Blog Fabulously: Your Bounce Rate

To help you continue to blog fabulously into 2013, I wanted to give existing bloggers and new bloggers a tip in helping readers stay on your blog when visiting. Do you know what your bounce rate is? Read more after the jump!

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your site and leave after arriving without visiting a second page. Basically the higher the number, the higher amount of people are reading the page they landed on, and just bouncing (leaving). It’s the equivalent of someone walking into a store, looking around and not buying anything. While our blogs may or may not be selling a product or service, some of us are looking to sell ad space. When your website stats look good, you can in turn offer that as an incentive to get businesses to buy ad space from you. It shows your readers are engaged and interested in the content you are providing. The longer they are on your site, the more apt they are to: buy a service, a product, click an ad, sign up for your newsletter, and most importantly, read what the heck you have to say!

When I first stated my blog back on August 10, 2012, I installed Google Analytics to track the behavior of my readers. I had a super high bounce rate. It was around 75%. I was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing that wasn’t keeping them interested in the other content I had available on my website. I implemented a few things and brought my overall bounce rate all the way down to 15%! *Does Dougie* I was excited because my job is to help bloggers and website owners with their businesses so it shows me they like my content! So what did I do?

Tips To Keep Those Bounce Rates Low, Low, All Way Down To The Flo’

Add Link Within

You don’t have to add this specific plugin, but add a plugin into your blog, that refers them to other articles on your blog. If they landed on your site wanted to read about 5 ways to grow your natural hair, and they see an article about how to style your long natural hair, you better believe they will click that other article. This keeps your readers on your site.

Add Popular Posts

Don’t let that right or left side bar of your website be naked; make it useful. Add some of your most popular posts over there. They’re popular for a reason right? You can add these posts by use of a WordPress widget.

Open Links In New Windows

I like linking to other articles from other bloggers or other sites in my articles. The worst thing is to have someone click a link and leave your site. To prevent this, make sure all the links you are linking are opening in a brand new window. This way, your site is still open and they can visit the other site when they’re done reading your content.

Add New Content

If you blog, they will come! People won’t keep coming back if they see the same post about “3 Ways To Dougie On Saturdays” (can you tell I like to dougie?) every time they visit your site. Give them something to keep coming back. If you need help with keeping up with updating your content try the WordPress Editorial Calendar, to help you keep that blogging on track!

There are many other things you can do to keep your readers engaged in your content. To view your bounce rate and other statistics about your blog or website, you can install Google Analytics. You can do this manually or through a plugin. Another great plugin you can add is the Google Analytics Dashboard to view the stats on each post and page of your WordPress website. I hope this little big of info is helpful! Send me an email and let me know how your bounce rate is doing after implementing these tips!

Do you know what your bounce rate is? Let me know in the comments if you have any additional tips!