30+ Tips To Reduce Your Site’s Bounce Rate
Written by S.Pradeep Kumar in Blogging - Print This Post
According to Google, Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. In short, it tells how many people who arrive at your website “bounce” out to another site. Keeping your bounce rate to it’s most minimal is important in making the most out of your new visitors.
Many people were confused with bounce rate. It is not rocket science guys! See if a page has bounce rate of 70% means that 70% of the readers/visitors who landed on that page decided to leave your site. The other 30% stayed on your site and performed at least one more click. Below I mentioned 30+ tips to reduce and improve your site’s bounce rate.
If you are trying to optimize your website/blog for conversion rate, then you can check this post,
30+ Tips To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate
1. Good Web Layout And Design : You should be careful when choosing between magazine and normal layout theme. Many recommended Thesis theme for better bounce rate. The look of your site’s design can force your visitors to stay.
2. Relevant Content : If your blog is about Animals, then publish articles related to Animals category alone. Don’t write about Fruits and Vegetables. Because visitors will expect more from Animals category. Each page of your blog should be on-topic.
3. Clear and Proper Navigation : Let the users know where they are. Every blog should have breadcrumb. If not download it right now. Have a proper archives section. Place the navigation menu near the top of the page. Use simple and clear words for navigation options. Don’t use too many links there. Maximum of 7 links recommended.
4. Good and Original Content : Always publish original content. Never publish duplicate content which will affect your blog in several ways. Your blog’s content should be worth reading.
5. Avoid Distractions : Avoid pop-ups, external toolbars and anything similar to that which causes distractions to the visitors. You can also avoid using Text In Link ads. Trust me, it decreases page views.
6. Improve loading speed : Don’t make your visitors to wait. Your blog’s page views will automatically increase if the pages load faster and quicker. You can check the tips to improve and increase your blog’s loading speed.
7. Add Relevant Images : Make sure you add relevant and related images to the articles. Provide good resolution and quality images. I made a list of websites providing copyright and royalty free images, you can try that.
8. Avoid External Links : External links on your blog’s main page can make the bounce rate very high. So you can avoid external links on the first page that visitors see when they land on your site. Try to reduce the number of outgoing links.
9. Comparing : Compare the page which gets lower bounce rate with the page that gets higher. Ask your friends and other fellow bloggers the difference between them. This one helps a lot.
10. Analyze Bounce Rate : I recommend Google Analytics for analyzing your site’s bounce rate. Check your site’s bounce rate regularly and see if there is any change. Study the reports. See which page gets the lowest bounce rate and highest bounce rate. You can also check your site’s bounce rate through Alexa. Though, I don’t recommend it much.
11. Ample Content : Try to have minimum 300-400 words of content on your site’s pages. Try to provide sufficient content to your site visitors. Let it be in the form of images, text or videos.
12. Targeted Keywords : Your Keywords should be specifically targeted for the content on your site. Bounce rates are also influenced by wrongly optimized keywords. Consider a post title like this, “Top 15 Twitter Tools for Twitter Freaks“. And you optimize this post title with wrong keywords like “Twitter Hacks” or “Twitter’s New Service”. This makes the users annoy and they won’t visit that page/site later.
13. Minimize Pages : Try to minimize the number of pages you have on your website/blog. Keep it simple and clear, so that your visitors will not get confused.
14. Optimize With Keywords : Always use the keywords within your articles. For example, I have a post titled “7 Basic Tips For Improving Your Blog’s Alexa Rank“, and then I will use the keywords like “Improve Alexa Rank”, “Alexa Rank Tips” and so on. This will indeed increase the value of the keywords on the search engines.
15. Good and Effective Headlines : Each page’s title should match the content within that page. Don’t try to use misleading page titles. You can refer Google’s “Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines“.
16. Offer subscriptions : You can offer RSS feeds and E-mail newsletters by which readers can easily subscribe and get daily updates. This will help in enhancing your site’s bounce rate because those readers will come back to read more.
17. Good Quality Links :Try to acquire as many good links as possible that points to your blog or blog’s page. Those links should have correct anchor text. You can hook other webmasters to link to your pages by placing genuine content in your pages. Avoid link exchange since there is a possibility of losing PageRank on both sides.
18. Remove Autoplay Videos : This is my opinion. I’ll close the site immediately if it starts singing. Remove the video altogether, or at least have it paused.
