We all check our blog stats with the help of various tools like Google Analytics, Reinvigorate etc. and we often come across the term Bounce Rate. Alex has written an excellent article which explains that what exactly is Bounce rate (he is becoming one of my favorite bloggers on blogging and maintaining blogs) and how it effects any blog and what all can be done to improve it too. This is what Alex tells you -

In other words, the bounce rate is the percentage of a page’s visitors that did not take any further action, transforming the entry page into an exit page. For that to occur, visitors would need to either close the browser window/tab, hit the “Back” button, type a new URL or simply wait until the current session expires.

Now, this can be little fun exercise! Let’s find out our blogs bounce rate for last month and lets see where exactly it stand. According to Alex’s excellent article a blog always has high bounce rate and if it hovers around 60%-70% then it’s acceptable otherwise it’s slightly bad.

(Bounce Rate stats for Blog Design Studio)

How can one improve the blog’s bounce rate ?

1. Interactive posts - One needs to ensure that their blog posts should be interactive. Either they should ask questions or should have links to older posts of yours. If that’s not the case then you’ll need to tweak your writing style.

2. Proper navigation - It’s important that readers should be able to reach your good posts without putting in much efforts and for that usability of the blog page should be improved. Use of tags, popular posts, bread crumbs, related posts should be placed at the right places of the blog post.

3. Highlight those areas which need action - If you are getting less comments, then move the comment box at the end of every blog post, this will ensure that comment box gets highlighted. You can also make use of Poll as that will help in gathering feedback and will improve Bounce rate too.

4. Good blog design help in better stats - I’ve been blogging from last 3 yrs. and I’ve noticed that good blog designs help in better stats. As you can see in the image that blog design studio’s bounce rate is around 44% and which is pretty healthy. A good blog design with good navigation will always help in making sure that visitors stick to you blog.

5. Free downloads - If you have something to give away like Free themes, free e-books, free reports, free wallpapers then you will always be able attract visitors to click on that link. One of the reasons of better bounce rate for our blog is that we are offering free themes of wordpress and that attracts few people for sure.

So, what is your blog’s bounce rate ? How can you improve your blog’s bounce rate ?