Monday 14 September 2020, by John Peterson
Introduction
A high bounce rate is one of the most impactful aspects of low organic search traffic because it shows Google, as well as other search engines, that people don’t spend too much time with your content. There are numerous reasons why online users leave your website sooner than you would wish them to leave, many of them are easier to handle than one might think.
Let us go through the importance of intensive organic traffic before we figure out how to achieve it through a low bounce rate. The most important reason is that more than half of web traffic originates from search queries. In extent, search traffic help reducing the amount of money you need to invest in content marketing and other forms of digital promotion. Finally, a high level of search traffic allows you to have more conversions and thus gain even more revenue.
Now, let’s check how to lower your bounce rate to benefit your search traffic.
Content readability improvement
One of the main reasons people leave a web page is the quality of the presented content. If you’re not dedicating enough time and effort to format the content, improve its readability and substance, users will not spend much time trying to figure out the message behind an incomprehensive sum of text.
It’s best to use short paragraphs, add bullet points where possible, and insert a few images to break the monotony. Also, you can use the Hemingway app, Grammarly, or some other piece of software to check the readability score and make sure it’s on a satisfying level.
Avoid pop-up screens
Imagine searching for an important piece of information and just as you click on a promising-looking link the page loads and instead of the information you were hoping to receive there’s a large pop-up window asking you to sign up for a newsletter before you even had the chance to see if the website deserves your email address.
Although pop-up windows, such as the one we used in our above-mentioned hypothesis, help grow our pool of subscribers and promote conversion, it's best not to throw them into people's faces. Better use a more subtle approach by designing a small pop-up form that appears after a visitor scrolls down or, better yet, spends a few minutes on-page.
Boost page load speed
The internet is making things faster, easier, and more affordable than ever, which made us all a bit spoiled and raised the expectations bar. Users don’t want to wait forever to be able to interact with your content, which makes the page load speed a high-level priority. Anything more than 3 seconds of loading is surely going to chase users away from your domain, according to most recent reports on user experience.
To make your website faster, make sure your hosting service supplies enough resources for your needs, but also try to trim the size of your website. Use high-compression images, delete inactive plugins, remove unnecessary content from your server space.
Manage your backlinks
When making a statement, try to substantiate your claims with at least one valuable argument and a link to the source of information. Even better, try and insert links to related articles you already published on your website because this is a direct path to a lower bounce rate.
However, it’s of utmost importance to check the existing URLs and remove those that lead to deleted pages because the error 404 message is one of the most notable causes for a high bounce rate.
Website design
User experience is one of the main aspects of every successful business model, encompassing a wide range of activities and services on your side. Your website layout, color scheme, and numerous other design features have a direct influence on user experience. If visitors can't browse through your presentation seamlessly, they'll likely give up quickly and move on to the place where things are easy to find and use.
Eliminate distractions, and make sure to utilize cookies to deliver content that holds value for the person that reaches your page. It’s also important to provide assistance in form of a live chat feature, so people can have someone they could ask for help or additional information.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization includes a series of tools and techniques that you can use to improve your organic search traffic. The bounce rate is just one of the aspects you need to maintain if you’re hoping to achieve a high-ranking position in search results and get more traffic. These few pieces of advice should help you improve your stats without too much hustle and keep people engaged with your website longer.