19. Popular Posts : You can use Popular Posts plugin and list the top and popular articles in your site’s sidebar.
20. Related Posts : There are many ways to show related posts on your blog. My favorite is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP). You can try that. Showing related posts with images/thumbnails also works.
21. Internal Linking : By internal linking your readers can know about other content of your site without having to search for it. Interlink only if it is related to the article and you can also do this to your old articles. Try to link between your old articles as reference.
22. Place Search Box : You can provide your visitors with the option to search on your blog at the top. If they cannot find anything interesting on the landing page, they can use search option to navigate into the site.
23. Page SEO : Provide proper URL, title and keyword optimization. For WordPress users, I recommend All In One SEO plugin.
24. Interactive Articles : Ask questions to your readers and visitors. Your article should be in a reader friendly manner.
25. Free Downloads : You can easily attract visitors if you provide free downloads like free themes, free wallpapers and so on. You can make them click on that link easily.
26. Use Post Excerpts : If your article is too long you can use post excerpts. If there is too much content on the main page visitors will get tired by scrolling and they’ll decide to leave.
27. Eliminate Bad Traffic : If you’re getting/buying traffic from other sites and it is not profitable to you, then you need to eliminate all those sources. Check which PPC keywords are bouncing and shut those keywords.
28. Upper Left to Lower Right : Keep the upper left of your site pretty, pretty nice and attractive. Because visitors will first see that only and that decides whether they need to stay or not.
29. Optimize 404 Pages : Many blogs have ugly 404 error page. That makes the bounce rate to bounce more. Your visitors will leave your site and look elsewhere for the information they were looking for. So optimize the error page. Provide some solutions and suggestions there. You can check HB‘s 404 Error page.
30. Optimize The Sidebar : Remove all those useless and time consuming widgets from your site’s sidebar and try to include widgets such as “Popular Posts” and “Recent Articles”. You can also use “tag cloud” in the sidebar.
31. Surveys and Polls : This is the best way to interact with your readers and visitors. You can ask them some questions or suggestions. You can check the results and you can predict whether they will stick around or not.
So what’s your site’s bounce rate? High? Low? Ahh.. 
Do you know any other tip to improve/reduce bounce rate? Please share it in the comments!
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Reducing your site’s bounce rate is a great way to make more use out of your existing traffic and a lot less work then increasing traffic and getting links. This is a great and informative article. Thanks a lot!
does bounce rate effect your rankings ?
Yes, it does . Your bounce rate is taken in consideration by google on how popular your site is with your visitors. If your visitor spends time on your site, this shows google that you have good content. This is measured by the bounce rate
Currently my bounce rate is 52. Time to work and reduce.
Thanks
Some really great tips here, plus a reminder that often to many people focus on getting more traffic when it is what they do with that traffic that is most important.
My favorite is number 27 – Eliminate bad traffic.
I used to use PPC but I prefer SEO now.
[...] you’re doing OK. I’m not saying that navigation can fix your bounce rate alone and there are many other thing you can work with. However good and user friendly navigation may help user find what they are looking for if the [...]
What is an acceptable bounce rate in google’s eyes ?
Excellent points mate. I need to consider this, since my bounce rate is over 68%. Have to reduce it. BTW thanks a lot for sharing these tips.
awsome da..related links at the end of the post..will decrease the bounce rate
i will keep all of the points in mind
Is there anyway for us to check our own bounce rate? I though once they have open your page, that would be okay then.
I loved this post! It really solidified a lot about what I sort of knew, but wasn’t sure I knew, so didn’t utilize…
I’m going to pay much more attention to all these details, and keep the post as a checklist until every single thing is done…then I’ll go through it again, and again, as time goes by.
Thanks!
This is a great list to reduce the bounce rate
this is a great break down to reduce the bounce rate.
excellent tips…thanks for sharing….it’s really necessary to have a lower bounce rate for any site..
Really bullet points to the beginner bloggers
You have covered almost all the points to reduce the bounce rate here. Good Work.
My Blog's bounce rate is 55.88% Not good i guess. i guess that was because of your interview
Thanks for the tips!!
Great list. I have been facing this problem of higher bounce rate on my blog. I think I have to follow all your points to get it reduced. Also, I feel I have to post more and more content related to the theme of my blog. This is an area where I need to work like anything. Thanks for all these great tips.
Thanks for such a wonderful article.
I think useful content and its good presentation is most important.
