The Web Traffic DoctorA high bounce rate is something search engines absolutely hate! Google and other search engines could actually penalize you for having a high bounce rate, by lowering your placement and rank in the search engine results. As soon as your bounce rate goes down, you will instead be rewarded by the same people. The better your placement is in the search results, the bigger the increase of traffic to your website.
Having a high bounce rate means that something isn’t right with the traffic you are getting. Generally, the reasons tend to fall within one of the following two categories:
- You are receiving the wrong sort of traffic to your website.
- You are receiving the right sort of traffic to your website.
Now, you might be getting confused after looking at the second category. Trust me, you’re not the only one!
Here’s how you should look at it:
If a person is looking for an answer to their question and they stumble across your website where they get all the info they need, naturally they are going to leave quickly because their question has already been answered and there is nothing to keep them on your website. This then results in you having a higher bounce rate.
Of course, you want people to stay longer on your website. But at the same time, you do want them to find the answer they are looking for. To achieve this, you’ll want people to check out more of your website before leaving. In other words, you want a more engaged audience.
Here are a few things you can consider when trying to decrease your bounce rate:
- Be careful with where you place your ads on your website
- Make your website faster by increasing the speed at which your website pages load
- Stay away from using pop-ups
- Consider setting up a proper web navigation interface on your website so people can find relevant information easily
- Segment your information
- Set up your website to be mobile-friendly
- Remove any unnecessary distractions on your site
- Avoid having a poorly designed website
- Optimize for intent
- Based on your priorities, design relevant information
- Leverage internal searches
Increase your free traffic by decreasing your bounce rate! It is absolutely worth the effort and time.
