Tag Archives: blogging

How to minimize the bounce rate on your blog

In case you’re wondering what’s bounce rate, it is the percentage of people leaving your blog (or website) after checking just a single link, and that too, within a few seconds.

High bounce rate is bad, low bounce rate is good.

You need to come up with ways to minimize the bounce rate on your blog. A low bounce rate is good for your conversion and your search engine rankings. I will explain how and why.

Initially when I started writing this post, I had intended to simply publish a couple of paragraphs and then link to another blog post from another website that originally seeded the idea in my mind.

But on second glance, that particular blog post is not written to add to the topic and in fact, most of the topics are a regurgitation of unrelated topics. Such blog posts increase the bounce rate.

In fact, I just discovered that I have written this blog post on a similar topic: How to improve your bounce rate with quality content writing.

Why is a low bounce rate important for your blog’s SEO?

As you have read above (or in the blog post I have linked above) your bounce rate is the ratio between the total number of people coming to your blog and the number of people leaving your blog immediately after arriving at the link, without visiting other sections.

Think about it from Google’s perspective.

The search engine user comes across your link for a particular search query, clicks it and comes to your blog.

She feels that the information she is looking for is not present on this link. She so disappointed that she doesn’t even try to check out the other sections of your blog.

She immediately comes back to Google and carries on with the search.

Google doesn’t solely want to depend on its search algorithms because its search engineers know that no matter how advanced the algorithms become, people who want to exploit the logic, sooner or later will.

But people’s response to your content cannot be cloned, and this is why, Google takes into account the response your content gets from its users.

When someone finds your link on Google and clicks it, Google tracks the behavior of the user. Currently your link has a particular ranking, let us say, it is on the fourth position of the second search result page, for a certain keyword or a search query.

The user comes back to Google within seconds and either tries out a different query or clicks other links.

This tells Google that the information she was looking for after using that particular keyword or search query, isn’t present on your link.

If multiple people do the same thing, Google concludes that your link doesn’t deserve its current rankings for that particular keyword or search term and consequently, lowers the rankings of that link.

It’s quite logical actually. If your link is not solving the problem for that particular search query, it doesn’t deserve to rank there.

Now, reverse the situation.

The search engine user uses a particular keyword or a search query and comes across your link on the second page at the fourth position.

She clicks the link and goes through the entire blog post. It takes at least a few minutes to read the blog post.

This tells Google that the content on that link is good enough to make her stay for some time.

She not just reads the content on the link, she also explores other links on your blog.

It tells Google that your blog contains useful information related to the search query used by her.

As a greater number of people show the same behavior, Google improves the rankings of that link for that particular keyword or search query.

Hence, the lower is the bounce rate for that link for the related keyword, the higher go its rankings.

A lower bounce rate is also important for your conversion.

The longer she stays on your blog, the greater is the chance that she may subscribe to your newsletter or check of the commercial section of your website or blog.

How to minimize your blog’s bounce rate?

Very simple. Deliver what you promise.

As explained above, why do people leave your blog immediately?

Because they were misled into visiting your blog.

They saw your title and clicked the link but when they came to your blog post, they realized that it’s not what they were looking for.

If this is not a one-off incident and there are multiple people who think that they have been misled (whether you are doing this intentionally or unintentionally), Google takes it as a high bounce rate and concludes that your link doesn’t deserve its current ranking for the related keyword or search query, and downgrades it.

Here are some steps you can take to minimize your blog’s bounce rate:

Provide specific answers to specific questions

In their pursuit to write long form content I have observed that many blog publishers try to cram as much information as possible in a single blog post.

In such cases, even when you have covered the topic mentioned in the title, it gets buried under extra details. Your readers are unable to find the exact piece of information they are looking for.

Google has tried to solve this problem at its own end: you must have observed that sometimes when you click a link, you are directly taken to the portion that gives you the answer for your query, and this portion is highlighted by a yellow marker.

But even for that to happen, you need to make sure that the answer exists in your blog post in such a manner that Google can locate it.

Long blog posts of 2000-4000 words have their importance, but you don’t always have to write them.

Sometimes you can write shorter blog posts that I trust to a particular question.

This will give you more satisfied visitors.

Write and publish blog posts catering to search intent

Since I have published multiple blog posts explaining search intent, for example, you can visit this blog post for a longer explanation – What is search intent and how knowing it improves your SEO – I won’t explain it again, but knowing the searcher intent of your visitors and then writing content accordingly, can bring down your bounce rate drastically.

In brief, search intent is the intention with which a search engine user uses a query.

She doesn’t always want to purchase from you. Sometimes she is looking for information.

