We all wish people to stay longer in our webpages, after all
a writer write so that his or her work is read. But many web pages suffer a
high bounce rate. By bounce rate I mean the rate (average of duration of stay
in the blog or site) at which the people navigate away from the blog or
website. This could be executed by the user by simply hitting the back button
or closing the web browser all together. And no website owner wants this to
happen and obviously it is detrimental if you are running an online business.
The cause of this high bounce rate is multifactorial. In today’s tutorial we’ll
be looking at 5 ways to decrease this nasty bounce rate. Yes, this are basic
SEO tricks but are very useful in making people stay longer in webpages if
applied correctly.
5 tips to make people stay longer in your site
So, here is the list of the 5 ways to make people stay
longer in your website. This tips worked for me and I believe it will work for
you too.
Site loading speed: Ask yourself this question. How long are
you willing to wait for a page to load? Certainly, not much I guess. This is
the case with most of the users. If the page don’t load within seconds, they
are likely to hit the back button or close the page. This usually occurs with the usage of complex template for the webpage as well as improper formatting. To avoid this
one should choose a simple template that loads within seconds. Also one can opt
for “read more” options and resort to the using of few essential widgets if one wants.
One should also show only a few numbers of posts in the home page. A webpage
with 5 posts in the home page will definitely load faster than the one with 30
in the main page.
Quality Content: The phrase “Content is King” is one which
is definitely in the minds of every blogger. Your site should provide good
amount of information that the people visiting it is seeking. The posts should
be easily readable and understandable. Even if you hold a PhD in English
literature, using of "erudite vernacular" should be avoided as the consequence is
negative. And also most people may not hold such a degree like yours, so if
your words do not make sense to them, no one can bind them to stay in your site.
The best is to use plain simple language. I am not a professor in literature
but still I would like to mention that the writing should be absorbing and
interesting. Such that even if you write humongous posts, it should be carved
in such a way that people don’t lose interest in the midway. Obviously,
grammatical mistakes should be avoided, as there is a natural propensity of people to
judge writers by their writing. Nonsensical phrases my drive away the readers
and believe me they won’t ever come to read anything in your blog.
Relevant Content: You must make proper use of the keywords
that you are targeting. After you have selected a keyword for targeting, make
sure that your post revolves around that topic. Many a time it happens that
organic traffic reaching your site through the search engines finds the topic
to be irrelevant to the term they searched for. This compels the user to leave
your page and thus a higher bounce rate. To avoid this before, writing or
posting make sure you have valuable information to share regarding the targeted
phrase. Also, keyword stuffing may be the cause of this, so that practice
should be strictly avoided.
Suggested Articles: What after someone is done with reading
your article completely? How to make the person to stay longer? This is where
role of the link to suggested posts comes to play. If you group link to similar
links at the bottom of the article which are similar to that topic, there is
high chance for that person to read one more article and thus stay longer in
your page. You can find several widgets/plugins for blogger, wordpress or any
website that could put a link at the bottom of the current post. Also to grab
the attention you can put such links in between the post which are known as
internal links.
Avoid Pop-Up pages as far as possible. This is which I
personally find very irritating and I definitely hit the back button. So does
many. Who does like to be fired with a pop-up every now and then when someone
is actually looking for is some decent information. So, stop using scripts that
creates pop-up nuisance every few seconds, or it will definitely drive away the
viewer of your webpage.
Well, with this I conclude the 5 ways which I found to be
effective in making people stay longer in the webpage. Apart from this there
are many possible way to make people stay longer in your webpages or blogs, and
if you have anything to add or any brighter idea, then it is always welcomed to
be shared in the comment section.
