If you have experience running multiple websites, chances are you’ve come across a high bounce rate issue.
For those of you who don’t know, bounce rate has to do with how many people leave your page once they click on it. For example, if someone visits your website and realizes it’s not what they’re looking for, they’ll leave almost immediately. This contributes to your bounce rate.
This is a bad thing for obvious reasons. If you have people visiting your website but leaving instantly, you’re not going to sell any products. In fact, your visitors aren’t even going to read your content!
The majority of internet marketers believe bounce rates are directly correlated to the quality of your content. In this aspect, the majority is absolutely right. However, it’s not necessarily the quality of your content – it’s about tailoring it to the distinct groups of readers.
There are three groups of readers. First, there are the “scanners.” These are the people who are looking for something interesting. If you can’t capture their attention quickly, they’ll leave immediately. Next, there are the “cherry pickers.” These are readers who are looking for information within your article but don’t want to read the entire article. They’ll look through and try and capture the main ideas.
Lastly, there are the critics – visitors who look through your content and try to pick out any errors.
Capturing the Scanners
To make sure scanners remain on your website, you must have a fantastic landing page. On top of this, you need a headline or title which instantly captures attention.
When most people think of headlines, they think of sales copy. However, these types of headlines can be equally good for blog posts. Remember – a good headline captures attention. It doesn’t matter if you want to sell a product or get someone to read a blog post. If your headlines or titles are good, scanners will visit your website, become interested, and stick around as a result.
Optimizing your Posts for Cherry Pickers
Although “scanners” will make up the majority of your first-time viewers, there are also readers who are simply looking to devour as much information as possible. However, you still want these readers to take action on buying a product or subscribing to your blog.
Here’s where quality comes into play. In order to capture these viewer’s attention, you must optimize your post for readability. You should write clear headlines designed to direct the reader’s eyes to key sections of your post. If you can do this, “cherry pickers” will read through your posts and gain value from them. Since they gained value from your posts, they’re much more likely to take action or subscribe to your blog in order to repeat the process in the future.
How Critics Can Help Your Website
Lastly, there are the critics. These are people who visit your website just to split hairs based on your content. They might have a personal vendetta against your website or may just like causing trouble. Regardless, it’s important to realize you can’t please everyone.
When writing your posts, you should be producing as accurate content as possible. No one’s perfect, but there’s a big difference between throwing a post together and taking the time to do the right amount of research. If you put together a valuable post that’s well researched, critics will likely be unable to find anything wrong with your website.
Here’s the thing about critics: they’re mainly looking to find problems, but if they don’t find problems, you may win them over as strong supporters of your website.
If a critic does find an error and decides to post it in the comments, take it in stride. Remember there’s no such thing as bad feedback. If they found an error for you, thank them and fix the error. Keep it in mind for the next time you write a post and you can be sure you don’t make the same mistake twice.
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Now that you realize there are three distinct types of readers, you can optimize your content for each of them. This way, not only are you lowering your bounce rate, you’re also ensuring all types of readers are satisfied with the information you’re presenting on your page.
Always remember this – traffic is great, but if your traffic doesn’t take action, how much is it really worth?
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