When people click through a pay-per-click advertisement, or a link on your message board, or guest blogging bio, you want them to go to your webpage and stick around. You want them to read your content, see your offers, and then finally take the next step to answer your calls to action. But, many people do bounce off the site. Bouncing means they visited but left quickly.

You can view your bounce rate in Google Analytics. So, how can you reduce your bounce rates?

* Increase Speed – When you can increase the loading speed of your website, you’re going to automatically have fewer bouncing visitors. People are impatient and do not like to wait around for something to load.

* Don’t Burn Out People’s Retinas – Certain colors, like blue and gold, do not translate well to online reading. In addition, you need to space out your paragraphs differently than you would for print. It’s okay to separate your text into more paragraphs for online reading.

* Improve Your SEO – Search engine optimization is important for your website. If you have a lot of bounces you may be using the wrong type of content to attract your ideal audience. Or, worse, your content is boring. Improve the content and the SEO, and you’ll have fewer bounces.

* Study Your Target Audience Better – Another factor in bounce rates is poor understanding of your target audience. If your advertisements, blog posts and content marketing (and any marketing for that matter) is not well-targeted to your audience, then you need to improve your targeting.

* Avoid Pop-Ups – Some pop-ups are fine, but you need to not have them show up the moment someone gets to your site. A better option is to have a slider come up from the bottom right of the website or for the pop-up to appear as the person is trying to exit the website. Immediate pop-ups scare people away from your website.

* Create Natural Navigation – The best navigation is not very noticeable but naturally leads your visitors to where they want to go. Don’t be clever with link and button names. Instead, be direct about where the link is going to send your visitor, and use less navigation on the front page. Having fewer choices will avoid confusion.

* Use Proven Design Techniques – Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Look at well-made websites that have good traffic ratings. You can get a plugin for Chrome to find out what page rank each site has.

Link to plugin – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-seo-statsformerly-pa/hbdkkfheckcdppiaiabobmennhijkknn?hl=en

* Know the Reason for Your Website – If you don’t know the purpose of your website then no one else will know either. Ensure that you have mapped out the website before building it so that you know and your visitors know that the website is clear about its message.

Bounced traffic has a variety of causes that you need to research. You can use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to help you discover ways to reduce your bounce rate. But, one of the most important things is to ensure that your website speaks to your target audience so that you attract the right people in the first place.