Good content but high bounce rate
-
Hi all,
We run a website offering specialist turkey tours and gulet cruises. Our website holds a few information and recipes pages which are doing well in the engines and bring in alot of traffic. However these pages are crippling our bounce rate with bounces of about 80-90%.
The time on site for these pages are above the websites average, but it seems that once the reader has finished with the information/ recipe, they bounce back to the Search engines.
An example of one of our recipe pages can be found here: http://www.petersommer.com/turkey/turkish-food/pilav-rice/
We have thought about moving and redirecting these pages from our main site to a new website, but we are worried that it may effect our position in the SERP's.
Can anybody offer any advice on this?
Thanks
-
Well, the recipes are pretty standard fodder, cant imagine them attracting much. Just seems like a weird diversion of effort to me.
-
Maybe the recipes and the quizzes will attract lilnks? Lots of sales sites are powered by links to freebie content.
-
Why do you care about bounce rate?
You are trying to sell cruises to people who are looking for recipes, of course your bounce rate will be high. Adding quizzes or whatever isnt going to help you sell cruises.
Stop worrying about bounce rates on recipe pages and get selling cruises to people who want to go on a cruise
-
Thanks all for the great responses.
One further question...if these methods still can't get the bounce rate down. Would it be a good idea to remove the content (to a new site and redirect) or should we just live with the high bounce?
-
I agree with EGOL's suggestion. After looking at your site I would recommend using a lot more anchor links. Your use of anchor text is confined entirely to the last paragraph which seems to be tacked on as an afterthought. Take a look at a wikipedia article on a similar topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdeli_pilav.
The links offer readers an easy opportunity to drill down and find relevant information as they are naturally reading an article. Many readers have developed a form of tunnel vision that allows them to filter out sidebars but they still see the anchor links. A couple small images such as found in the wiki article would be helpful as well. The images can contain links to an image gallery on your site.
-
I have some pages on my site that regularly get read and then the reader immediately bounces back to the search engine. What I did is put a few links at the bottom of the content to some cool tools that I have on my site. It says something like, "Check out our ____ calculator!"
Some other examples of content that might drive them in further:
-Quizzes (people love doing quizzes)
-Awesome photos
I did check out your page and the links that you have at the bottom are not enticing enough. Make it really obvious that they could get some more good and relevant information on another page of your site.
I do have an additional thought though - it may be hard to decrease the bounce rate on a recipe page. I mean, if I'm looking for a recipe I'm not really browsing for information like I do for other searches. Once I've found the recipe I'm likely not going to want to do a quiz. But...what I might want is to see photos of this recipe...that may help!
-
Offer the visitor something else to read.
Make highly related content and offer links to it with colorful thumbnail images and inviting text descriptions. Place these links in obvious locations within the content and beside the content.
Go to top newspaper sites like NYT and LAT and note how they have links to "what's hot" "Recommended" "most viewed".
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Good Facebook Remarketing resources
Hi. Anyone know of any links with guru levels of Facebook Ads and specifically Remarketing on Facebook? Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | YNWA0 -
Any General feedback or Experience on Page Titles and Click Through Rates ?
Moz, I have managed to climb onto page one for a couple of keywords i am really happy with, Just looking for any feedback on page titles and different effects on CTR The page i am working with is product pages I tried a simple headline which was a branded product keyword, this way when the keyword matches the user search it will stand out as the the majority of the title is bold because of this match,, Example below <title>Jeffs<strong> Lollipops</strong></title> and my other option is to look at testing a more descriptive title to fit the limit <title>A selection of sweet Strawberry and Cherry<strong> Lollipops</strong> from Jeff<//Title></p> <p>has anyone looked into this and tested for results in CTR ? i can see there being a youmoz about it somewhere?</p> <p>Alot of people i assume will just say test test test, but any feedback on how other moz users tackle title tags for CTR would be great,</p> <p>Thanks</p> <p>James</p> <p> </p> <p> </p></title>
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Antony_Towle0 -
Is putting an email address in the page title a good idea?
As our Contact Us page title was a little short I added in [email protected] So "Contact us : [email protected]" We don't get a lot of spam and it hasn't noticeable increased since we did this. Tynt suggests that a reasonable number of people have copied and pasted the email - presumably to contact us Is it worth experimenting with further or a waste of time?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Zippy-Bungle1 -
Why has my bounce rate gone in to orbit since moving the same content to a new site?!
