How To Reduce Bounce Rate

SEO / 05 Oct 2022

You’ve worked hard to get visitors onto your website, so you’d feel pretty foolish if they left straight away. 

Yet that’s precisely what a bounce rate is. For most sites, the number is usually high – so how exactly can you reduce it?

You can make some technical tweaks to improve bounce rate, but quality copy that converts is key to keeping visitors on your website. 

In this blog, we’ll give you some top tips on how to reduce bounce rate, diving deeper into how to improve bounce rate and how to keep visitors engaged with expert content writing.

What is a Bounce Rate?

If you want the lowdown on exactly what bounce rate is and why it’s important, check out our previous blog. In the meantime though, here is a quick summary: bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that landed on your website but left before going on any other pages.

There are many reasons why a user might bounce, from the content on the web page not meeting their expectations to technical aspects of the site leading to frustration.

Whatever the reason, keeping visitors on your website longer is crucial – engaged visitors will boost your conversion rate and find more value in your website. So how do you ensure your website is in ship shape to reduce bounce rate?

1. Check your loading speed

It’s not glamorous, but a fast loading speed is crucial when considering how to improve your bounce rate. Think about how annoying it is when a web page takes ages to load. Many visitors won’t stick around to see your great content if your website has a slow loading speed. In fact, most visitors expect a website to load within two seconds – so it pays to be speedy. 

Some simple ways to improve your loading speed include optimising your images, using a content delivery network, and investing in a high-quality web host.  

2. Match search intent

You can have the smoothest running website, but if you don’t provide a visitor with what they are searching for, they will go elsewhere. A primary method when considering how to improve your bounce rate is trying to match the search intent of your visitors. 

For example, if people are searching for “Italian restaurants in Birmingham”, you want to rank highly for what different visitors are searching for. They might be looking for reviews of restaurants; they might want restaurant opening times or want to see pictures of the restaurants and the food. Try to understand what your audience wants and develop a strategy accordingly.

There are a few other things you need to consider when matching your content to satisfy search intent:

Tailored keywords

Using catch-all keywords on a given topic might send a lot of traffic to your website, but it’s going to give you a high bounce rate. Ultimately, if your keywords are promising content that you’re not actually providing, visitors will feel disappointed and leave. 

One of the best ways to reduce your bounce rate is by conducting tailored research that incorporates long-tail keywords. This should be a key component of your SEO strategy, and is something that an agency like us can help you with. Drop us a line right here.

Competitor research

As well as keyword research, size up the competition. What pages are already ranking highly for your search terms? Make sure you’re covering the same type of content as your top five competitors, and try to improve on what they already offer. Otherwise, you’re going to lose traffic to them. 

Answer visitors’ questions

When it comes to long-form content, you want it to be comprehensive. Having a 3000-word pillar page or an extensive 2000-word blog on bodybuilding isn’t very practical if you don’t define what it is. 

It’s also worth trying to answer some of the most searched questions on a topic. Let’s stick with bodybuilding; you might want to answer some of the more in-depth questions like “what can bodybuilders eat?” or “is bodybuilding dangerous?”. The more visitors’ questions you answer, the more value you give them. 

3. Use effective internal links 

Repeat after me: Link your content. This is one of the most valuable ways to  improve bounce rate. 

Not to be confused with backlinking, internal linking is when you provide seamless links to other relevant pages on your own website. This not only encourages visitors to stay on your website for longer, it also demonstrates your value by subtly guiding them around your site and introducing them to other qualities or features about your business they may not have known about otherwise.

However, in the same way you want to avoid keyword stuffing, you also don’t want to clog up your content with too many internal links. You want your content to be easy to read which means finding the balance between so many links that they are distracting and so few links that the visitor is left looking for more information. Go for quality over quantity by only incorporating relevant links that will benefit the visitor’s experience. 

4. Have clear CTAs

A crucial way to get your copy to convert is using effective calls to action (CTAs). A CTA is often the final step of converting your reader into a customer, so it’s vital to have clear and persuasive CTAs wherever possible. 

Whether it’s a free E-book or a subscription to your newsletter, ensure that they are honest and clear about what the user is getting and that they are impossible to miss – transparency goes a long way in customer conversions. 

5. Use multimedia 

How your content looks is just as important as what it says. Spice up your content by adding a range of media like video, images, and infographics to make your content more engaging and keep the reader’s attention. 

Thoughtfully placed media can go a long way in keeping visitors tuned in, so use relevant and appropriate images that relate to your content to avoid confusing your readers. 

6. Hire a copywriting agency

When it comes down to it, excellent copy is the key to reducing your bounce rate; give your visitors value, and they’ll keep coming back for more. 

But creating top-quality content doesn’t happen overnight – that’s where a copywriting agency can help. At Beesting Digital, we can take the job of writing compelling copy off your plate. Book your discovery call today to find out more.