Well, Bounce rate is something that every webmaster should keep an eye. There are few who think that Bounce rate and Exit rate are same. This is totally wrong as both are two different factors. Google Analytics is a simple free tool which helps in calculating the Bounce rate of a blog/site.

No worries, Here is the definition of the Bounce rate and the formula to calculate it. I have also listed few ways to decrease the bounce rate of your website/blog.

What is a bounce rate?

Bounce rate is nothing but the percentage of visitors who leaves the blog after viewing only the landing page i.e. if a visitor visits www.yoursite.com/page1 and closes or leaves the site without navigating to other pages of www.yoursite.com.

How it is calculated?

Bounce rate is calculated using a simple formula,

Bounce Rate % = Total No of Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total No of Visits

What is a healthy Bounce rate?

It is not possible to have a bounce rate of 1% or 2% or even below 10%. I would rather say that it is really hard to go below even 20% but if you can then it is double great. The healthy Bounce rate is something lying in 40% to 70%. If your site/blog is having a bounce rate of more than 70% then you must take an action to bring it down.

Here are the 6 Simple ways,

Interesting Title:

Make sure all your posts have interesting headlines as it can tempt your visitor to click on it. The Titles are like the cover letter for your article so make sure that the cover is neat and tidy.

Related Posts:

This is one of the main things that you must do after making the headlines. Place relevant links to the article which can drive the user to them. You can use wordpress plugins to list out the related posts and keep them featured. I would suggest you to add the links below the posts using any plug-in and manually inside the posts. You can also list some posts in the sidebars just like I have.

Site Design:

Hmm, this is bit interesting. I have seen so many sites/Blogs looking crap just because of its layout and design. Do concentrate on your design and make it look clean. Avoid using the free themes available in the market as it can reduce the brand of your blog.

Clean Navigation:

This is a must as a clear road can bring more travelers. The Blogs/site must have a clean design along with clear menu navigation. Make sure that the Categories are listed as Menus and all your posts have clean navigation either above it or below it. I would suggest you to go for Yoast’s Breadcrumb plug-in for navigation.

404 Error Page:

This is a page shown to you visitors when they land up in a broken link. You must take care and enhance the 404 Error page with useful links from your site. This will allow the users to navigate to those rather than leaving your Blog/site. You can use 404 SEO Plug-in or Smart 404 Plug-in to configure your 404 Page.

Interactive Posts:

Make sure that your posts are interactive. Try to invoke your visitors and make them interactive with the posts. You can also offer some giveaways which can help you in getting the visitors converted to readers. This can help you in decreasing the bounce rate but of course giveaways are costly so make it once in a month or so.

Hope you all like the post!! Share your comments!!

Visit the following links to read more and improve your Blog/Site:

Spare 45 Minutes to get your Brand New Blog Indexed by Google within 6 hours
4 things to remember when you buy a Domain Name
5 Ways to Speed up your Website
Spend 2 hours a day to increase your blog traffic
10 Simple Ways to Convert your Blog Visitors into Readers
5 Best Tips to Avoid Blog Wandering and Increase the Traffic