2019
2019
Five Ways To Improve Your Website Bounce Rate and Why You Should
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Join Matt and Chris for another thrilling episode of the Best SEO Podcast, featuring “Five ways to improve your website’s bounce rate (and why you should)” by Syed Balkhi. TRANSCRIPT:

Chris: Hi and welcome to the SEO Podcast: Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burres, owner of eWebResults.

Adam: And I’m Adam Gregory.

Chris: Adam Gregory!

Adam: That’s right.

Chris: He’s an SEO Guru here at eWebResults. Hi and welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. I wanted to jump right into– it’s a really short review. It’s from [00:28 – Nedjula Heideman], and it is of course–

Chris & Adam: 5 stars!

Chris: That was awesome. “I love to listen to their podcast and their professionalism!” as you can see already, we are incredibly professional. We are broadcast–

Adam: Punch in the face to them?

Chris: Yeah, punch in the face to you. Yeah, [00:45 – Nedjula Heideman] for that 5 star review. We appreciate you. We are broadcasting live here from Houston, Texas, and Adam and I– we actually like, we are your–

Chris & Adam: Results Rebels!

Chris: Everybody here at eWebResults is a results rebel. So if you’re tuning in to the podcast for the first time: Howdy, welcome to the podcast.

Adam: That’s right.

Chris: We’re glad you’re here. If you’ve tuned in to the podcast before, you know what we’re going to skip. Each and every week we run a contest, and the contest goes like this. If we get a review – I just read one – and we get 10 shikos– Adam, I mean you’re here, not that many people have been seen on camera, you’ve been on camera on this podcast once?

Adam: Once in the geofencing podcast.

Chris: Right.

Adam: That was last year. Actually that was almost a year ago because I just hit my year with the company last month.

Chris: And we’re like, “Welcome to the company, get on the podcast.”

Adam: Yes, basically.

Chris: What is a shiko?

Adam: Shiko: share, like, follow.

Chris: There we go. And if you’re doing a share, or a like, or a follow, in your head you need to be hearing:

Chris & Adam: Shikow!

Chris: If we get 10 shikos and we get a review, then we skip the part where we tell you how to leave us a review to the end of the podcast. So we’re going to do that. What we will do– yeah, let’s do that. Also if you’re tuning in again then you might be looking for tips. We have a lot of tips, you can get our resources, you can get our resource guide, you just need to go to I think it it’s eWebResults.com/tips. It’s right there in my notes /tips.

Adam: Lots of resources. I was actually in there the other day and the team has built out so many different things.

Chris: You’re like, “Wow!”

Adam: Yeah, there’s like a domain authority checker, keyword builder thing.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: It’s just really cool and there’s lots of new tools coming.

Chris: We could call that a keyword multiplexer.

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: I like that, I like the sound of that. So basically you take the keywords and then make all the iterations of separate keywords together. All of that is available at eWebResults.com/tips. Today we are reading an article from Syed Balkhi. I think that’s how you say his name. Punch in the face to you Syed. It’s, “Five Ways to Improve your Website’s Bounce Rate (and Why You Should).” And I don’t know if you’ve read this and come up with a lot of tips and like–

Adam: Well I mean, I spend all my time in the SEO like–

Chris: Realm.

Adam: Dungeon or whatever

Chris: We actually have like Team SEO, Team PPC here at eWeb, and Adam is definitely Team SEO.

Adam: Not to knock PPC, I like PPC.

Chris: It’s all valuable.

Adam: Every bit of it is valuable.

Chris: It’s why we have it in this company, if it wasn’t valuable, it wouldn’t be here in this company, that is for sure. Let’s see, we’ve done that, we’ve done that. Hey! If you would like a t-shirt, we have t-shirts here and we have some really cool ones, what’s your favorite t-shirt?

Adam: Mine is the one that I kind of came up with. I kind of ripped off the idea, but we’ll say that… Well anyway, it’s the one that says like SEO, and PPC, and Internet Marketing, and Remarketing. It’s the red–

Chris: So like text?

Adam: Yeah, the text all the way down.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: That’s the one that’s my favorite. But I also like this one, if you guys can see.

Chris: Right now, he’s got the logo, blazing the logo. You can get t-shirts. We got all sorts of t-shirts, internet marketing shirts. All you got to do is go to eWebResults.com/Swag.

Adam: Also, also, I was thinking this the other day– so just to get the users and community involved: if you have ideas for a t-shirt–

Chris: Yeah, send them.

Adam: Send them.

