A majority of online businesses strive to increase search traffic to their websites to boost their brands’ growth.

However, the truth is that unique visitors will not help your business become more profitable. Engaged visitors will. If you want to grow your revenue and make more profit, you need to ensure that you reduce your bounce rate.

Optimizing your website to reduce bounce rate is one of the most effective ways to increase your conversion rate.

A reduced bounce rate can also help you improve your rankings in search results, drive qualified leads, and boost the authority and credibility of your brand.

To help you reduce your bounce rate, I’ve put together a list of 23 actionable ideas that work well for most businesses.

Before that, let’s dive deep to learn more about what a bounce rate is and how to reduce it.

What is Bounce Rate and How’s it Different from Actual Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate refers to the number of visits to a website in which the user leaves without checking out any other page. Broadly defined, it’s the percentage of single-page visits. Google Analytics keeps a close track on the bounce rates for websites and individual web pages.

What many people don’t know is that bounce rates and actual bounce rates aren’t similar.

In many cases, websites with a high bounce rate may also be among the top-ranking sites on popular search engines. This is because of the differences between the two numbers.

Confused? Let me elaborate on these differences using some hypothetical situations.

First, imagine users get to a web page through organic search results. They take a quick glance at the ad-filled page with low-quality content, so they return to the search results. These users probably spend only a few seconds before returning to the original search results.



This counts as an “actual bounce”. It will show up in Google Analytics as a bounce and count with search engines.

Now, imagine a user ends up on a web page with a well-written blog post about a topic of their interest. The post provides useful definitions and addresses major concerns that are supported by great visuals. This user ends up spending almost 30 minutes on the page and reading the content before going back to the search results for a different search.

Although Google Analytics would count this as a bounce, search engines know that the user spent almost 30 minutes on the page. This doesn’t count as an “actual bounce”, but consider it as dwell time to analyze site user behavior.

So, you can see how search engines calculate bounce rates and actual bounce rates. This is the exact reason why there are many websites that rank well with search engines despite having high bounce rates on Google Analytics.

It’s because they maintain good user engagement and don’t have high actual bounce rates. And your goal should be to reduce this bounce rate.

What Defines a Bounce in Google Analytics?

As I’ve mentioned earlier, ‘time spent on a page’ doesn’t get taken into consideration when Google Analytics calculates bounce rates for web pages. The equation it uses is:

Bounce Rate = (total number of bounces) / (total number of entrances) x 100

Bounces are all the single page visits for a page. Entrances are the number of visits you get for a page. For example, if you get 171 bounces for 416 entrances, your page bounce rate would be 41.11 percent.

You can view the bounce rates of individual pages in Google Analytics by navigating to the “Behavior” section, clicking on “Site Content,” and then be choosing “Landing Pages.”

What is an Ideal Bounce Rate?

What are good bounce rates that websites should hope to maintain? I know that this question is probably bogging your mind.

For most sites, it’s common to see average bounce rates between 26 percent and 70 percent. According to analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, it’s difficult to reduce bounce rate to less than 20 percent. If you do manage to achieve lower than this, there’s nothing like it.

Bounce rates landing between 26 and 40 percent are excellent.

Source: gorocketfuel

41 to 50 percent may be considered as the average for most websites. Bounce rates between 56 and 70 percent are quite bad, but may not be a reason to panic depending on the website type.

Anything higher than this is very bad. If that’s the case, it’s time you start taking measures to reduce your bounce rate.

Here are the 23 Best Ways to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Here are 23 of the most effective ways to reduce your bounce rate for better search results rankings:

1. Create a compelling landing page

If your landing page doesn’t have the information visitors are looking for, the number of bounces is bound to be high.

To reduce your bounce rate, you need to create a solid landing page. Ensure that you write high-quality content, put your CTA buttons in the right spots, and write a compelling title for the page.

Additionally, you should pay attention to the color scheme of the page and ensure that the CTA button stands out.

2. Improve your page load time

A one-second delay in your page load time can reduce your conversions by 7%. Try to avoid flashy banners and other additions that can cause lagging web pages. Check Google recommendations on page speed insights to increase website page speed.

This tool will give you the website speed for both mobiles and desktops. All you need to do is follow the recommendations and improve the page loading speed.

Migrating your website to a cloud hosting platform can also help you improve its speed. This can help you reduce your bounce rate.

3. Include relevant keywords

If your website gets listed for keywords that aren’t relevant to your topic, you’ll end up with visitors who aren’t interested in your content.

Find the keywords that return poor visits and replace them with ones that are more relevant. This will help you drive targeted traffic to your website and reduce your bounce rate.

Make sure you do ample keyword research before coming up with topics. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to research keywords and find high volume low competition keywords.

It’s also crucial to add these keywords into your content in a natural way without forcing them. Over-optimization of keywords may be detrimental to your SEO.

4. Use the right sales message

You’ll get a higher bounce rate if you use a sales message that doesn’t comply with the services offered by you. Your persuasive ad copy should match the information and services you provide.

For example, MailChimp has used a sales message that states, “Easy Email Newsletters.” This is exactly in-line with the service that they provide – newsletters.

You need to ensure that there’s a coherence between the service and your sales message just the way they’ve done.

