How to Reduce Bounce Rate: 12 Steps to Save Your SEO

Bounce rate hurts your search engine rankings, organic traffic, and conversion. Now check your bounce rate on Google Analytics.

If it’s above 70%, it’s definitely in the red and needs immediate attention.

And even if you don’t, knowing how to lower your bounce rate can be a big step in the SEO game.

1. Offer visitors what they are looking for

You can’t expect people to linger on your website if you’re not providing them with real value.

And you only bring “value” if you recognize their weak point and bring them the right solution.

So when you create content, don’t just be a writer or content creator. Be a friend who has a one-on-one conversation with the visitor.

You understand their problems, and you sincerely want to help them by offering them the most relevant and appropriate solution.

Remember that you need to understand their intent when producing content. That is to say:

“How to cure the flu” – if that’s their problem…

“Go to the doctor” is a solution, and that’s what they should do.

However, that’s not necessarily the solution they’re looking for?

They would have gone to the doctor if they had wanted to. If not for the incredible “go to the doctor” advice, they seek do-it-yourself, at-home treatment. This is their intention. And that’s what you need to recognize when creating content.

Create content around “what readers want” and NOT around what you want readers to want. Understand audience intent. And then customize the solution to their unique problems.

2. Say goodbye to “clickbait“ titles and descriptions

This is cliché advice, of course! But it’s surprising how many copywriters and bloggers do it anyway.

While the article has enough background and resources (and gets decent traffic through social media), I learned two things:

• It hurts the brand.
• It doesn’t work, at least not with the severe audience I’m aiming for.

If you are trying to provide visitors with what they are looking for, as mentioned in point 1, there is no need to write clickbait titles and descriptions

because you rely on the truth.

If this post is how to reduce bounce rate, when you post misleading titles and descriptions, it

attracts the audience that you are not necessarily targeting. Thus, they will leave because they will not receive the actual value.

Disappointing visitors because they didn’t get what they were looking for. So why would they stick around? They’ll leave, of course.

Attract a “relevant” audience.

3. Website loading speed

We already know how important website speed is for SEO.

A one-second delay in page load time results in an 11% loss of page views.

As for bounce rate, it’s not hard to guess how loading speed affects this metric.

When your website is slow, it provides a bad user experience.

So, no matter how good your content is, the person will stop engaging with your site as soon as they find their solution.

Industry competition also plays an important role.

When you have too many competitors, visitors have many alternatives.

So, if your website is loading very slowly, visitors won’t hesitate to hit the “back” button and go to your competitor’s site.

Now, how fast is your website right now?

Check it out on GTmetrix.

Try to have a loading speed of fewer than 3 seconds.

If it’s longer than 3 seconds, take it seriously and do whatever it takes to improve its speed.

4. Easily readable content

It is another factor I’ve seen in the SEO and content marketing sphere.

If your fonts aren’t readable — or aren’t visually appealing enough to read — no one will take the time to read them.

Imagine the texts you are reading right now. Imagine if they were smaller and you had to squint or more extensive and required quick eye movement: it wouldn’t be so pleasant, would it? Your font (style, family, size) must be optimized.

If you go through any other article, you will notice a friendly format where there is:

• Enough space between lines
• Paragraphs are no longer than 2 or 3 lines
• Lots of chips
• appropriate titles and subtitles.

All of these, and more, make content easier, more interesting and engaging to read compared to large blocks of text that are often overwhelming.

5. Provide visible, easy-to-access navigation

What will visitors do if they hit a dead end on the website? Of course, he will leave!

If they find the content engaging and want to explore your website but don’t see how they’ll leave.

Your navigation bar is essential to be visible and easy to access.

Place a navigation menu bar at the top of the page. And have one at the very bottom.

If you stick it somewhere on the screen (like you see on this blog, both on desktop and mobile), it will be much more noticeable.

This will help visitors move between pages more conveniently and quickly.

Now, in the navigation, provide enough suitable options.

Have “About” and “Contact.” If you offer a product or service, include that in the menu.

Remember that once on a company’s home page.

• 86% of visitors like to see information about the company’s products/services.
• 64% of visitors want to see company contact information.
• 52% of visitors want to see “about us”

When reaching a company’s website through a referral site, 50% of visitors use the navigation menu to navigate.

Also, make sure your brand logo or brand name at the top of the site is clickable and links to the homepage.

6. Improve your internal linking game

In this article, I am linking to several of my other articles on concept marketing (this blog).

I do this through relevant anchor texts or by mentioning “Recommended reading.”

This has a double advantage.

For one thing, it helps spread the link juice across different pages and the entire blog. This is great SEO practice. Remember, keep the DoFollow link.

Second, I provide readers with enough options and resources to continue browsing the marketing concept and consuming its content.

It brings them more value, keeps them engaged, and gives them a good user experience.

All of this ends up helping you reduce your website’s bounce rate.

So if you are not yet linking other internal pages in your content, start today.

Link content that is relevant to the current page visitors is on.

This last point is more related to this post on “how to reduce bounce rate” than the first.

Do you understand?

Internal link building becomes more accessible and seamless when you have more content on your blog.

7. Include strong calls to action (CTAs)

Other times, once visitors get the solution from that landing page, they don’t want to stick around any longer.