Chris: Yeah, send us a picture and maybe send– Because that’s how we make them, we’d be driving down the road and see some billboard and are like, “That would be cool as an internet marketing t-shirt. Let’s go ahead and like get it over there.”

Adam: Maybe you’ll see your t-shirt design up.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. And you can buy it directly from our website. Again that’s eWebResults.com/Swag. If you would like a free website analysis, you can get that free website analysis by going to our website, and not surprisingly, filling out the free website analysis form. That’s really how that works. You get a lot of value out of that website.

Adam: Oh man. I sit out here everyday and listen to Alyssa do a lot of the recordings. Because the cool thing is if you don’t have time, we’ve figured out a way to get you this website analysis.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: And so we’re making these videos and sending them out. And man these videos are so detailed and so good, that I mean Alyssa is just knocking out of the park. I see her everyday, she’s probably doing 10 or 15 website analysis.

Chris: So really we like to say, or I like to say, and then now I’m saying it, so maybe the team will start saying that the podcast is kind of the heartbeat of the company, right? It kind of expresses the personality and the desire to give away value.

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: So anytime somebody is interacting with us, the team is committed to giving away value, right? How do we give value? So that free website analysis, it’s not just like, “Hey, great! Website analysis: get to our next step.” No, no, no. It’s: let me deliver value. Let you walk away from this experience, and we’ve got testimonials, just about that first initial call.

Adam: Oh, yeah.

Chris: Walk away from this experience like being really glad that I went through it and with lots of to-do action items to make improvements in your marketing. So you can get that by going to our website eWebResults.com and filling out the form. So that is the pod– that is the potatoes, not the podcast. That is the potatoes of the podcast, it’s time to jump into the meat. Again, this is from Syed Balkhi, “Five Ways to Improve your Website’s Bounch Rate (And Why You Should).” Right? So it’s a good point of like, why do you even want to bother with your bounce rate? We’re one of the weird companies that would actually be okay if you had 100% bounce rate. Did you know that?

Adam: No.

Chris: No? Because if they go to one page, and they call, and they leave the website, that’s technically a bounce.

Adam: True, true.

Chris: And they called.

Adam: Okay, yeah. True.

Chris: So that’s actually closer in line to our goal. It’s like: get them to the one page that they need, have enough information on that one page that they can fill out a form. By the way if they fill out a form they get to a thank you page, so it’s not technically a bounce. Or they pick up the phone and call, even better for most of our clients. So 100% bounce rate may not be that bad. It depends on what kind of conversions you’re having. And we’re all about conversions. That’s why we’re eWebResults. Why you typically want to adjust– make changes so that your bounce rate is decreased, or at least your Time on Site is increased right?

Adam: Yes.

Chris: Because they are different. You can spend a lot of time on one page and then leave, and it’s still a bounce. Like a bounce is just visiting one page, it’s not visiting multiple pages. So “Five Ways to Improve Your Website’s Bounce Rate.” “Create content consistently,” alright? You got any bullet points out there Adam? I do, because I’ve got one–

Adam: I do too.

Chris: Alright, so you go first.

Adam: Okay, so when we talk about creating content consistently, it doesn’t mean like write words on a page and stick them up there. The content needs to be rich, high-value content.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Adam: There needs to be a reason why someone is going to be on that page and say, “You need to answer that question.” Go through Google, look at– I’m looking at the computer screen because I’m so used to putting stuff up here.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: But it’s like do a search, ask Google a question and then you get that block of questions. Go through those questions.

Chris: And answer those questions, yeah.

Adam: See what people have answered those questions. Those are what people are looking for. You can also scroll all the way down to the bottom, and look and see what other people are searching for. Those are simple tips and tricks to kind of grab what people are searching for.

Chris: To get like a guideline of what kind of content that you might want to be creating.

Adam: Yes.

Chris: By the way, I feel like Mickey Mouse up here because your voice is so very deep. And I feel like I’m talking up like this. According to Hubspot, companies that publish 16+ blog per month got 4.5 times more leads than companies that published 0 to 4 monthly posts. Right, that’s a pretty big jump from 0 to 16, from 4 to 16.

Adam: And for someone that sees most of our clients are 2 to 4 blogs a month, there’s still a lot of traction. 16 I think if you’re like national: maybe.

Chris: In a super competitive industry.

Adam: Super competitive, like you’re McDonald’s or something, I guess you could say.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: Like those are the times that you’ve got to. But really, I mean that’s just a big jump.

