Honestly, I couldn’t have written a more thorough and better post than the one found on Hellbound Bloggers where the author lists 30 tips to reduce your blogs bounce rate. I will encourage all of my readers to go visit Hellbound Bloggers and read the article as there are many items that will help you tune your blog and blogging style so you can keep visitors on your site as long as possible.
Some of my favorites on the list are:
The YARPP WordPress plug-in which lists related posts in your site at the bottom of your articles. This does a better match than the default WordPress functionality.
Internal Linking, this can be done with plug-ins and I did try it that way once, but had to turn it off since it was indiscriminate on which posts it applied the link building keywords (can’t do it for paid articles). I now do it manually but do not do internal link building nearly as often as I should. Extreme John is probably one of the best I have seen at building internal links and every one of his articles has a ton of links that point to other articles in his site. They stand out cleanly as well, I imagine he must have a really low bounce rate.
Write content that is at least 200 words in length, if you just write 25-50 word posts they can be read in under a minute and if you don’t have enough to “grab” your readers attention to focus them elsewhere, they will likely bounce from your site.
Also note that advertising networks like Entrecard, Adgitize and CMF Ads (yes I use both CMF Ads and Entrecard) contribute to a high bounce rate, this is because people “drop” to get the credit and the cents (spikes) and move on to the next site. If you want to improve your bounce rate it is recommended you don’t use these services, as they definitely cause your bounce rate to skyrocket.
I actually have a pretty high bounce rate on DragonBlogger.com and it was in the 90% when I first started blogging and relied heavily on Entrecard for my traffic, now that 73% of my visits are from search engines my bounce rate is a little lower, but still has a very high average. I need to implement more polls and engaging questions and solicit more feedback from readers. (Also didn’t help that I put CMF Ads on recently)
For the rest of the list I encourage you to visit the article on Hellbound Bloggers and pay attention to the “clean layout” and other suggestions.
-Dragon Blogger
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Tags: analytics sculpting for your blog, blog bounce rate, blogging tips. wordpress tips, bounce rate on blogs, google analytics bounce rate, high blog bounce rate, how important is bounce rate, lower blog bounce rate, reduce blog bounce rate, SEO Sculpting, SEO tips, tips to reduce your blog bounce rate
February 10th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Heading over there to check out the tips! My entertainment blog at Just Press Play experiences a high bounce rate from google images (since i don’t use EC, adgi or CMF). So I definitely need some pointers.
Shemah´s last blog ..Letters To Juliet (2010) Movie Trailer Starring Amanda Seyfried, Vanessa Redgrave, Gael Garcia Bernal
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February 10th, 2010 at 7:51 am
I”m fascinated with bounce rates. Sounds like strange foreign language to me. Okay, I will check out your recommended post. Just hope it doesn’t hurt my brain too much. LOL
jan geronimo´s last blog ..When a Question Is the Answer
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February 10th, 2010 at 8:13 am
Just got back from reading the article, very interesting, I think I follow the majority of the points, my bounce rate has improved since my blogging has improved and tweaking my blog to speed it up has also helped.
BlazingMinds´s last blog ..Project 365 – Photo A Day #40: Todays Weather
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February 10th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Thanks for sharing my article here buddy!
S.Pradeep Kumar´s last blog ..15+ Tips To Optimize Images For Search Engines
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February 10th, 2010 at 9:48 am
No problem, it was a great article.
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February 10th, 2010 at 9:00 am
I’ve had some good/bad experiences with Entrecard, high bounce rate was one of the reasons why I dropped them early last year. Still, you deserve a pat at the back for bringing down the bounce rate. ^^ Pradeep has some good points to follow, can be a guideline for us. Appreciate you share the results and motivate us to do something about it.
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
Ching Ya´s last blog ..6 Status Updates Scheduler for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
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February 10th, 2010 at 9:32 am
Great tips as always bro. I will say that within a couple of days of dropping EntreCard my Bounce rate reduced dramatically. Im off that.
Extreme John´s last blog ..A Day in the Life of.. Episode 1 [video]
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February 10th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Akismet spammed your comment again, had to dig it out of the spam bucket, in 1 day I had 100 spam emails had to go 3 pages back to find your comment.
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February 10th, 2010 at 9:36 am
These are great tips. I use Linkwithin to display related posts at the end of my posts and the response is truly encouraging.
People will hang out and click from link to link when we make it easy for them to find other posts they might be interested in.
Kiesha @ Highly Favored´s last blog ..We are God’s masterpiece
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February 10th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Hey Justin, thanks for bringing up this topic. I’m curious about something, why are you sticking with EntreCard anyway? Are they bringing you any value at all?
This question came up in the Blog Engage User Forum and on Shirley’s Zone blog and I’m still not sure if I should try it or not. Some say they get a lot of traffic, but I don’t think bounce rate was a consideration.
I have a suggestion for you too. I love watching your videos, and I’m looking at the featured one you have on the sidebar now, but I have no idea what the topic/title is. I would certainly watch it if it was one that I’d never seen before, but I can’t tell from here. How often do you rotate them?
