How to Design your Website to Reduce the Bounce Rate
A website’s bounce rate is one of the most important and underappreciated elements of SEO, one that could dictate how Google sees the website and how high in the rankings it is placed. Sites like LeoVegas Casino in India spend vast sums of money to nail this aspect, but what do you do when that sort of budget is out of reach?
How to Improve Your Bounce Rate
Google defines a “bounce” as a single-page website session, which means a user visits your site and leaves before clicking any internal links. The more of these sessions that occur, the higher your bounce rate will be and the more your site will be affected.
Here are a few simple ways to improve your bounce rate:
- Encourage Internal Clicks
Internal linking is essential for any website as it’s a key SEO metric. However, if those links are randomly placed on any relevant keywords, you’re not doing enough to improve your bounce rate.
Savvy internet users don’t simply click a link because it’s there. If anything, they’re learned to avoid links like this. To make them click, you need to give them anincentive.
Encourage them to visit links for more information on specific topics and to learn more about similar topics. This way, you create a Wikipedia-like loop, whereby users keep clicking and clicking, delving deeper into a rabbit hole.
- Be Visual but Simple
If your website content is just a wall of text, users will disappear as soon as it loads. No one wants bland and boring; no one wants black and white. Add some colour, some block paragraphs, bold, italics—anything that livens things up a little.
However, don’t go overboard, because a site that is loaded with visual assets is just as much of a turnoff, especially if those assets get in the way of text or produce slow loading times.
- Simplify Navigation
Websites are getting more and more complicated and technical, but old school simplicity still works. Simple navigation features give the user clear options, while additions like search bars allow them to find what they’re looking for in a few seconds.
Internet users are impatient and won’t stick with a website if it takes them several seconds to find what they’re looking for. By laying everything on a plate for them, you’ll keep frustrations to a minimum and encourage them to use your website.
- Entice Them
Clickbait headlines, free tests, and mobile games may seem a little dated at this point, and they probably won’t do much for your engagement. However, they will improve your bounce rate, because they’ll encourage users to click links, visit different parts of the site, and not simply leave when they’ve read what they came to read.
- Careful Placement
Finally, and most importantly, if your traffic is coming from a single Google result, you need to optimize that page. If users find a specific article looking for a single keyword, they may leave as soon as they have the info they need. So, optimize it, place additional content nearby, and give them a reason to click, such as a promise of additional information. Additionally focus on SEO techniques to get good ranking in search engines. There are lots of techniques to improve site ranking like on page SEo, off page SEO and backlinking etc.