Either way, they leave the website.

That’s why it’s essential to provide them with a specific call to action.

So, at the end of your content, provide visitors with a clear and well-defined call-to-action button.

Tell them what to do – and what they’ll get for doing it.

Speaking of CTA, make it as a button (no image or text)…and make it very personalized.

Like this from Unbounce.

Key takeaways:

• Have a clear CTA button.
• Make your call to action very personalized.

8. Make the website (more) mobile-friendly

Yes, it’s a cliché you probably hear everywhere. But it is incredibly essential – more than ever today because up to 70% of web traffic is on a mobile device.

Your website should be optimized effectively for mobile users. This is important for search engine rankings and conversion. And very, very important for a good user experience.

Having a responsive design is, of course, the first step.

Next, you need to optimize your navigation and fonts to fit better on smaller screens.

Make sure there is enough space between clickable objects and that they are the correct size.

Properly format content to make it aesthetically appealing and appealing to consume on small devices.

Images should respond correctly to the screen size and fit the right way. Scrolling should be smooth.

You can do many to optimize your website for mobile.

Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes. What type of website would give you the best user experience on mobile devices?

Then go ahead and create a similar UX-optimized website.

Key takeaways:

• Make sure the website design is responsive.
• Focus on font readability, navigation, content formatting, image responsiveness, and scrolling smoothness.

9. Reduce technical errors

Imagine landing on a web page and being greeted with a 301 or 302 status code. Chances are you’ll leave.

There could be a lot of such technical errors on your website that can push visitors away.

For example, the contact form does not work. The navigation bar overlaps the block of texts. The popup does not move or disappear from the screen, a sticky element in the sidebar makes scrolling impossible, and some scripts do not charge properly.

All of these technical errors lead to poor ergonomics. And when the person does not like their experience on the website, they leave it.

And it will even hurt your brand.

He may never come back to your website because of his previous bad experience.

So keep an eye out for these technical errors, the number of which increases if your site is larger and more sophisticated.

Correct them immediately as soon as you spot them.

What you must remember :

• Audit your website regularly to spot technical errors.
• Look especially for broken links.

10. Check the quality of your content

YOU think you are posting quality content.

But what if, in reality, the content is not as good as you think? What if it was mediocre and priceless?

When visitors consume your content that is not of the best quality, they will make up their minds accordingly.

First, they won’t want to engage with the content.

Second, they won’t want to come back to your website.

Third, even if you add a lot of value to other blog posts, that one piece of poor-quality content will hurt you in the game. Remember, one rotten fish can ruin the whole pond.

So check the content of your website.

Prioritize essential pages like “About” and “Contact.”

Then move on to content that gets the most traffic/attention. Review them and make corrections.

Also, check your stats and find the web pages with the highest bounce rate and exit rate.

Review the content of these pages and make appropriate changes if necessary.

Remember that there is no alternative to good quality content. It may not immediately pay off, but it will eventually help if you create a content asset on your website.

Recommended reading: How to create content quickly (without compromising its quality)?

Key takeaways:

• Prioritize content on important pages, like “About,” “Contact,”and “”
• Use analytics to find web pages with the highest bounce and exit rates. Focus on these pages.

11. Examine the quality of website traffic

This blog post is dedicated to how to reduce bounce rates.

Imagine I optimize it with irrelevant keywords, like “what is SEO,” “SEO checklist,” or even “what is bounce rate,” and that I get organic traffic from these keywords…

These visitors won’t find the exact content they’re looking for here.

The quality of such traffic is irrelevant and untargeted. And this has the effect of increasing your bounce rate.

There are many ways to check traffic quality.

The easiest way is to manually check the content (including meta tags and URL) of the web page in question and see if it is optimized with irrelevant keywords.

If you spot a lack of relevance, correct it.

Google Search Console is a more concrete way to look at traffic quality.

Log in to your Google Search Console and click on the “Performance” tab on the left side of the navigation.

12. Give visitors more than they ask for

The value. Value. The value.

Yes, it’s a cliché, but it’s also fundamental and straightforward.

If you offer more value to readers than they asked for – it’s safe to assume that they won’t leave your website without paying attention to it first.

And even if they do, they will come back.

Take this article, for example.

If you find it interesting, you will engage with this blog.

Perhaps you will click on the internal links and go to another web page. Maybe you will give me your email address at the bottom of the page.

Or, at the very least, you’ll bookmark this post because it now spans a long time.

Understand that there is NO alternative to this.

When you provide value to your audience, the rewards will follow eventually, if not immediately.

So, pack each of your articles with rich resources.

For example, if you write about “A Complete Guide to Weight Loss on a Vegan Diet,” also provide a PDF diet chart with that post. MORE VALUE.

If you write about “off-page SEO techniques,” also include the link to “on-page SEO techniques in your article.” MORE VALUE.

Include internal links, guides, calculators, quizzes, etc., in your articles.

If visitors find them useful, we have enough reason to believe that they will stick around and engage with your content and your website for longer.

Bottom line

With every piece of content on your website, focus on delivering high value to your audience.

Internal links, guides, exclusive reports, quizzes, calculators, etc. – all of these can be used to add more value to your blog posts.