Tips to Make Readers Stay on Your Blog !

     BLOG TIPS- Since we have been discussing blog analytics recently and the new Yahoo Web Analytics program, another great blog stat that you should track is the bounce rate of your blog.  You should check the rate on your blog regularly to verify that your blog is "sticky" and that readers actually hang around for awhile and read several of your pages, ads and great posts.  But, what is a bounce rate?

Your bounce rate is basically the percentage of readers that come to a page on your blog and leave immediately after reading it.  The lower the bounce rate, the BETTER !  Your goal is to have an extremely low bounce rate which means that readers stop frequently at different points on your blog and are viewing more than one article or more than one page every time they visit. 

That's great to know, but how do you lower the bounce rate for your blog? My ideas-

• Link to your other pages and posts often (when appropriate)!  You'll notice that at the start of this post, there's a link on the "Yahoo Web Analytics" phrase to my prior post on Yahoo's unveiling of their new program.
• Note that the best spot to link is really towards the end of the post.  Ending with a relevant link at the bottom of your post, you're improving the chances that the reader will continue on.  Naturally, your posts have to be interesting and of value, so that the reader does get to the end! 
• You can also divide long posts with the "READ MORE Below..." function.  This will lower the bounce rate but is not really the purpose of decreasing the rate.  You don't just want a low %, you want readers to find more & more interesting material and content to view.
• Encourage your readers to communicate with you -- comments, questions, etc.  Start a dialog so they will return.
• Use terms and phrases in your posts to move the reader to action!  Your reader needs to be motivated to "click here", "read this", etc.
• Design your blog attractively in order to keep the reader engaged with different areas of the page. (We'll discuss more thoroughly in another post, see keep stopping by!)   

So, as always with blogging, work hard to keep your blog fresh, interesting, attractive and compelling.  If you give your readers information easily, they will reward you with future visits!

Bounce low, and Blog To Great !

Comments

[Laura Barat]

Thank you for the invaluable information. I justed started a new blog and need to know these things.

[Laura Barat]

THank you for the invaluable information. Now I know that'll I'll need to write more interesting stuff. These tips will really help.

[Kerrie]

Thanks for dropping by my blog. I have added your fBtG eed to my RSS reader so that I can keep tabs on your new ideas.