5. Avoid pop-ups

For most people, pop-ups are annoying. When anyone lands on your page, they went there with the intention of finding the information they’re looking for.

However, a pop-up can disrupt this flow and annoy them. This may push them to bounce away from your website. Avoiding them can improve your user experience and reduce your bounce rates.

6. Make your site mobile-friendly

Design your web pages in such a way that mobile users can access them effortlessly. Online visitors today want useful, relevant content that is easy-to-read on the go.

With widespread availability of smartphones and mobile data, a large portion of people browse the internet through phones. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, people could bounce away quickly.

You can use the Mobile-Friendly Test tool by Google to check your website’s mobile-friendliness. A well-optimized mobile website can help you reduce bounce rate.

7. Improve your content’s readability

Large walls of text with lousy formatting often scare readers away and make them exit your website.

If you want to reduce your bounce rate, you should break up the content into segments. You should also use subheadings and bullet points to make it easier to read and understand.

Additionally, people generally skim through a page’s content in the shape of an F. Your goal should be to keep the most important information towards the beginning of the content.

This would work as a hook to catch the attention of your visitors, which in turn, can help to reduce your bounce rate.

8. Place ads strategically

Avoid intrusive ads that block the website’s content. Use better ad placement to create a good user experience for a higher-ranking website.

If you place big chunks of ads after every other paragraph of your content, your website will appear spammy.

At the same time, it’ll break the reading flow for your audience as well. This can increase your bounce rate. Using ads judiciously can reduce the bounce rate.

9. Pick contrasting colors

Colors can make your content more exciting and improve user interaction. Dull colors can make your website seem uninteresting for your visitors.

Additionally, you should pay attention to the colors of all the elements of the website. If your text and background have similar colors, it might make it tougher for your readers to read your content.

Having a good color scheme with contrasting colors can help reduce bounce rate.

Instead of redirecting users off your site, allow external resources to open in a new tab or window. They will more likely return back to your website after reading those resources or remain on your website without navigating to the other tab. This can help reduce bounce rate.

11. Prominently display search boxes

If users have to find information on your site, they shouldn’t have to search for the search box. Make it clearly visible.

It can be very frustrating for a user to put a lot of effort into looking for the search box. Making the box accessible can help them find the information they’re looking for with ease. This can reduce your bounce rate drastically.

12. Break up content

Since most people have a short attention span, try splitting up long posts into different parts. Forbes uses this method and it reduces their bounce rates. It will also increase the page views, which improves the Alexa Rank.

Additionally, the bite-sized content pieces can help users understand the content with ease. Seeing a huge block of content can be very repelling, which is why breaking up the content works.

13. Use intuitive navigation

Enable users to find important content more effortlessly by improving your site’s navigation tabs. Get into their mindset and try to understand how they’d want to navigate on your website.

Make it easier for them to find the information they’re seeking. Your goal should be to help them reach their information in fewer than 3 clicks. Good navigation can help you reduce your bounce rate by leaps and bounds.

14. Try lazy loading

Lazy loading allows content to load quickly and new content to be loaded as needed. This improves page load speed and, therefore, helps you reduce bounce rate.

15. Create a compelling call-to-action

Once you have attracted readers with your headline and engaged them with the content, don’t lose them with a poor CTA.

If you want to reduce your bounce rate, ensure that your call-to-action compels users to take an action. You can ask them to subscribe to your channel, buy a product, or explore more products.

Visitors should know what you want them to do instead of having to guess.

16. Improve your 404 page

Try adding a link to your homepage and a search box in your 404 error page for a better user experience. A 404 page is very disappointing for users and all effort should be made to help them navigate away from it.

Try to keep all of your navigation bars on the 404 page to ensure that they can easily move away from it and go back to other pages. This can help reduce your bounce rate.

17. Tell your story

Storytelling, if done effectively, can help you captivate the minds of your target audience. You should attract and engage users with a good story about your brand or how your products originated.

18. Encourage users to explore more

Give them a purpose to check out other parts of your website by giving them content or product suggestions. This will help you reduce bounce rate and increase your chances of making a sale.

19. Minimize distractions

Autoplay videos and audios can be distracting for viewers, so make sure you cut these off. While they may seem like great ways of increasing views or marketing your products, they can be annoying at times.

Many users may navigate away from your website for this sole reason. Give them the option to play the videos but don’t put them on autoplay. This can reduce your bounce rate.

20. Offer help through live chat

This is a great way to help visitors find what they’re looking for. This prevents people from simply leaving the page if they get stuck and reduces your bounce rate.

21. Enhance your page design

A well-designed page improves your chances of being taken seriously by visitors. Opt for an uncluttered, clean design with consistent layouts, colors, and fonts.

22. Avoid using flash

Flash-based websites take much more time to load. Using flash may also create bad user experience if the visitor’s device doesn’t have it installed.

23. Use internal linking

Internal links are another great way to ensure that visitors explore more parts of your website and reduce your bounce rates.

Got More Ideas?

By adopting the measures given above, you should be able to attract the right users and improve user engagement. This will help you reduce bounce rate and boost your page ranking.

I’d love to hear from you if you have some other great ideas of your own. Use the comment box below to share!