Any Suggestions To Help My Bounce Rate?

[PhiladelphiaSeo]

Hello Everyone,

I'm stumped. My primary website has a horrendous bounce rate of around 75%

Here is my domain:

www.radicalmarketingsolutions.com

My home page has a bounce rate of around 68%.

The funny thing is, I have a page on Google Analytics basics for small business owners that is my 3rd top page for content, I have an average time on page of over 3 minutes yet my bounce rate is 90%.

I have another page on how to depersonalize your google searches in Chrome and Firefox that is a top page with a time on page over 5 minutes and this page has a bounce rate of 96%!

I felt that my old design was really hurting me so I changed the design in the beginning of this month and it does not look like it's helped much.

I really simplified the site, created a lot more white space and added some links to my other important pages in hopes to get more click throughs.

I would really love some honest "constructive" feed back on my site as to why the bounce rate could be so high.

I have a ton of content on my blog and I get a lot of positive feedback.

One thing I did not do was exclude my IP from Analytics so I could be influencing the numbers. I've added this filter and hoping this will help.

I also email blast my list with each new blog post I publish. Could it be that they are going to the post and then not clicking through to the other pages?

Would love your suggestions.

Thanks,

Bill Parlaman

[SuzanneH]

Hi Bill,

If it were me, I'd first double check to make sure the analytics is definitely on all pages. :-) The second thing is to track any external links (you can do that with Events in Analytics) and see if people are going off site.

Aside from that, one thing I noticed on your blog posts is a lack of internal linking within the article itself. I do this on my site and it really helps. People sometimes have a short attention span -- or they they may be reading about one issue and you mention a second issue that they're more interested in. It also helps Google understand what your site is about.

I put several internal links within articles using relevant keywords in the article. After a couple of paragraphs, I'll put a link to a relevant/related article to that particular paragraph.

I also noticed that your footer has a lot of "sublink1", sublink2". I'd get rid of those! ;-)

Suzanne

[SuzanneH]

Just looking at your home page: it could just be me, but I don't really feel like reading all the text. I notice the call to action for the free ebook but not much else. My eyes aren't really drawn to anything. Maybe check to see how your competitors are drawing people in?

Also, think about what your main goal is for your home page -- and what kind of traffic you're getting to it and what keywords they're coming in from.

Hope this helps a bit. Haven't had coffee yet!

Suzanne

[PhiladelphiaSeo]

Originally Posted by SuzanneH

Hi Bill,

If it were me, I'd first double check to make sure the analytics is definitely on all pages. :-) The second thing is to track any external links (you can do that with Events in Analytics) and see if people are going off site.

Aside from that, one thing I noticed on your blog posts is a lack of internal linking within the article itself. I do this on my site and it really helps. People sometimes have a short attention span -- or they they may be reading about one issue and you mention a second issue that they're more interested in. It also helps Google understand what your site is about.

I put several internal links within articles using relevant keywords in the article. After a couple of paragraphs, I'll put a link to a relevant/related article to that particular paragraph.

I also noticed that your footer has a lot of "sublink1", sublink2". I'd get rid of those! ;-)

Suzanne

Great points. I usually use SEO Plugins but sometimes it links things I do not want linked. I do offer related posts and most popular posts on the side bar and under the posts themselves but something I need to do better is more in text links.

[PhiladelphiaSeo]

Originally Posted by Izaya

Add a video if you can, Video's are great they help increase average time on site and lower bounce rates.

Thanks. Yes, that is one thing I am going to add for sure. I will use a screen shot with a play button on it and then redirect to the video after they click on the screen shot. I am not a big fan of auto play videos. Thanks for this.

[mnov5534]

Hi Bill, just came across your thread and took a look at your site. As Suzanne said, it seems like there's a lot of text on your home page.

Would it be possible to reduce the amount of text, or reorganise it in a way with some boxes to emphasise important key points, or alternating the size/style of text? I think this would make it easier on the eye, rather than seeing a lot of text when you land on the home page.

I like the box up top with your opt in form, that's very appealing and looks great. Perhaps if you can break up the text below and make it more modular, or varied, people will be more inclined to read what's there. Hope this helps and all the best with the site.