How to reduce the bounce rate of a website
Have you recently noticed a high bounce rate on your website? We know, it can be frustrating… Despite your best efforts to write amazing content, people are still leaving the website without exploring it any further. Your SEO rankings and conversion rates are suffering, and you can’t seem to find a way to fix this problem… But don’t panic yet, there might be a solution!
To keep visitors interested, you have to pay attention to details. Luckily, experts from Alpha Efficiency gave us five tips on how to reduce the high bounce rate of a website:
Increase Page Speed
If it takes too long for your content to load, users might get impatient and search for the solution on another website. A fast page load time might not bring you new visitors, but at least it won’t lead to a higher bounce rate either. Ideally, a page should load within 2 seconds. To increase site speed, you might want to consider the following recommendations:
Minify your code – remove unnecessary data from HTML and CSS code.
Optimize images – choose a different image format or compress images on your page to achieve faster load time.
Reduce the number of ads – too many ads on your page can increase the bounce rate on their own, but they also affect page speed.
Delete plug-ins – unnecessary plug-ins slow down your website. Use only the ones you need.
Find a better hosting solution – to achieve the best possible result, find a hosting solution that suits your website based on its traffic.
Target the right audience
Targeting the right audience can seriously reduce the bounce rate of your website. Do intensive keyword research before writing. Then utilize the power of long-tail keywords to narrow down the audience in order to increase traffic quality. Afterwards, it is crucial to satisfy the user’s search intent and deliver on your headline promise. The usual outcome of clickbait is a visitor’s click on the back button.
Make your content easy-to-read
Keep visitors on the page by making your content more visually appealing. In the Internet era, People usually skim through the text before paying full attention. If they can’t find the information quickly – it might result in a higher bounce rate. These tricks can help you improve the readability of your text:
Avoid long walls of text
Use subheadings for different sections
Write shorter paragraphs
Keep sentences short – one idea per sentence
Use bullets and numbering for making lists
Include images in your article
Use internal links
Internal links lead to other pages of your website and they are helpful when you’re trying to reduce the bounce rate. If you use them correctly, internal links will provide a better user experience for your visitors. People might want to learn more about a given topic, and that’s the opportunity to keep them on your website by linking to another page that is relevant.
We recommend using at least two or three internal links per article. But avoid using too many as they should always have a purpose and be placed in the right context.
The best practice is to use relevant keywords as anchor text for internal links.
Make your website mobile-compatible
More than half of web traffic comes from mobile devices. If you want to keep visitors on your website as long as possible, optimizing it for mobile phones and tablets is a must. Mobile responsiveness is also officially a ranking factor on Google – which is another reason to ensure that:
Pages load fast on mobile – use AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) framework
Text is readable on small screens – change fonts if necessary
Navigation is easy – everything should feel natural to users
Conclusion
Someone will always be leaving your website, but if you follow the tips above – you can reduce the bounce rate to the optimal range of 26 to 40 percent. To keep people on your website, you have to design a good user experience. Not only will it improve your SEO metrics, but your brand will look better too.
