How do you keep visitors on your site longer once they\u2019ve
\nclicked through from a search result? Here\u2019s the lowdown.<\/b>
\nWe all want to get our site to the top of Google. But that\u2019s only half the story \u2013 what happens when people click through to your site? Do they hang around and check out what you have to offer \u2013 or quickly move on to the next result? Obviously, we want the former to happen, so how can we make sure it does? When visitors find nothing of interest on your site at first glance and leave immediately, this is known as a bounce. A site with a high bounce rate from good quality traffic sources is an indicator that the website isn\u2019t performing up to visitors\u2019 expectations. Reducing your website\u2019s bounce rate is a great first step in improving its overall performance and conversion rate. First, you need to analyze the bounce rates of the different traffic sources. Focus your efforts on improving the bounce rates of the highest converting traffic sources, such as: Ignore the bounce rate from unqualified sources, such as: How you design your landing pages can make a difference to your bounce rate. Take the example of Real Gap, which provides gap year and traveling ideas in over 35 countries for those youngsters wishing to take a year off before, during or after university. The website uses specially designed landing pages for its pay-per-click (PPC) accounts. The PPC page has a strong call to action, whereas the SEO page just contains general gap year information. Not surprisingly, the bounce rate for the PPC page is far lower than for the organic page: 18.24 percent for the former compared with 25.44 percent for the latter. It\u2019s a clear demonstration of how the design of the page people land on influences the bounce rate. So what\u2019s the secret to designing a page with a low bounce rate? Here are some helpful tips. How do you know what\u2019s working and what isn\u2019t in terms of keeping visitors on your site? Answer: you don\u2019t. So assume nothing, and test everything. Thanks to Google\u2019s Content Experiments (in Analytics), we can create, test and monitor the performance of landing pages. The purpose of testing your landing pages is to reduce bounce rates and increase conversion rates. Setting up an A\/B split test on Google Content Experiments is very easy and free. Here\u2019s a basic overview of the steps involved: Finally, here are some golden rules to remember when you\u2019re designing and testing landing pages: Creating landing pages that encourage visitors to stay longer can sometimes be time-consuming and expensive, but it\u2019s absolutely essential to high converting, high-performing websites. In the words of Samuel Beckett, \u201cEver tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.\u201d<\/p>\n