Do you want to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate?
If yes, this post is for you.
How to Increase Pageviews and Reduce Bounce Rate in WordPress
Most bloggers think that it is a hard task to get people to their website or blog. Most expert bloggers or SEO experts believe that getting people to their blog is an easy task. To let the user stay on your site is a hard task. Most users visit your site and leave it without going through the second page. When the user does not visit the second page, it increases the bounce rate. In addition, it also decreases the pageviews per visit.
In general, it affects your ad revenue and decreases it. In this post, I shall tell you some tips and tricks to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.
Before we start
Let’s start with basics to consider technology and terminology. Bounce rate stands for the percentage of visitors who enter your website and bounce (leave the site) rather than visiting other pages of the site. Page view represents the load of a single page on an internet site. I use Google Analytics to track my data. You can use other analytics services or you can also install Google Analytics on your WordPress website.
Now I have discussed the basic terminology and you are thinking that why do these numbers matter?
If you have a website which is primarily monetized by banner ads, then the number of pageviews do matter.
If you want to get a loyal users or audience, then the number of bounce rate also matter. In addition, the lower your bounce rate, the better ads CPC(cost per click) or eCPM(cost per thousand) you will get. When the same user visits the next page, your ad provider will show a better ad to serve him and it will give you a higher CPC or eCPM. I have done a lot of experiments on my own websites so the methods I shall share with you are the ones that I used in the past and know that they will work.
P.S. These techniques will ONLY work if you have Good Content.
Interlink Your Posts
When you will interlink your other posts within the new post content, it will increase in pageviews. In WordPress 3.1 version, it has become an easy task to interlink. Simple you need to search for the post which you want to link while adding links. Interlinking techniques work great when your website is full of great articles. If you are a beginner, you will be a bit limited in this regard.
So how do you go back and interlink older posts when you will have something new?
You need to do it manually but it is time taking task.
There are plugins that let you automatically link keywords in WordPress.
Additionally, interlinking not only helps to increase pageviews but also reduces bounce rates. It is also helpful in SEO as well.
Show Related Posts After the Post
Why does user leave your blog?
The user leaves your blog after reading the post because you are not showing them what to do next. You should show the user a list of ‘related posts’ or ‘other popular posts’. It may lead them to see another post in your website. There are a number of ways to add or show related posts in your website. If you want to use a plugin to show related post. You may like our post on best related posts plugin for WordPress.
Show Excerpts on Front / Archive Pages
If you show excerpts on front/archive pages, it has two advantages. First of all, it will decrease the page load time. Secondly, it will increase the pageviews. You should not show full posts on your front page or archive page. Imagine if you have 25 images in one post, then have 5 of those on one page. It will give a terrible user experience because of super long page and slow load time.
It will make the user to leave your website. Most of good themes including Genesis, Headway and Thesis already have this as built-in option.
Splitting up Long Posts
Are you writing super long posts?
You can split it into multiple pages by using WordPress <nextpage> tag in your post. Just add it wherever you want to add it, then it will split your post into multiple pages. You may see some websites which split their posts into two pages or even into five pages.
But you need to be careful in this method as well. It is because if you do not have a sufficient amount of content on each page, then the user may get pissed of. There are several famous websites which are using this technique including Forbes, Wall Street Journal and NY Times etc.
Interactive Sidebar
Your sidebar plays an important role in reducing bounce rate and increasing pageviews. You can display your popular posts in the sidebar. You can also customize it to show popular posts by week, month and all time. The blogger can also show the most recent posts only on single post pages.
I have seen different websites that create custom images to navigate to their specific posts. You can integrate other sections of your website in your sidebar.
Encourage Random Browsing
You should encourage the user for random browsing. Make him curious to click on the buttons available on your website.
Results
An average user spends only one page per visit on your website and leaves it. When I started to see the basic data, my website bounce rate was in 70% range. After observing that, I have started implementing the above changes on my site.
Bounce rate decreased from the average of 70% to 45%. Pageviews per visit increased to 2.79/pages per visit. An average time spent on the page went to the average of 2 minutes and 40 seconds.
What is your strategy to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate? Am I missing something?
Share with us in the comment section.
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Arsalan Rauf is an entrepreneur, freelancer, creative writer, and also a fountainhead of Green Hat Expert. Additionally, he is also an eminent researcher of Blogging, SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media, premium accounts, codes, links, tips and tricks, etc.