Good content and ample content is very important to keep the visitors coming back. I think another point could be made, ‘Top Commentator’ widget can make more people coming back again and again.
Very useful tips, this tip is not only helpful for reducing bounce rate but also this is more useful for making a good quality site.
Yeah, just jump in HBB. Lost of useful information! Just bookmarked this article
).
Thanks Vuong. Welcome to HBB.
internal linking can also be used for minimizing bounce rate and also useful for spiders.
Thanks, this is a really specific article and I can use some of those tricks!
Nice list, by keeping your visitors on the site for longer times, you can increase the number of page views as well your chances of them performing a desired action.
My blog bounce rate looks like stuck. I hope these tips will help me to control it. Thanks
You did not mean interesting videos. I tried the video option and put an interesting video related to my website in the front page and the bounce rate was as low as %20 (before it was like 60%)
One more way of doing this is by having “Related Posts” near the top. This way if the initial content on your web page does not interest the reader, s/he can always click on the “related links” thus getting you more page views per visit and reducing the bounce rate. For WP bloggers the YARPP will do this job – use a widget and post the related links to the right.
Nice and true tips.
My bounce rate is around 75% but 80+% of my traffic is organic straight from the search engines. Bounce rate tends to be higher from these types of visitors…
I already removed some of the unnecessary pictures on my page, and run a poll.
only one thing is to stop the bounce rate is, that content should be good and which every one knows about it very well rest are just ordinary tips.
Only option is to improve your website look and appearance so people spent more and more time on your website by exploring the whole website. If you website have good appealing look or appearance then surly bounce rate will decrease
Thanks for your tips. I hope it can decrease my bounce rate.
Hi kumar,
I'm a little confuse with this:
Scenario: If readers arrive in a landing pages and read that article for about 10 minutes and leave the site. Does it considered to be a bounce rate? Even he stays longer in your site than the average?
If the readers stay on your site for long, then it may boost your bounce rate.
I face same problem. I am using analytic to check bounce rate. 70% is my website rate. I will try to improve by following your tips.
it worked very well and my blog bounce rate comes down to 60%
You can also improve your site speed.
Add new services, especially free services that attract audience (ex. free sms,email…..)
Hi,
Thanks sharing this information. I have learned new things in bounce rate
Excellent Points. I am sure, these tips will surely reduce the bounce rate
Always provide a related article to reduce the bounce rate, or a call to action, to continue reading.
Not all bounce rates are the same. I have a high bounce rate because I have a lot of images in Google. When people do a search on google for images google will display the image in front of the page and that counts as a hit. Then the user leaves the image and you get a bounce so the bounce rate could be higher and if the keywords are the same for web/image then you can't decipher between the two.
Fascinating! This post is almost 1,5 years old but still 100% up to date. Good stuff!
Yea, Really like this Post
thanks for all
thank you for sharing a good tip, great job man !!
Great Tips. One thing to note is that having too many options on the landing page can sometimes confuse and distract visitors. Try to incorporate only one or two driving spots to other pages. Then, from those pages, one or two more. Keep them flowing thru the site.
My site has a 70% bounce rate, but my top landing page (bounce rate 75%) also has an average time on the page of 2:34. So people are finding great content and reading the entire page but then leaving. I have a number of links on the page to entice readers to another page. Any suggestions??
It will be nice if you can share that page bud.
This is really genuine article and i love it
Bounce rate reduction plays an very important role in search engine optimization.
useful tips but my blog is getting 70-80% bounce rate.
My site has a bounce rate of about 93%, I'm definitely going to do something to reduce this percentage. This post is very informative. Thanks for sharing.
80% already known points. 20% innovative points. Thanks for making this a little bit more clear to me! My bouncerate at the moment is 40%. Is this high or low?
That's a perfect %.
I am a webmaster for my companies site, and I noticed something the other day… when I took the contact info off the main page, and linked it instead, my bounce rate dropped by 45%. Just a thought for you webmasters out there!
Hey Pradeep, Great collection of tips. And The most considerable point to decrease bounce rate is Optimization for proper keywords. Because sometimes, your post is ranked for irrelative keyword and it gives substantial rise to your bounce rate… at that time, quality of content doesnt matter…
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really good tips, i have my bounce rate as high as 80 on some pages. some of them are mini sites so sometimes it's not really matter.
Great tips Pradeep …
From quite a few days, I am getting high bounce rate on a particular page… I like your suggestion on adding polls/surveys, Will try implementing it