Bounce Rate: how fast do your visitors leave?

Google now looks at the bounce rate, or the amount of time it takes for a visitor to leave your website, when determining your site's rank for keywords. It is not good to have a high bounce rate. For example, if a visitor searches for the keyword: "stop smoking now", clicks on your site and then closes the page after 5 seconds, this behavior will increase your page's bounce rate for that keyword. If many visitors do the same thing, Google will interpret this as meaning that your site is not relevant for that keyword; as a result, your site may drop in the rankings.

So, it is important to achieve a low bounce rate (somewhere near or below 50% is ok). How can you do this? Well, the first thing is to make sure that your content is highly relevant to the keyword that you're trying to rank for. Then, you should find a way to keep your visitors on your site for longer than at least a minute. You can do this by making the color scheme of your site easy on the eyes (some people just leave websites fast because the colors are too harsh to look at - eg: red & blue together is a bad color combination). You should also offer some interesting and funny information or news to capture and retain your visitor's attention.

Do you know the bounce rate of your website? If not, you can check this in Google Analytics. What do you do to keep your visitors on your site longer? Please share your ideas.