Chris: From 4, 4’s a good amount of articles. So one of the things that we decided very early on when we’re doing SEO for our clients is: we can’t rely on our clients to create the content, right? Because some clients, most clients, will never make the content. Some clients we have a hard time just getting on the phone, right?

Adam: I think, what is it that Aaron says? If your strategy relies on the content–

Chris & Adam: On the client.

Adam: It’s a bad strategy.

Chris: So this may sound bad, but work with us. So if the client relies on the customer, then– no, I’m sorry. If the concept–

Adam: If you’re relying on your client as an account manager to get you a lot of this stuff, it’s kind of a bad strategy because a lot of times clients–

Chris: It’s the strategy, yeah.

Adam: Because a lot of times the clients– I mean we get it, you guys have a job, that’s why you hired us to do the marketing.

Chris: So we’ve got a team in place to make the videos for you, write the content for you. So that’s– create content consistently. Was there anything else you wanted to add on to that content?

Adam: No, no. That’s it on that one.

Chris: Number #2, right? So, “Five Ways to Improve Your Website’s Bounce Rate,” number #2, “Add images and video.” Right?

Adam: Well we know how excited Matt gets about talking about video SEO, and where it’s kind of going, and how big it’s going up.

Chris: What was it? In 2020, like 90% of traffic will be video. I don’t know how many videos do you watch on–

Adam: I do a lot of searches now through Youtube actually. Because I’m like, “I’d really just watch the video and find out what I need to find out, than go read in a bunch of blogs.”

Chris: Yup.

Adam: And so that’s– yeah.

Chris: Make sure you’re in the shot.

Adam: Oh, I’m sorry.

Chris: For those Youtube people out there, I’m making sure that Adam is in the shot so you can see all of Adam. Yeah, what is it? So we can make a recommendation about what size of videos. It’s also images, so really we talk regularly about having different media, right? So have images, have video, have audio, right? So have audio. So we’ve got clients where we ended up putting up audio reviews, if they were able to record a call where somebody was leaving them a review. Then yeah, let’s get that content up on the site.

Adam: It’s an original. Like you want original. So just to kind of speak on that: had a guy, a client, who I did like 50 videos for and they were all testimonials. So 25 of them were just text.

Chris: Right.

Adam: They were like 20 seconds long, and then the other 25 were before and after shots of like what he was doing.

Chris: Right.

Adam: And putting those on Youtube, pointing the links to their website. It works. because Google sees it as all just fresh content, it’s new, it’s original. And so that’s– and it’s keeping people on his site because they’re watching a video for a minute and a half to two minutes. So that’s another thing that helps with the bounce rate.

Chris: Yeah, and that’s good for RankBrain, where people have actually come to your webpage, they stay there longer and because they’ve stayed there longer, Google’s like, “Oh, they must of gotten– they were satisfied by the content that was on that page. So let me bump that page up in the search engine results.” So yeah, a lot of value there. So make sure you add images and video. Number #3, “Speed up your website.” Now I know step one as we onboard a new client: Adam check the speed, and/or Adam as I was going through the sales process with this client, their website is incredibly slow. Speak a little bit about kind of speed and what you guys do.

Adam: You keep saying Adam, but we all know what you really mean to say is Ethan.

Chris: Ethan, yeah. Punch in the face to Ethan.

Adam: So our technical guy, Ethan, he’s really breaking down the speed of the website. You know, using a lot of the tools and this article talks about pulling up GT Metrics, putting your website in there and seeing what comes back. It’s going to give you like an A, or a B, or a C.

Chris: A waterfall. The grade, yeah.

Adam: The grade through. And so you can see what you’re doing. And it could be something as simple as: you didn’t optimize your images, so they’re large images, you can take that and throw it into TinyPNG– just do a Google Search for TinyPNG. I drop them in there twice so I double strike them and put them up. It doesn’t make the pictures grainy or anything like that, but it shrinks it for the site. And you want to do that with videos, pictures. Like that’s helping speed. You also want to make sure the cache. Okay, so plugins are good and bad.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: You don’t want too many plugins.

Chris: For sure.

Adam: So that can be a problem, but like having a plugin that clears the cache rather than doing it manually. WPSmush is another one.

