At first, most people think it’s easy to get people to your site. While most WordPress experts believe it’s easy to get people to the site. But, it’s harder to keep visitors stay on your website. Most users visit your site and end up leaving without even seeing the other pages. When a visitor leaves without viewing more than one page, it increases your bounce rate. Unfortunately, it also decreases the number of page views per visit. In this blog, we will share a few essential tips & tricks with you to help keep visitors on your site, which increases page views & reduce bounce rate in WordPress.
But, before sharing the tips and tricks to increase your site’s page views and reduce its bounce rate, let’s look at how bounce rate affects and what a “good” bounce rate is.
What is the bounce rate?
Bounce rate indicates the percentage (%) of users who come to your site and “bounce” (leave the site) without continuing to other pages on the same site. A high bounce rate means you don’t have an enticing, well-organized landing page that could persuade a customer to stay on your site and visit other pages.
A visitor can bounce from your site’s page in many ways.
- Tapping on a link to a different website
- Closing the open window/tab,
- Typing a new URL
- Clicking the “Back” button to abandon the site
- Session timeout (caused by web hosting errors)
People leave websites, and it’s normal because that’s how users navigate the website. But, there are two types of bounce rates: Good or Bad.
A good bounce rate indicates that your visitors had a fantastic user experience and found the information they were looking for on your site. Conversely, a bad bounce rate means that your visitors found your website irrelevant and leave quickly.
Explaining A Good Bounce Rate
Good bounce rates will vary based on the type of page and the source of traffic.
As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate between 30-50 % is excellent.
Here are some general rules that you should consider when looking at your data:
- Over 80% is disappointing for everything.
- In the range of 70-80% is poor.
- Between 50 to 70% is higher than average
- Between 30 to 50% is excellent
- Under 20% is generally a tracking error
A bounce rate could be high due to some reasons. Fortunately, you can fix most of these reasons.
- Slow-loading website.
- Your visitors don’t find your website easy to navigate.
- Poor website design.
- No clear calls to action
Tips and tricks to increase your page views and reduce the bounce rate
Many ways can help you rack up more page views and reduce bounce rates in WordPress. If you are serious about boosting your page views, you should regularly check and test your website loading speed. 47% of customers expect a website to load within 2 seconds, so that’s what you should intend for. Use a WordPress speed performance plugin to speed up the loading time of your site. Also, check out this blog: HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR E-COMMERCE WEBSITE?
Go For Linking Your Content in WordPress
Internal links are those that connect from one page on your site to another.
Strategic internal linking is not only great for SEO but also establishes and improves your site structure. Setting up an internal linking strategy is one of the best ways to reduce bounce rate while boosting page views of your website. Internal links are relevant links that promote your existing content.
Other than this, internal linking helps:
- Your viewers can navigate your site easily
- Spreads link equity throughout websites
- Retains visitors on your site
- It allows Google to crawl your site
- And more
Best practices for internal linking in WordPress
- Have a great content marketing strategy
- Avoid overusing anchor text
- Ensure that image links have Alt attributes
- Avoid linking to top-level pages
- Use plugins for automatic internal linking
- Don’t insert too many links per page
- Insert relevant links
Open External Links in a New Tab
Linking out to other websites are the most important source of ranking power & also helps you build relationships with other website owners. This is a great practice to make your content more relevant & valuable. Linking your content to high-quality external resources can even become beneficial for SEO.
However, you must be very cautious with external links because it makes your potential users leave your site, significantly increasing the bounce rate.
The best way to keep your bounce rate in check is by making external links open in a new tab in WordPress. That way, when a visitor lands on your site and leaves by clicking an external link, it won’t be counted as a bounce.
Show Related Posts or Popular Posts
One of the main reasons the user leaves your blog after reading the post is because you don’t show them what to do next. By offering the user a list of “related posts” or “other popular posts,” you can ask them to visit another post on your site. It’s a good practice to encourage visitors to keep reading. There are many ways to add related articles to your blog. You can use a plugin with an advanced algorithm that selects the associated post; this lets you quickly add popular posts to WordPress and control the layouts.
Improve Readability
Long paragraphs tend to scare visitors.
To reduce your bounce rate and improve your page views, split your content into smaller paragraphs & favor formatting that makes it easier to read quickly.
You can add:
- Titles & subtitles
- Smart lists
- Include Images
- Graphics
- And much more.
Increase The Relevance Of The Landing Page
If your landing page does not contain the information expected by your visitor, then it is not surprising that the latter leaves.
Start by reworking the keywords; maybe you’re not optimizing the right ones?
The idea is to identify keywords that are not getting you qualified visits and replace them with more relevant terms related to your business.
Then add a call-to-action to encourage your visitor to learn more or to contact you.
Avoid Web Design Mistakes
The design of your page plays a crucial role in your bounce rate. But, first, you must convey a professional and reassuring image.
Start by taking care of the navigation. It should be intuitive & allow your visitors to identify the essential pages of your site.
Also, avoid redirecting your visitors away from your site if you share resources. Instead, make the link open in a new tab so your user can quickly come back to your page.
Web design also involves the choice of colors. Choose a complementary color palette consistent with your logo. By adopting the above measures, you will send a positive signal to Google, a boon to boost your SEO.
Place Ads Strategically
Intrusive advertisements disturb internet users because, very often, they prevent them from viewing the content. This does not mean, however, that you should ban advertisements.
Instead, try to find a strategic place for them, a place where they will be visible without hindering reading. It could be on the side, for example, or as an insert between paragraphs of your text.
If you prefer to opt for a pop-up, be careful that it does not take up the entire screen. A smooth appearance at the bottom edge of your page is more appreciated, thereby decreasing the bounce rate & boosting page views.
Wrap Up
No matter what your online business goals are, getting visitors to your site is a vital driver of overall business success & growth. As we know, it is crucial to bring significant traffic to your online doorstep to stand out in the web crowd. So, the tips we have discussed above will be helpful for you to grab a moderate no. of page views to your website and defeat the bounce rate.
In addition to this, you can provide them a follow-up (such as push notification or creating an email newsletter) when they leave your website. It will also help in enhancing the overall performance of your website.
Looking for expert help to boost your website’s page views and reduces bounce rate in WordPress? Get in touch with us! Our dedicated WordPress team can help you!
