Tips to improve bounce rate?
 

Looking for tips to improve bounce rate on a blog. What's a good bounce rate to have?

One Tip: find a really really nice image/thumb to put at the top (find this through testing), and people will not only click on the image a lot but probably have a higher quality view of your site (first impression). Not a big tip but just something that comes to mind.

I was thinking maybe my ad buttons are too high on the page and too attractive, but that'd reduce income although it'd improve the bounce rate if they didn't find the ads so interesting.

When writing an adult post I will often link the pic to the more link. This way the surfer get to page 2 and I get a lower bounce rate then if I linked it to a FHG or the site itself...

After the more line they get 3 or 4 more pics all linked to the site itself... then more text calling to action...

You can NEVER have ads too high on a page, you are trying to make money not get someone off for free or circle jerk them around on trades or pages of your site. When someone visits your site and the first thing they do is click an ad those are your biggest money makers right there (regardless of conversions). Some ads that fit in with your layout will always be more appeasing than some obvious flashy ads that get barely any clicks and annoy people.

Edit: v rocks has a point about getting them to page 2 and lowering bounce rate, but honestly, bounce rate doesn't mean shit if you're trying to make money. You want to get visitors to your target (sponsor tour, or otherwise) as fast and in as least clicks as possible. If everyone visits your site and clicks the ads and your bounce rate is 90%, hallelujah!

Make them have to click into the posts. Show a small thumb and an excerpt. If you blow your load right on the main post they can skim quickly and your bounce rate will be higher. If they have to click around, it slows them down, lower bounce.

have good design for start, then add good thumbs-content on top to make them stay on page

Thats the trick. thats a bit of blind linking and might piss them off but it works..

Another thing is to use each post to link to similar posts. For instance. Big tits post. You might want to link to the girl in the post and other posts about her as well as other girls in the same niche but not particularly hitting big tits keyword. 3 links to other posts works well.

start split testing ;)

70% is what im at i dont know if thats good or not but avg site time is 1:30. my gimmick is lots of text/story in trip report format then also offer audioblogs and other offsite crap they have to click off into to delve deeper into your web

Good quality images
Get them clicking to read more
High quality text
Don't over do it with ads, and keep them to one side, don't interfere with the posts

I'm not sure what a good bounce rate for a blog is, it really depends on the set up. A lot of bloggers are trying to get that first click to go to the tour or the hosted gallery or whatever... others want to build a fan base, play the long game! Good luck.

Well, for comparison, a new / small (20 post) blog I'm working on is at 49% and 5:08 today

that's overall traffic (parked domains, 404's etc., 22% from SEs) and I think it sucks...

once I've SEO'd and using targeted traffic, I'm looking for ~20% and 10:00 min or better, with at least 40% (80% preferred) of traffic from search engines.

I'm halfway there, but it's that last bit that's hard :2 cents:

If your bounce rate is high it's because people are clicking your ads (good!) or leaving your site without clicking through to any other pages (bad).

If your ad revenue is low then people are leaving your site. You may be able to reduce this by making sure your text is as well written as it can possibly be, and that it is clear and easy to read (good size, good color, etc). Don't stuff your keywords with any irrelevant garbage. High quality images and simple navigation to your other pages will make your site more interesting and more click worthy.

Good luck!

I agree with Jakez I would leave the most eye catching ads where they are as they get the most clicks. If its relevant to your niche then I'm sure it would make you more sales.

Having well written and easy to read text does help a lot with bounce rate. You want your visitors to at least navigate to a second page. Put a nice quality image at the top of your blog can work wonders aswel.

I like to put related pictures directing to other posts on my blog so when they click on 1 post they may click the related links and would increase there time spent on your blog.

********** makes a good point. A high bounce rate could be a good or a bad thing, depending on your site. They could be just leaving your site if it sucks or rushing to the sponsor to check it out and possibly buy something. A low bounce rate might mean they aren't doing either...

I wouldn't worry too much about bounce rate. If your blog is a "real" blog in the sense that it has content that keeps readers coming back every day or two for years, a lot of people will hit your front page multiple times a day as part of their routine surf pattern. Every time they don't find something new is an instant bounce, but it's no loss to you (except a smidge of lost opportunity, you could have kept them if you had a new post up.)

You have to look at sponsor click through rate versus your bounce rate too. If you have very good ad clicks the high bounce rate might be a good thing depending on what you are after with your blog. I build many blogs almost like a FPA, I don't care much about BR on those since It's the click I'm after, those are made for the quick sponsor click-through. Some blogs I want low bounce and to keep the surfer as much as possible to build up a good base and increase the SE traffic.

At present our mainstream bounce rate is 23% on average and our adult sites average bounce rate is 46%, both mainstream and adult do well financially so not sure if bounce rate diference will be that much difference on dollars brought in as in the past we have had sites with round 60% bounce rate making good money.

Replace trampoline flooring with hardwood

As DWB also stated, put small thumbs with excerpts into the posts. I changed out one theme I had with this format to a theme where I was showing all of the post content on the front page, my bounce went from 32% up to 63%. When I changed back the bounce dropped back into the low 30s again. Of course having good blog content helps too.

Good reading here :)

Bounce rates...aka Abandonment Rates increase with page load times as well.

To learn more about this, check out: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/vel...bath-soap.html

agreed on this.

longer videos.

Good thread.
Bounce rate is important simply because of it's increased weight in the post-panda algo.
Not only that, but what if it's just the first step and Google continues to increase it's weight in future updates. From their standpoint, it would certainly make sense to do so as it's a fairly accurate indicator of quality. I think internal linking is crucial and have tried to get an internal link into at least 75%of my posts over the past month.

add video and build community.

This thread got me thinking and taking a deeper look at my bounce rate and so I'll share a tip with you this morning that helped me late last night. If you set up an exclude filter on the referrer spam you're getting (accessa.me / forex / unlimited hosting scams etc.) then you will enjoy an immediate reduction in your bounce rate.

You can easily identify other bots by their signature '0' time on site, 100% bounce.

Remove them from the equation and your average rate will quickly improve :winkwink:

Thanks for the tip!

Anyone have a general list of these?

i didn't pay much attention to br so this might sound dumb, but how does google determine your bounce rate if you don't use google analytics?

Well on our cam sites we have a bounce rate of 27% and average holding time of 00.09:52

For our blog sites the bounce rate is 60% with an average holding time of 00:01:30

Tubes is 70,49% with an average holding time of 00:01:38

Still working on improving these numbers