Chris: So just what that is. And we use a lot of– that’s good. We use a lot of WordPress. The sites that we build are in WordPress. Most of the clients that come to us have WordPress. It represents, I don’t know, I think it’s 70% of the websites that are out there are on WordPress. Some very large number. And so you’ve got these plugins that go in there. What cache is is WordPress like has a footer over here, has a header over there, has images over there. Maybe if it’s an e-commerce, has products over there, has the pricing in the database. So when a page is requested, WordPress has to put all of these pieces together. What cache does is it says, “Hey, for this URL I put all these pieces together, and unless you exclude it, I’m going to make a hard copy – a hard HTML copy of that page, so the next person who requests that page I don’t have to put the pieces together. They’re already put together and I just send it.” That’s what cache does, and that’s why you’ve got to clear your cache sometimes and you can get some latent issues when you update a page and the cache isn’t cleared.

Adam: Like when a client calls and goes, “I thought you changed that on your website.” And you’re like, “I did.”

Chris: I did.

Adam: And then it turns out it was the cache.

Chris: You got to make sure you clear the cache. So that’s what cache is. It certainly speeds up the site. I don’t know if you had any more.

Adam: I wanted to hit– and this is a little bit off subject, but we talked about WordPress and you kind of went into that. Something that I think that people don’t understand a lot is why I– well we as a team prefer WordPress site over everyone else. Is because of the SEO. WordPress you have 100%. Like someone that has like a squarespace site or whatever, it’s like a 60-65% that you can really–

Chris: In terms of how much you can manipulate.

Adam: How much you can really manipulate to get the SEO value. And so I just kind of wanted to add that on there. If you are looking to build a website, or you’re looking and want to build a new website, and you’re on an old platform, really look into into WordPress. Because it’s just a better platform in my opinion, especially for SEO. I’ve almost competed with sites before and the WordPress is going to win every time.

Chris: Yup. So we’re in the process with one of our clients– so we get clients who are on other platforms, Drupal is one of the platforms. I’m trying to think of one of the others. Anyway, so they’re either big platforms–

Adam: ModX.

Chris: Yeah, ModX is another platform, right? And so yeah, we can work in those, and we can continue to do some SEO in those, and we’re in the process of rebuilding those websites because there’s so much value in doing them from an SEO perspective in WordPress.

Adam: And don’t think you can’t scale a SquareSpace or a ModX website. You can get those sites to rank really well, it’s just my opinion, and I think even within a lot of the community, just a WordPress–

Chris: It’s a lot easier.

Adam: It’s a lot easier.

Chris: I do to. Save your time some effort. Save yourself some effort.

Adam: Yes.

Chris: Alright, so speed up the site. One thing, just remember, 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds. Remember: how much searching is happening on mobile devices. We’ve all been there. Like it’s painful, you click a search result and you’re like, “Alright, load page.”

Adam: “I’m out.”

Chris: Yeah, that.

Adam: It is 3 to 4 seconds, I’m out.

Chris: Yup. Get a faster website. So that’s why you want to do it, and there’s a lot of good tools listed here. So yeah, Syed’s done a good job. Number #4, “A/B test.” So what is an A/B test?

Adam: Split testing.

Chris: It’s split testing, right? Right? I’d throw that back at you. Right, so that’s where you’ve got two versions of a page, and usually it is a page, right? And you’ve changed something on one page versus the other page. And you’re testing it to see which one gets better results. When should you be A/B testing?

Adam: Always.

Chris: Yes. That is correct. Always. Like just always be A/B testing, like even when you think you’ve reached the pinnacle of your conversion rate, right? Because that’s really what you’re after, better conversion rate. Even when you think that you’ve reached the pinnacle, keep tweaking it, keep changing it. Change the button color, change the title, change how long the text is. Just keep changing it and you may only run– so A being your most productive, your best conversion rate, you may only run 10% of traffic to the other one, but keep changing it because you might hit on something that really takes it to the next level, right? So you always want to be doing A/B testing. I don’t know. I say, yeah. When we say A/B test everything: we mean everything. Title, button color, button size, form.

Adam: Where the CTAs are placed.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. All of that. And you know, what the CTAs are. So make sure you do that. Alright, so this is Number #5 of “5 Ways to Improve your Bounce Rate.” “Target abandoning visitors,” right?

Adam: Remarketing.

Chris: So there’s two pieces to this, right? Because this is abandoning visitors.

Adam: Ah true, true.

Chris: They have not yet abandoned. And I think it’s a good idea because remarketing doesn’t actually help the bounce rate, but it does help the conversions. And it’s so important we will mention it, but those– Did you know this is the stat for this particular article that Syed came up with, “Did you know that over 70% of people who leave your website will never return?” And we have another stat the we use regularly which is: “95% of people will visit your website and not take an action.” Right, so they’re slightly different. But it’s huge how many people won’t take an action and won’t come back. And so what you should do– he’s talking specifically about, there’s exit-intent popups. This has all happened to everybody.

