Decrease Bounce Rates Dramatically

For every website, blog, or rss feed out there, bounce rates are a key statistic that everyone should be looking at. If you have no idea what I'm talking about when i say bounce rate, it is the amount of people that come in and leave on the same page. For example if you have a post about a screaming squirrel and someone visits that page, then leaves directly after word it is a bounce. Now if that person were to visit another page on your site from the screaming squirrel page it would not be considered a bounce.

How do you decrease your bounce rate?

First things first, your site should look good. The first impression is always vital to any website or blog, if the reader is so turned off by the amount of flashing banners and ads popping up in their face that they want to cry in a corner, its a good bet that they will not click anything else on your site and leave immediately.

If you have an eye pleasing layout, the reader will stay longer and actually read what he or she came to your site in the first place for. This doesn't mean you have to go out and shell out $500 for a site design that has awesome graphics and color design principles handed down directly from the Guggenheim. A simple layout that presents the information in a concise and easy to obtain manner is best.

Secondly, add a photo to your post, and no Bea Arthur shots! Adding a bit of visual splash to a post is a great way to catch a readers eye. It is also a subliminal key to the brain to say "Hey, this post looks a bit more official, I should go read it." Our brains are so conditioned to seeing front page articles in newspapers with photos, that our initial response is to associate importance with a post that has a photo. So why not add a photo?

It doesn't necessarily have to be a photo that exactly fits the post, but it should be something fairly relevant if possible. One of my favorite places to grab some free stock photos is sxc.hu.

The next thing you should do is link your photo to another post in your blog or website. If you're going to draw attention to the photo you might as well get the most out of it that you can right?

Now lets say you've created a nice long article with a photo at the top of that post, and your reader has managed to wade through the entire post to the bottom, shouldn't you reward them with some more interesting tidbits and links? Try posting some other relevant links to other posts you've done recently. There are several plugins available for most of the major blog systems, or you can do it manually. I personally like to do it manually, and throw in a fun link as well, something that might entice the user after reading a really long post for example.

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