First and foremost what the hell does bounce rate mean? Bounce rate refers to the number of people who visit your site and leave without viewing any other articles or pages you may have. Basically your bounce rate calculates the % of people who quickly see your blog and leave compared to the ones who actually stay and browse your blog. The lower your bounce rate is the better off you are. If you have a bounce rate above 50% I would suggest you work on some things to try and decrease your bounce rate. Here are some tips that may help you decrease your bounce rate. If you dont already use a statistical counter to monitor your bounce rate I would suggest using Google Analytics. One of the best methods to decrease your bounce rate is to offer suggestions on what to read to your visitors. One of the easiest ways to do is is by offering a “Related Postâ€.. “Most Commented Post†feature below your articles. If you are using Word Press you can use an easy to install plug-in called “Yet Another Related Postâ€. I have put this plug-in to work on this blog. Another option you can use is hyper linking your other articles within your new article. This is also a great way to bring new life to any old articles that may not have been seen by many of your visitors. Lastly I mentioned in another post about having new links open in new windows or tabs. This will decrease your bounce rate as visitors are not taken away from your blog/article to view a link you have mentioned in your post. You must also remember that if your not writing good quality content on your site.. most people are going to come.. read a few lines and leave.
Nice reminders! I think another cool tip would be format your posts to expandable posts. This way, visitors can have many choices to read especially if your post titles are intriguing. Entrecard members suffer a lot from bounce rate since most visitors are more focus to earn points by dropping their cards, but I am NOT convincing members to quit their membership. I think they just have to think of ways to minimize bounce rate. Just my 2 cents.
Yes.. I found that using entrecard increased bounce rate quite a bit. Visitors would simply drop a card and leave. Some people do swear by entrecard and say that have gotten great results though.
Personally I would stay away from entrecard. In my experience it has been nothing more than a fancy word for "TRAFFIC EXCHANGE" Your tips are great ways to get people to stay longer, I also like having a random post snippet somewhere on every page, or a recent post listed somewhere.
The same can be said about StumbleUpon in my opinion. Lots of short term traffic that just bounces away.
The one good thing about stumble upon and other social bookmarking sites is the fact that a few of them actually stay to read the article before they just leave. Unlike entrecard which is drop and go.
A few of them may stay and read... but with my experiences the % that bounce compared to the ones who just read is not worth it.
Woah, my site bounce rate is 90% and i already had related post link below my article. It seems that it is because the content.