It doesn’t matter how good an SEO you are, if your site traffic doesn’t stick around all that hard work of getting that top position will have been for nothing. When looking at the metrics for your site you need to be looking further than just total site visitors and the total number of referring key words and your top positions. You need to be taking note of how long your traffic is staying on individual pages and how many pages are seeing traffic both enter and exit the page in the same session.
So How Do You Get That Bounce Rate Down?
Where the Traffic Is Coming From
This one may be one you don’t have all that much control over but look at where your traffic is coming from. In most cases it’s either going to be via paid revenues, organic traffic or direct and if it’s an internal page it’s less likely to be getting the majority of it’s traffic directly.
If the high bounce rate page is getting the majority of it’s traffic via a key word from the organic results you need to look at where it’s ranking, obviously you can no more tell Google not to rank a certain page for a certain key word than you can tell it to rank that page. If your page is ranking for a keyword that isn’t relevant to that page make sure the page isn’t optimised for that term, if you’ve got another more applicable page try optimising that page and build some links to it. In the mean time tweak your meta description slightly so any traffic that does click through knows exactly what you’re offering before they reach your page.
Relevant Content Above The Fold
One of the most common reasons for your traffic to leave your site from the same page they’ve entered on is because they can’t see what they’re looking for. You need to assume your site traffic is lazy and not tech savvy (this isn’t being patronising, it’s covering all bases) and make sure the data they’re going to need is sat there waiting for them.
If this page has a unique selling point (USP) then you need to make sure that’s sat above the fold. You also need to make sure the focus of that page is above the fold too, if you’re selling something don’t make your traffic have to scroll down to find it, put it right in front of them so they can’t get bored or leave the site.
Kill Any Pop Ups or Annoying Ads
The majority of people who really want to view a page won’t have a problem clicking to get rid of a pop up and they’ll just ignore the ads but if you’ve got too many even the most patent site traffic is’nt going to stick around.
If your site has vibrating buttons and banners all round the edge and your traffic is being asked to complete a survey before they’ve even seen the site it’s going to be off putting. Many websites rely on some form of advertising to keep them going but don’t go over the top and don’t get greedy. Don’t forget, too many ads are going to look spammy and there are still lots of people out there who are reluctant enough to spend money online so don’t give them a reason to go to your competitors.
Show Your Traffic Where To Go Next
The whole point of lowering your bounce rate is to get your site traffic to stick around on the site and view at least one more page before they leave. The most logical way to reduce the amount of traffic leaving your site straight away is to show them where you want them to go next.
You have site maps to help traffic and search engines find their way around and you have a bread crumb in place so they can find their way back through your site but how about helping them find their way to their next destination? Have some related services or products above the fold on either the left or right hand side of the page. Place some internal links in the onsite copy so they can jump through the site to relevant content. Make sure the navigation doesn’t just disappear once they reach deeper pages.
Incentivise Them To Convert
The ultimate goal of keeping your traffic onsite is to get conversions. The high bounce rate page might not offer a conversion opportunity itself but it does offer a path to the conversion page. Use your page with the high bounce rate to incentivise people to go on to convert, offer a special discount code just for that page or a special after sales care package. Find something you can offer that won’t devalue from any other special offers or promotions you’re running and use this page to advertising it.
Don’t forget the previous tips though, you need to make sure any incentives are easy to see and not hidden away.
Jessica works for Solopress printers, an amazing website needs to be backed up with an amazing set of business cards
