Should you get your knickers in a twist over bounce rate?

This is a guest post by Gordie Rogers.

I’ve noticed on Google Analytics that my blog’s bounce rate is averaging just over 50% for the past few months. Oh no!!! Shall I get the razor blade and start slashing away? Should I cry and gnash my teeth? Or should I be as calm as Lenin’s corpse and just lay back and do nothing?

What is bounce rate?

Definition: “A bounce occurs when a website visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry-standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur.” –Wikipedia Avinash Kaushik, a Google analytics specialist says "It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying." - Measure Effectiveness Of Your Web Pages | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik. I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with Avinash. Now, let me qualify that by saying that you can taken actions which will hopefully lower your bounce rate. However, I’ve also realized that some things you do to improve your blog, whether it be beneficial for your readers or for yourself, could potentially lead to an even higher bounce rate or at least keep it high.

3 Things You Can Do To Lower Your Bounce Rate.

1. Add three or more suggested posts at the bottom of each post.

I have decided to add three links to all posts on my site to try to get people read more on my blog. Being right at the end of the post, it should be easy for readers to click on one of those links to read another post.

2. Encourage people to leave comments.

At the end of most posts, encourage readers to leave a comment by often asking them a question. When someone submits a comment, the page refreshes and therefore their visit will not be counted as a bounce. I highly recommend “CommentLuv”. It shows the commenter’s latest blog post title from their blog. This rewards and encourages people to leave comments. Also, in this day and age, you don’t need captchas. These can be highly frustrating as the codes are not always legible. Get yourself a couple of decent anti-spam plugins and moderate the comments yourself.

3. Add a Popular Posts Plugin.

By having the ten most popular posts on your blog displayed on each page’s side bar, it should at least attract new visitors to click on one of those posts and stay on your blog reading.

5 Things you can do to improve your blog, but could also potentially lead to high bounce rates .

1. Make links clearer.

This has two sides. The internal links are links which go from one page on your website to another. By making these more visible, you’re helping reduce the possibility of a bounce. On the other hand, my outbound links are also now more visible, which may lead to my readers clicking on one of them and leaving my site. I made the links more visible on my blog by having a different color text for links as well as underlining them.

2. Make the share icons at the bottom of your posts more prominent.

You can give readers the choice to share your posts through Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, Del.icio.us, Technorati and Facebook, etc. Each person who has just arrived directly on your blog on your latest post and then shares it will unfortunately count as a bounce, but you should still be happy that they are sharing your posts which can potentially attract new readers to your blog.

3. Do more interviews and look for guest posts.

I’ve started to do interviews lately and get more guest posts. Naturally, these will have links back to the respective interviewee’s or guest blogger’s blog or selected posts. It’s a trade-off that you need to be willing to make for good content. It’s good blogging etiquette to reward guest-posters and interviewees by have their post link back to their own blog or site.

4. Add a Top Commenter Plugin.

By adding the top commenter plugin, which appears on every page on the side bar potentially can lead to bounces because the top five or ten commenters names appear with links back to their own blogs through the URL they provided when commenting. On the other hand some readers will be encouraged by the idea of having a prominent link in their name appearing on every page of your site and may leave more comments which in turn reduces bounce rate.

5. Have “Follow Me” icons for Twitter and Facebook on every page.

By getting people to follow me on Twitter and Facebook, you are increasing the risk of increasing bounce rate, while at the same time increasing chances that you can keep visitors updated on my latest posts and keep them coming back. Conclusion. Ironically, your most faithful readers are probably responsible for a large proportion of your bounce rate. Perhaps they’ve subscribed by email or to your RSS feed. Once they’re familiar with your blog and if they’re anything like me, they’ll just read your latest post. They’re familiar with most of your older posts or are just interested in your latest stuff. If they decide not to leave a comment, then they’re probably going to just read your latest post and then move onto another website, which means their visit will count as a bounce. This brings me to my argument that, until analytics software stops counting single page visits of all lengths as a bounce, I don’t think you should get your knickers in a twist over bounce rate. Remember, you could write a great post of considerable length. A regular visitor to your blog sees it in his RSS feed, comes to your blog, reads it in its entirety, enjoys it, learns something from it and then decides to Tweet it for you. Okay, you have a bounce, but you have to balance that up with the fact that you’re getting your post promoted to other potential new readers. You could remove all out-going links from your blog for a start, but then you’re reducing the value of your blog for your readers. Outbound links to other sites and resources are often appreciated by your readers. Perhaps Bart Simpson sums it up best when he said, “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”

Summary.

1. Bounce rate may be caused by your most faithful readers.

2. The more you encourage people to promote and share your posts, the higher the possibility of their visit being counted as a bounce.

3. It’s difficult to strike a happy balance between having your post promoted by your guests and bounce rate. I would say just try to get more new visitors to your site, because they’re more likely to explore your site.

4. You may have to be content that increased sharing of your posts can lead to higher bounce rates, which in turn has the benefit of more first-time visitors.

5. New visitors are probably the less likely to bounce but they may also not come back, while your faithful readers will keep coming back, but may be one of the main causes of your high bounce rates.

This is a guest post from Gordie Rogers from Personal Development X