Lower Your Bounce Rate By Using Suggestive Links

Posted By: Josh Kohlbach - August 10, 2010

One of the easiest ways you can improve your blog right now is by telling your visitors what to do next. What I call a suggestive link. That doesn’t mean that it’s rude, just that it gives the visitor a little nudge. Call it a “call to action”, a “call to arms”, a “do this right now or I’ll break your legs”, whatever floats. It’s the power of suggestion at work.

These kinds of cheeky suggestions are just the kind of hints your visitors need to stay on your site. Sometimes you just have to provide more material for them to consume.

It can be a simple as a few links in the last paragraph/sentence, or as complex as an automated post recommendation section like my friend Marko does on How To Make My Blog.

How To Make My Blog Post Recommendations

You can also drop hints in many other ways and it all relates back to what your website’s primary purpose is. For some it may be to get their material seen, other it could be to help out other bloggers, or it can be simply to get another subscriber (guess which one I am?)

Laying Down The Path

Now that you know your primary purpose, you’re getting a handle on inter-site linking, you can start thinking about laying down a path through your website (I’ll have a detailed post on this soon).

To start with, end of post linking or suggestive links with a clear call to action (think, “Click here to …”) giving instructions on what to do next can really increase your readers engagement and that’s what getting your bounce rates down is all about – increasing engagement.