Well thanks for the post and I’m looking forward to a new video from you so let me know when it’s ready!
I’m going to check out the other post now (after I vote and RT you).
@Ileane
ileane´s last blog ..Some Serious Blog Engagement
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February 10th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Entrecard brings about 100 visits per month to my site, I am going to be dropping it in the near future. It helps people who do lots of drops, but requires to much effort anything that requires you to do “dropping” to get a drop in return is not efficient. About my featured video, I often rotate 1x per month, no set schedule. It should show the video title just by loading my home page, doesn’t it say the name of the video? It does for me. I don’t do video demo’s as often as I would like, hard to find the time.
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February 10th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Bounce rate has been bugging me so I am interested in learning more. Thanks for the tip.
Ralph´s last blog ..Change you can believe in
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February 10th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
The video title is showing up on the video, but it wasn’t earlier. I don’t think I watched this one before, so I’m off to check it out. Thank you.
ileane´s last blog ..Some Serious Blog Engagement
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February 10th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Thanks for sharing. The featured video on sidebar is very useful
Tek3D´s last blog ..Augmented Reality: This is Our Future
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February 10th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Thank you, I plan on doing as many featured video’s as possible.
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February 10th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
I guess the blogs naturally have higher bounce rate compared to the sites. I have only around 40% bounce rate for my psExam site but almost cent percent for my blog ictTrends. Will it matter much if the blog has higher bounce rate when all blogs do have higher?
Suresh Khanal´s last blog ..The First Step of Blogging – How to Start?
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February 10th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Bounce rate can tell you that readers aren’t reading your articles or very many of them, if you write really short posts like 50 words or so, you can have a high bounce rate and still have your content read, but if you average 200-400 words per article and have a high bounce rate you know that majority of visitors are skimming your title or first paragraph and moving on.
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February 11th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
le
mk akan´s last blog ..HOW THE BIGGEST PROBLEM ON THE INTERNET CAN MAKE YOU RICH
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February 11th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
3 Lessons. use deep linking,link within plugin and write short enough posts.
question..is there a figure for a good bounce rate ?
mk akan´s last blog ..HOW THE BIGGEST PROBLEM ON THE INTERNET CAN MAKE YOU RICH
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February 11th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
The lower the better, the lower means people are staying on your site and reading your articles. I imagine a bounce rate around 40-50% would be good, because you want some people to follow your links and ads so this would increase bounce rate. Too low and people aren’t clicking on your outbound links enough perhaps. I don’t really know what is the ideal target though, would have to research more.
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February 12th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
I am not so much bothered by a bounce rate in the 70′s, although as you mention, it would be difficult to know what the ideal might be.
I am trying to do more internal linking as well and hope that might help decrease my bounce rate. I will be going to check out those 30 tips now.
Kidgas´s last blog ..Blogging Part-Time
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February 12th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Its too early for me to use YAARP as I dont have that many blog posts (like 25) but I can see how that will help reduce the bounce rate
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February 24th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
@Dragon Blogger: The related post thingy still ain’t reducing my bounce rate at all so I’m trying my hands @ internal linking (without a plug-in of course). Hopefully it will give good results and reduce my bounce rate to below 55%. It’s currently @ 64% for this month.
P.S: I see you complaining about having to dig through tons of spam comments to get Extreme John’s comment. You might want to try Wp Spam Free. It works wonders for me
Udegbunam Chukwudi@Make Money Online Nigeria´s last blog ..Beware Of MMO Blog Setup Services Like This One!
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February 24th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Do you use WP-SPAMFree instead of Akismet or with it? Also I had to dig your comment out of my spam
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February 24th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
I use the both of them and the amount of spam awaiting moderation is now easy to sift through in less than 2 – 3 minutes.
You can check out my review of the plug-in for the settings I’m currently using on my blog.
Some legitimate comments still do land in the spam folder but then they are easily detected as spam is less and you don’t have to wade through tons of them
Udegbunam Chukwudi from Make Money Online Nigeria´s last blog ..Wp-Spam Free Works Just Fine @ StrictlyOnlineBiz
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February 24th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Thanks, really good article. I will install wp-spamfree and test it myself.
April 1st, 2010 at 9:35 pm
I’ve never checked the bounce rate on my blog, I just headed over to Hellboundbloggers to read on the blog post. I gotta check the bound rate for my blog when I get home later, it’s good to reduce it and improve our blog.
I used to follow some little tricks to make my blog sticky, such as related post at the end of every single post, deep linking and etc. I believe that it’s something similar to reducing bound rate, right?
Regards,
Lee
Lee Ka Hoong@Make Money Online´s last blog ..How To Provide Value To Your Blog
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April 1st, 2010 at 9:45 pm
I am trying to do deep linking, something I haven’t been really adept at. I tried using plug-ins but they don’t do a great job and can’t disable them for sponsored posts which don’t allow other links in them.
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