aside from the newer posts. The bottom line is that you should take advantage of the sidebar.
  • Highlight the best of the best so that readers can easily the pages you want them to read. Wherever your web visitors are on your website, the sidebar widget will always show up on every page of the blog. This heightens the idea of your web visitors exploring more articles.
  • This increases the chance of your readers to view your most popular posts. Thus, it decreases your bounce rate to a minimal.
  • For WordPress users, there’s a plugin called WordPress Popular Posts. This plugin will automatically identify display the articles with the most clicks most visits. You can also manually select posts that you want to be featured. Skip the widget and create your own personalized list.

• Link Up Old Articles

  • Every time you publish a new post, make it a point to include links of your old articles.
  • Also, edit old articles, and add links to any new content you just published.
  • Link related articles to each other and create a domino effect. So, when a web visitor reads 1 post, he will end up reading 5 more because you were able to create a link to all the related articles.
  • Don’t just rely on the related post widget. Insert links within the post itself.
  • So, if you missed part 1 of the discussion on bounce rates, you can read it by following this link. See what I did there?
  • Deep linking will shed light to old articles that have been buried by newer articles. It will also increase page views, and lower bounce rate.

• Speed Up Your Website

  • One to way to definitely annoy your web visitor? Give them a slow website.
  • Having a very slooowwww website will absolutely increase your bounce rate. Web visitors will immediately abandon the page. So, how do we test your website’s speed? You can visit Google’s PageSpeed Insights. The tool is free and is very easy to use.
  • You have to input the URL and click analyze. PageSpeed Insights will analyze the website, and then, it will give suggestions to make the site load faster.

• Make Website Navigation Easier

  • The easiest way to to convince people to stay is to provide a clear navigation. It should be easy to find information in your site.
  • A lot of websites have complicated menus that tend be confusing. So, an important tip for you: Keep your main menu simple. That’s it!