How I Reduced My Bounce Rates To 64%

byMGaspary

1K followers

Updated 5 years ago

While I was looking at my Google Analytics data, I realized that the bounce rates have gone lower than I had in the previous months. Especially when I joined the Wealthy Affiliate a few weeks ago. To me, it's a great thing.

In comparison to how it was, I had over 80% bounce rate, which is for a website, is a terrible figure to look at.

For every website, particularly to those who want to build an online business, the website owners have to strive to keep it low as much as 60%. In this month, with all my hard work, I achieved that.

Having 64% bounce rate is excellent versus 80% in the past. That means I have built something for my users to stay longer on the website without leaving the page until they're satisfied with the information they're looking for.

Before anything else, I'd like to introduce what does a bounce rate mean?

WHAT IS A BOUNCE RATE?

Basically, it's a percentage shown on your Google Analytics as you see above. It's a figure in which Google informs you how many users have gone off of your website without getting any takeaways or left without bothering scrolling to whatever you have for them. Hence, no engagement.

Preferably, a great and a good website has a 60% bounce rate as the maximum. If possible, you have to go down to as much as 40%. That's a significant achievement for the website owner. I'm working on that, by the way.

PREFERRED BOUNCE RATE

As I mentioned earlier, you have to make sure you reach 60% as the maximum percentage. In Google's eyes, it perceives that your users are satisfied with whatever content you wrote or offers you have for your target audience.

For you, as a website owner, you interpret it as "My users choose to stay on my website." To make it more understandable, let me put it this way.

If you were a shop owner, it's like you appreciate that your customers enter your shop and roam around to see your products and approach you at the cash register to buy something from you.

Indeed, it's an achievement.

You can't let your customers enter your shop and leave immediately. This is how Google measures the bounce rate. Do you understand that?

Thus, you have to create something - an improvement - to let them stay.

HOW TO REDUCE BOUNCE RATES?

I will tell you exactly what I did to reduce that. If it's not enticing enough, I'll let you know the outcomes first. Okay?

Hereunder are the positive results of applying the strategies on my website as per 7-day observation - NOTE: 7 Days!

1. The bounce rates reduced to as much as 62% (8.5% improvement).

2. The sessions increased to 66.2%.

3. Increased number of users to 80.3%.

4. Enhanced amount of subscriptions to 10 sign-ups approximate.

So, how did I do that?

Honestly, these are the outcomes of long-term hard work on the content. As I mentioned many times in my previous posts, Google loves high-quality content.

And I've been writing 30 posts with at least 2,000 words to as much as 5,000 words once or twice per week.

If you are willing to do the work, you can follow my suggestions:

1. Improve site layout.

I invested in improving the appearance of my website to make it look more professional. I used Studio Press Themes to achieve the look I wanted. Also, I used Design Palette Pro to boost the layout.

Your users want simple font style and sizes as well as a clean and professional layout. So, choose your website theme carefully and adequately. Invest in that.

2. Become a fan of killer blog posts.

There are many of you here asked me how I did all of these things. I simply told them I've been posting killer blog posts for quite some time now.

They asked me how often do I post them. I said I've been posting once or twice per week depending on how hectic my schedule is.

You know, I'm also writing for someone else's website (a full-time content writer), writing my own novels (actively on Wattpad), and doing some household chores, too. It's a lot of work on my part.

But I didn't use this as an excuse.

Needless to say, posting killer blog posts, though they take so much time, gives me almost a 100% organic traffic. In fact, I've been relying on it aside from Pinterest, one of my favorite traffic source + my #1 recommended writing tool to keep my writing as flawless as possible.

Read more here.

3. Clarity of your content.

This is concerning the previous point. Aside from boosting your website content to its maximum level, you have to consider the flow of your writing. Make it as personal as possible. Your readers love to see your vulnerability.

If you have read my previous post about writing 2,000-word blog posts, I recommended writing an outline. That's for beginners.

If you haven't tried to write that much, I suggest you do that. It would be initially a bit tough, but you'll get used to it later on.

Keep in mind the route:

Problem >> Solutions >> Recap + Offer

That's how it works in content marketing, my friend. If you want to bolster your writing, you can see 85 writing tools you can try.

Read more here.

4. Add apt opt-ins and other plugins to stop your users from leaving.

What I do here is to add opt-ins (images containing my offer) from the beginning, middle, and end of the post. Aside from that, there are some of my posts with Click to Tweet plug in the middle of the post.

Whatever it is, you have to do something to keep them from leaving. One of the Wealthy Affiliate members suggested placing videos.

Yes, that also works.

Another thing is to add Related Articles. Lots of strategies.

Don't be scared of doing this. Just do it and experiment. Study how your users behave. Use Google Analytics for that. You can see with the Behavior option. See the screenshot below.

CONCLUSION

Why do you have to do this?

At this point, I could see your eyes rolling at me.

I know you're telling me just to stop this BS because you're so tired from building this. I know you want to focus on growing your website and make it run.

Yes, I'm aware of how tiresome and difficult it is to build a website. But, there's a but, I am doing this to encourage you to create a platform that thrives in the long run.

You know what, I spent months of putting everything into place. I bought my domain in November 2018.

Since then, I have been writing and writing and writing. I put my soul into my writing and promoting it on various social media accounts, too. It's hellish.

I would be lying if say I never had my downs as you right now. You can read my account here.

But what happened?

Having 62% bounce rate within 7 days won't be possible if I didn't do the work.

It'd be impossible to impress people with my professional-looking website.

On top of that, I wouldn't be able to achieve so much if I didn't do what I have to do as a content marketer.

Thus, it's imperative to study your target market, specifically the bounce rates. Google provides you the information. All you have to do is to do something to reduce it.

You can follow my suggestions or not. It's all up to you. I showed you what I did. It's up to you to replicate that or ignore it.

If you want to get serious with this, you can send me a message to learn more about it. :)