As an enterprising Australian SEO expert, you’ve no doubt come across the concept of ‘bounce rate’ in Google Analytics.
At first glance, you’d expect it to refer to a visitor clicking through to your site and immediately leaving. This definition makes intuitive sense, but is not the case. Bounce rate refers to visitors who visit your site and never leave the page they land on. In other words, they don’t explore the rest of your site.
In a way, the fact that visitors only visit one page on your site is positive. It suggests they found just what they were looking for. They entered a term in a search engine, clicked on a result and stayed on one page. Surely, that confirms you nailed Google’s prime criterion of relevance?
Apparently not. It seems Google likes to see visitors clicking around your site in search of more information.
So how do you make sure your visitor takes advantage of all your site has to offer?
Firstly, of course, you have to provide him with exactly what he’s looking for. Whether he’s arriving via a PPC ad, article link or a SERP, he must encounter exactly what you promised in your meta tags, article or adwords ad.
Next, you need to organise your content in a way that’s easy to read and navigate through. You want a headline that cajoles and intrigues, an enticing lead that draws him into your world, and then short paragraphs, bullet points, images, infographics and all the other devices that keep people engrossed in your copy.
After all, he’s not going to check out the rest of your site if he’s not enthralled by what he finds on the landing page.
Talking of which, you also need to build trust and credibility from the start by convincing your visitor he’s arrived at a quality destination. To help do this, make sure your design is tasteful and professional, and keep the banners and other ads to a minimum.
All the above takes time, but here’s a trick you can apply right away. Just add links to other posts on your site to the bottom of each post. If you use WordPress, you can avail yourself of some fine plug ins that do this automatically. Then after finishing reading a post, your reader will find thumbnails of other posts on your site, and a message like “Some other posts you may be interested in”. It’s a simple procedure and it works well.
So if you’re a Sydney SEO company get to work on the bounce now. It’ll probably help with rankings. But more importantly, you’ll be doing your utmost to give your visitor a great experience.
