How to improve your site's bounce rate

[Kay]

This Google piece is great. It shares how to not only check what the bounce rate is of your site (ie how many arrive and leave soon after or as they put it " I came; I puked; I left."), but what you could do about it. Interesting! Anyone got any tips of their own?

[InterShark]

The best way to improve your sites bounce rate is to make sure the page they are landing on is relevant to what they are searching for.

For example, if it was something to do with banner exchanging you wouldnt want them landing on a page where you only mention in once unless there is a link that directs them deeper where they can learn more about it.

[Kay]

The best way to improve your sites bounce rate is to make sure the page they are landing on is relevant to what they are searching for.

For example, if it was something to do with banner exchanging you wouldnt want them landing on a page where you only mention in once unless there is a link that directs them deeper where they can learn more about it.

Agreed, but how do you make that happen then? I would have thought the chances of them landing on your page at all if that were the case would be slim at best if you only mentioned it once. Unless of course you stuffed the tags with non-relevant keywords. Don't get me started on that subject.

[InterShark]

Agreed, but how do you make that happen then? I would have thought the chances of them landing on your page at all if that were the case would be slim at best if you only mentioned it once. Unless of course you stuffed the tags with non-relevant keywords. Don't get me started on that subject.

Its actually pretty simple to make sure you direct the site visitor to where they are wanting to go using the techniques many of us already use on a regular basis.

We should all be checking our hosting providers server stats to see which keywords our visitors are using to get to our site, along with which pages they are hitting.

If you see a page that is getting hits for a specific search term that you would rather is wasnt, there are several options available including offering redirects based on referring URLs over to a more specific page.

This can be done on the page itself using java or it can be done server side using htaccess and mod re-write rules.

There are also other methods of achieving this using dynamic content and urls on our websites and also cookie sessions.

In additon there are plenty of ad scripts that also utilize keyword tracking in them, i know AdCycle used to have this, not sure if it still does, but basically if a site visitor comes to your page using a keyword such as 'dog' you can create ad campaigns to only show banners related to 'dogs' on that page for that individual site visitor.

As for visitors getting to our sites using search terms that dont appear so often on the pages they hit, there are more organic methods of that happening than many realize, it isnt just about keyword stuffing and non-relevant content.

[decipher]

One of the biggest problems I see is that most all users will link their advertisements straight to their home page... I personally recommend sending them to a sub page as it will not effect the bounce rate of the home page.

[ankur0412]

One of the biggest problems I see is that most all users will link their advertisements straight to their home page... I personally recommend sending them to a sub page as it will not effect the bounce rate of the home page.

hmm.. and how is that possible? I mean, do you mean we should re-direct them?