I moved our site to a wordpress theme over the christmas break. All content is pretty much the same word for word, and I think the new site looks much, much better than the old one. Why then, has our overall bounce rate gone from 7-8%, up to 74%? Bounce rates for some KW focused internal pages have gone from 2-3% to similar 70+% in some cases. Just to confuse things further, I have also changed the name and branding for the site to differentiate us from a competitor and stop the confusion we've experienced at times. But, I can't see how the new logo would cause and extra 65% of visitors to leave straight off! I really don't want to go back to the old name and don't think that's the answer anyhow, but I may have to test it out of sheer desperation. There's only a static holding page for the old site now as a reference point for people searching the old name (not many). So I've attached a screenshot of how it looked below. Also at http://imgur.com/aM5o9. The new site is at flatroofs.co.uk. I have just noticed that by placing the previous 'more information' links a secondary menu in the left widget area rather than on the page, they are less noticeable especially if you scroll down to the bottom of a page, where the only links are in the footer? Again though, if 75% of people are put off this easily something else must be at play! Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Danny. aM5o9.png?1
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Biota0 -
How Do you Reduce Bounce Rates?
I'm doing work for a website right now that sells musical instruments. They have great content on their site but we're helping them to create even better content. We've been working with them for 2 weeks now and they average about 180 site views a day according to Google analytics. Their pages also have very high bounce rates (70-98%) What are your best ways to reduce bounce rates?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TylerReardon0 -
Thoughts on meta descriptions - best click through rates
Hi All, I recently heard a tip from a prominent SEO'r that meta tags should be custom written by professional copywriters. Well, I want to head down that path. What are your thoughts on these two options: Buy the top-selling <xyz product="">. 20 year warranty, 30 day money guarantee + free, fast shipping! Includes <1-2 features or included accessories of product></xyz> or Buy our top-rated <xyz product="">today</xyz> & save! Over 20 5-star rated reviews + free, fast shipping! Includes <1-2 features or included accessories of product> Would you focus on the warranty, reviews, product accessories, money back guarantee, free shipping over a certain cutoff, customer service (which we have a toll free number for) or another factor? Are there any good articles out there outlining this? Do you think the way I've structured it is good/readable? What about the use of '+' instead of '&'? Is the cutoff limit still 156 chars? Any thoughts/views/ideas are most appreciated! Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | bradkrussell0 -
Can fun, slightly unprofessional text be good for conversion rates?
I operate on a freemium model. The three plans are currently called "Free", "Gold" and "Platinum". Besides being incredibly square and boring, these titles are also meaningless. I'm doing a slight redesign of my site, and the new (unreleased) site has a very fun, playful feel. I'm also trying to make everything more streamlined and obvious. I'm considering renaming the three plans "Boring Amateur", "Kick-Ass Amateur" and "Bona Fide Professional" on the registration page and simply "Boring", "Kick-Ass" and "Professional" elsewhere. There are lots of places on the site where I have to refer to "amateurs" vs "professionals" - these tags would make that easier to explain. Easier = more sales. What do you think about using unprofessional text like this? Is it too risky, possibly offending too many people and losing sales? Or is it a good eye-catcher? I know the best answer is "test it." But this is one of those changes that I don't want to have to put my users through too many times. Thanks for any thoughts!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | PatrickGriffith0 -
61.45% Shopping Cart Abandon Rate - How to troubleshoot?
Hello MozPeeps! I wanted to see if I could get some help on the best method for troubleshooting our abandoned shopping cart funnel. Maybe point me in the best areas to research, or what are the best tools to use, or an improved method for analyzing and interpreting the existing data for more clarity about what is happening. I have attached the screen shot that shows what's going on. This account is using a Magento shopping cart with a custom built checkout page that is trying to copy Overstock.com's checkout page. Here are my thoughts: 1. Use Clicktale to monitor the checkout pages in question to try and get a feel for what people are doing or why they are clicking off? 2. Use another tool (not sure which one) that allows us to monitor page load speeds for the checkout process to see if orders are being hung up by slow loading pages. 3. Or, maybe 62% is not an uncommon abandoned cart rate and therefore we should just focus on automating abandoned cart follow up emails for the customers. Thanks in advance for any help! funnel-goal-visualization.jpg
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JerDoggMckoy0