Adam: And–

Chris: Yeah?

Adam: And you know, I was reading this. To me, and maybe it’s just me – and I think it could be anybody – that could be kind of spammy, but in the same way it does kind of grab your attention one more time while you’re about to leave.

Chris: And we’re kind of used to it, right? You’re like, “Okay, an exit-intent.”

Adam: Exactly, I think like as time’s gone, I’m used to a popup. Like when I get to a website now, like a popup comes up I keep moving.

Chris: It’s really like the infomercial guy going, “But wait there’s one more thing! Before you leave.”

Adam: What’s the one– there’s a site that I go to all the time and the little chat is like, “Are you still there?” And I kind of like that. I can’t remember the site of whose it is, but there’s a site that says that.

Chris & Adam: “Are you still there?”

Chris: I think it’s First Capital.

Adam: Yeah, I think you’re right.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. “Are you still there?” Alright, so exit-intent. So that’s as they’re moving the mouse, so you’ve got Javascript that’s on the page that’s tracking where the mouse is. And as the mouse is moving towards the back button, or moving towards the close the browser button, or change the tab button or whatever, really moving towards the top of the page. You kind of do this last popup and say, “Hey, before you leave make sure you subscribe to our newsletter,” or whatever. Actually they say that not only can exit-intent popups improve your bounce rate, but they can also boost your sales instantly. So it’s probably worth doing that. Alright, so Syed, he’s an entrepreneur, marketer and CEO of Awesome Motive. So punch in the face to you Syed, it was a really good article. Alright, so if you liked this podcast, we’re going to ask you to do three things. Go ahead and tell three people about the podcast, and if you have a Twitter account, we’re going to ask you tweet #SEOPodcast: this is Podcast #452. Tag us: @SEOPodcast, @eWebResults. Matt’s not here so it’s going to be @eWebChrisBurres I think.

Adam: @AdamGregory821

Chris: Is it?

Adam: Yeah, I think it’s 821. I haven’t been on my Twitter in a long time.

Chris: Me either. Yeah, so make sure you tag us in it. If you’re looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet. Do you know what that is?

Adam: Us?

Chris: It’s the internet, and we’re the kings of the internet. So you’re close.

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: It’s the internet. Go ahead and call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. 713-592-6724. We are moving to new offices, so you guys are going to see videos, and there’s going to be a new location in the podcast. Maybe on the next podcast, but probably not. But the podcast after that will probably have a new location. So we are really excited about that. Just a phenomenal facility that we’re moving into. If you have a referral, we have a referral program. Actually I just cut referral checks today. It’s kind of fun to cut referral checks. Thank you for sending those clients to us. We did work for them, they paid us, we paid you.

Adam: That’s right.

Chris: Really good program. That’s it. So we were filmed live here at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas 77092, and Adam has a tip.

Adam: Alright.

Chris: An SEO tip.

Adam: So I have a really good SEO tip. It’s a basic SEO tip, but you know what? Nobody’s doing it.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: It’s filling out those categories and tags.

Chris: On WordPress.

Adam: On WordPress and on your post, and making sure that their categories are matching your services, and the description, SEO, meta description, the full just everything. Categories and tags: start there.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: I promise you.

Chris: You’ll see results.

Adam: You’ll see results.

Chris: Yeah, that’s a pro tip. Yeah. We might be editing that out. That’s what kind of tip that is. No, that’s really good. That’s what we’re about is giving back to the community. So take that and run with it. We were filmed live here in Houston. If you would like a transcript, video or audio of this podcast, you can get that at our website: eWebResults.com. You guys have made us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. So thank you, thank all y’all, you guys are awesome.

Adam: Yes, and our Youtube subscribers, everybody.

Chris: So go ahead and leave us a review. Go to our Facebook page, Facebook.com/eWebResults. That’ll get you to our Facebook page. Go ahead and leave a review there please, and also you can get to our G+ account, our Google My Business account just by– and it’s super simple you go to eWebResults.com/G+ and that’ll actually take you to the search, the SERP: the Search Engine Results Page of us. And then actually what will popup right there in front of you super easy is how to leave the review. Click that 5 stars and then fill that in, and we’ll probably be reading yours on air. So thank you. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burres.

Adam: I’m Adam Gregory.

Chris & Adam: Bye bye for now.