8 Powerful Tips to Keep Readers on Your Website Longer

We live in the digital age where everyone one expects instant everything, and if they have to wait, even if it's just a little bit, they will move on to something else. That's just the reality of today's society—instant gratification and no patience for anything less, especially when it comes to internet browsing and the websites visited. That means if you don't provide your visitors with an immediate response, they will move on to another website that will.

What is a Bounce Rate?

Bounce is the web jargon name that's used to describe when someone lands on your website, or one of its pages, and quickly clicks away from it—they bounced. When that happens the result is called a bounce rate.

Why is Bounce Rate Important?

Because one of the major factors Google uses to determine the importance of your website and where they choose to rank it is based on your website's (and it's individual pages) bounce rate. If your bounce rate is high, that means people don't stay on your website or any of its web pages for very long. If your bounce rate is low, that's a good thing because it means people are landing on your website or pages and sticking around. This tells Google that your website provided their user with the relevant information they were searching for, and, in turn, Google will then reward your website with higher rankings.

The 8 Tips to Keep Readers on Your Website Longer

Any digital marketing agency or SEO company can help you construct your website and its pages in a way that brings you the best possible results. Here are a few tips a digital marketing agency or SEO company will use to encourage your visitors to stay on your website and its pages longer which will ultimately result in higher rankings.

1. Include a Hook in Your Introduction

Make sure the first few lines of your introduction includes a hook. Some piece of information that grabs your reader's attention and encourages them to keep reading to learn more.

2. Make the Reader Stop and Think

Immediately engage your visitors with questions that make them stop and think, and use conversational words such as You, I, Me, etc. These tactics will help engage your visitors and make them want to know if their thought process is correct or if they need to learn more so they can make a change.

3. Make Your Points Short and Sweet

If you are writing an article, you don't need to begin it by explaining the obvious or something your average reader should already know. This wastes your readers time and will generally cause them to get bored before they get to the meat of your article and you will lose them. You can simply include a link to additional information so those not in the know can take it upon themselves to learn more if they so choose.

4. Videos and Other Visual Content

Our human brains process visual content more than 60,000 times faster than text. Which is probably why the statistics for video usage is so staggering. And videos work very well for keeping your visitors on the site longer because they are engaging and addictive.

Did you know that:

More than 55 percent of people watch online videos every day?
About 65 percent of video viewers watch a video almost, if not all the way through?
If you include a video on your landing page it can increase your conversion rates by 19 percent?
Almost 50 percent of internet users search for videos that are related to a product or service before visiting a store or making a purchase?

And this is just the beginning. You can also add infographics and podcasts within your content as they also work very well.

5. Less Is More

If your website is littered with too many links, ads or anything else that's distracting or confusing most people will click away from your website and find one that's visually appealing, user-friendly, and just makes sense.

6. Optimize Your Website's Performance

Nothing is more damaging to your bounce rate than a slow loading website or a poor design. If your website takes more than a few seconds to load, that's too long and Google WILL penalize you for it.

You can test your website's loading speed here: Google's PageSpeed Insights page.
You can Click Here for some very effective techniques that can be used to improve a website's page loading speed.

As far as your website's design goes, you need to remember that your content should take center stage, that's what people are visiting your website for after all. That means everything else should take a backseat. For example, opt-ins, ad clicks, a sidebar littered with distractions, etc. In addition, your web design should also be mobile-friendly because according to Google, more searches are now performed on a mobile device than on a desktop. That means if your website isn't mobile-friendly, you will probably lose that visitor to your competitors whose websites are.

7. Readability

Readability is how easy your website's content is to skim and scan. The more white space you have and the easier it is to read, the more likely your visitors are to read your content all the way through. For example, do you find it easier to read big blocks of straight text, or do you find it easier to read content that has subheads, bullet points, images, and other visually appealing features that help carry your eye through the message? Most people prefer the latter because it's much easier to read and digest.

8. Relevant and Contextual Interlinking

Every website should be linking their content to another related page within their site this is called interlinking. Interlinking helps keep your visitors on the site longer. It also distributes page authority and ranking throughout your website which makes your website easier for Google to index. Just make sure you're linking to relevant content and that it's done in a natural way.

What's Next?

Hiring an SEO Agency or digital marketing agency with the experience to immediately identify and correct website issues is the best way to make sure your website is performing to its fullest potential. Please Contact Us today. We'd love to help you take your business to the next level!