Traffic Tips: 4 Tips to Decrease Your Bounce Rate

by Alyssa Ast

Websites have something known as a bounce rate. A bounce rate is the percentage of your website visitors that immediately "bounce" away from your website after landing on a website page. For example, when a visitor lands on your home page and immediately leaves the site, instead of staying on the site and visiting another page. A low bounce rate is essential because it means your visitors are actually engaged with your site and want to stay.

To determine your bounce rate, it only involves a simple math equation:

total # of visits/ # of visits that left after 1 page = bounce rate 110,000/50,000= 0.45 (45%)

What Causes Traffic to Bounce?
A number of factors can cause your traffic to bounce from your site. Bounce rate can involve the number of visitors who hit the 'back" button on the browser, a closed browser or a visitor who clicked on your website ads. Other factors that can alter your bounce rate include external links, a new URL is typed or the search box on a browser was used to search for information.

Decreasing Your Bounce Rate
The lower your bounce rate is, the better. An average bounce rate ranges from 40-50%. So, how do you decrease your bounce rate? There are a number of tips you can use to keep visitors engaged with your website and lower your bounce rate.

Content- Develop a large archive of quality content that's relevant to your audience. Your content should be error free and provide your visitors with valuable information.

Know Your Audience- Target the audience that will benefit the most from your website by properly optimizing your website with the correct keywords/phrases. Create catchy titles and unique content that will speak to your audience, engaging them to remain on your site and visit frequently.

Update- Your website needs to be updated regularly with fresh content to keep your visitors coming back and to maintain your search engine result's page ranking. Your keywords/phrases need to be updated regularly as well to ensure you're targeting the proper audience and your website is easily search-able.

Links- While it's vital to have external links for search engine marketing, limit the number of external links you have on your site. Balance your internal links with your external links to ensure traffic remains on your site. And, always remember to have your external links open to a new window to prevent your website from becoming lost to the visitor.

Guest Post: Link Bait Techniques For Catching The Big Fish

Six tips for trolling for organic internet traffic

Whenever anyone mentions the term “link-bait” one can’t help but envision an SEO (search engine optimization) casting hooks at unsuspecting internet users until one gets hooked in the mouth and violently yanked to a website. However, as an internet writer who worked for a company that specializes in SEO in Vancouver, I know that link bait doesn’t always come from negative intentions from an SEO writer’s point of view. And one doesn’t always have to resort to nasty tricks to covet links.

Link bait is any piece of content written or featured on a website with the specific goal to gain internet traffic to a website. A writer can put together a very useful article that users will enjoy reading and treat virally because it was entertaining.

Here are 6 effective link bait techniques for catching the big fish when it comes to internet traffic:

1. Guest blogging

I’ve done this a lot in the past, especially when I get users commenting on my blogs or asking questions that are out of my area of expertise. That’s when I call in the real experts in the form of guest bloggers (or I feature an interview with a real expert) who can answer the question from a professional viewpoint. Opening your blog to guest posts is not only the perfect way to get valuable links from other expert sources (since the author of the guest post will almost always link back to their post on your site); it’s also a great way to show your readers that you know where to find the information they want.

2. Infographics

If you haven’t seen the viral infographics that have literally taken over Facebook and Twitter posts lately then you must be off the grid. People love infographics because they visualize information in a short, sweet, fun, and engaging way that can be easily shared—meaning they drive an amazing amount of links to websites!

3. Giveaways

People love freebies! It doesn’t matter what it is—as long as it’s free! So have some Ts made up with your site name and logo, give readers a promo code to purchase goods, collect goody bags or free products to give away c/o sponsors, or give away a free software trial and you will get the attention you want and draw new users to your website.

4. Top XX Lists

This works—after all, you’re reading this one aren’t you? Ha! Top XX lists are a hit with online readers because they are quick to read, easy to share, and you can infuse some humor to get them moving virally over social networks.

5. Video

Watching an entertaining video takes little time at work and it’s a nice break during the work day. Plus, people share them like wild fire—especially humorous or how-to style videos (if the advice is practical).

6. Reader polls and quizzes

People liked to share their opinion (if you don’t believe me, just look at the self-proclaimed expert bloggers out there). So tap into your audience’s interests and create a quick quiz or poll for them to share their opinion on what color is hot for spring or what Harry Potter character they are most like. People are drawn to quiz and poll-like tools because in a society that determines so much for them—they simply want to be asked what they really think.

Author Bio:
Caeden M MacGregor is a staff writer for SEO in Vancouver who specializes in blogging on viral marketing, social media, and internet marketing tips and techniques. Caeden has written for numerous blogs in a variety of fields ranging from software to fitness, and from gourmet food to travel.

Are you interested in guest posting? Email alyssa_ast@yahoo.com for more details!

SEO Website Review: artfuldobson.com

Website: http://www.artfuldobson.com/

Providing a variety of Photographic Services, especially image retouching, manipulation and montage work by Peter g. Dobson

Search Ranking:
Artfuldobson.com has an excellent search engine ranking on all major search engines.

URLs and Page Titles:
The page titles and URL's are excellent. They are short, to the point and describe where they are directing the reader. My only recommendation for this area is to make the main menu accessible from each page. It's difficult to navigate when you leave the home page.

Keyword Density
The main keywords for the website are relevant; however, the keyword density on the pages is very low. I recommend increasing the content on each web page to allow a higher density of keywords to be used. Also, there should be more internal linking for easier navigation and to increase on-site traffic.

Overall, artfuldobson.com has a very sturdy foundation. It appeals to the reader and has a niche specific topic. It loads quickly, and there appears to be little to no glitches other than the difficult navigation upon leaving the home page.

Would you like to have your website reviewed? Learn more here!

Mailbag!-- How does Microdata affect Product Optimization and Rankings?

Mailbag Question:

How does microdata affect product optimization and rankings in terms of e-Commerce SEO?

Microdata involves HTML5 specifications that allow computers to comprehend what exactly your web pages are taking about. It allows machine-readable data to be embedded into HTML documents. The use of microdata is important because it allows computers to fully understand the information on your web pages in order to provide abundant information to a web browser. It involves very simple HTML that can be used to define products, descriptions, dates, locations, prices and more.

E-Commerce Microdata
The main goal behind the use of e-commerce SEO practices is to eliminate your competition's organic search engine rankings. Because this practice is still relatively new, those who do take advantage of microdata have little problem achieving results. As this practice continues to evolve, it's essential B2B companies fully utilize this skill.

There are numerous benefits associated with microdata in terms of SEO ranking, especially since the major search engines, including Google, are now using microdata to produce more relevant search results, increasing your online visibility.

Increased visibility isn't the only benefit achieved from this practice. It also provides search engine spiders with more and better content to aid with a web site's indexing and ranking on search engines. It allows search engines to narrow down a specific and relevant category to index content.

With the use of microdata, search engines are able to provide rich snippets on search engines, when compared to traditional SERP listings. With richer snippets, your site is more likely to be chosen over sites with traditional listings.

Overall, spending a few extra minutes focusing on microdata certainly won't hurt. It's an easy skill to learn and you will achieve benefits-- whether your focus is B2B or B2C.

Do you have a question you would like to see answered on the Fundamentals of SEO? Submit your question to the site's mailbag!