When she finds out that instead of informing her, you are trying to sell something to her, she leaves immediately.

It can also be the opposite.

She wants to purchase something, but you go on and on educating her. She gets confused and leaves immediately.

Therefore, it is vital that you write and publish keeping search intent in mind.

Link to other blog posts from your existing blog post

Linking to other blog posts from your blog also saves you from creating duplicate content.

For example, in the above point, instead of explaining again what is search intent, I have simply hyperlinked to another blog post and if you want to know more about search intent, you can just go to that link.

This way, even if you’re unable to find what you’re looking for in the present blog post, maybe you will find the right information in the hyperlink.

Shorter paragraphs, smaller sentences, and headings

Simply put, make it easier to read your blog post. When people notice long strings of text going on and on, they feel intimidated and leave immediately.

Write in a conversational style. Write shorter sentences. Even if you want to express something complex, leave it for later.

Draw the reader in. Ask the right questions. Drop the right hints. Tantalize. Invoke interest.

If you can write three sentences out of a single, long sentence, do that.

Don’t have more than two sentences in a paragraph.

Organize different subtopics under different headings so that the reader can skim if she wants instead of reading everything, and still make sense of what you are saying.

In conclusion, minimizing your bounce rate or reducing it is crucial for not just improving your search engine rankings but also for improving your conversion rate.

It is not even difficult. Be truthful. Have a conversation with your reader. Sound enthusiastic. Provide short answers for short questions.

You don’t always need to show how much you know.

Sometimes, knowing enough to provide the right answer suffices.

Are you blogging regularly? Here is why you should

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Benefits of regular blogging.

In the beginning blogging started as a hobby movement. Publishing was being democratized on the Internet and many tools came to exist that would allow people to publish their thoughts and opinions without expensive software.

From Blogger.com to Movabletype to Tumblr, and everything in between, I have used practically every blogging platform, before finally settling with WordPress.

My website and my blog these days are powered by WordPress. Anyway, this is a side issue.

Once thousands of people started publishing their blogs regularly, they discovered that Google preferred blog posts over regular company web pages.

It wasn’t surprising. People shared more information through blog posts than through company web pages. The blogging content was more search engine friendly, especially when you used software like WordPress.

Most of the blog posts that you publish using WordPress are search engine optimized. These posts have SEO-friendly URLs. They have titles with the main keywords. People use headings and subheadings to create different sections. Many posts are interconnected through hyperlinks. Through the “Recent Posts” section, almost every post become scrollable.

Search engines like Google found blogs ideal for higher search engine rankings.

Soon the SEO community discovered blogs and started using blog posts to improve search engine rankings and to generate more traffic.

It worked wonders for many businesses. I definitely benefited from blogging. I still do.

Just as it happens with every technology and every trend, once a few people begin to benefit from it, more people want to benefit from it.

When more people benefit from it, they want to find faster ways to benefit from it. They begin to find workarounds. They begin to “exploit” loopholes and capabilities.

The same happens with blogging. These days almost every business website has a blog. Every entrepreneur knows that blogging is an essential part of search engine optimization. You have SEO plug-ins that tell you how to write (I recently uninstalled such plug-ins) to improve your search engine rankings. They tell you how many images are good and how many images are bad or whether you are repeating the keywords enough number of times or not.

Despite the fact that the search engine crawlers these days can crawl and index millions of pieces of content per second, the audience is still limited.

When you search for something, Google tells you that these many links have been found.

Content writing services – number of Google results.

Google is just trying to make you feel good that it has so much information for your queries. Of course, you’re not going to go through all these millions of links. At the most you’re going to check out the first and the second pages of search results.

Google may be crawling and indexing millions of links every day, the way people use this information hasn’t changed much. Most of the people still don’t go beyond the third page.

So, almost everyone is scrambling for the limited space.

This is where people begin to get disenchanted, and they lose confidence in the effectiveness of blogging. Not every blog post can appear on the first page. And that too, when you are competing with millions of blog posts for the same keyword or key phrase.

This is where they commit a mistake.

Don’t publish blog posts just to improve your search engine rankings

If you think that your blog exists only to improve your search engine rankings, you’re going to be in for disappointment.

The search engine benefits of blogging begin to show after some time. And that too if you blog regularly – 3-4 times every week.

Blogging definitely has SEO benefits and if you publish regularly, these benefits begin to manifest in a couple of months (provided you are publishing every day or every alternative day), but don’t just focus on improving your SEO.

The problem with just focusing on SEO is that then it becomes your primary concern. You want every post to rank well and for that, you take “measures” such as using keywords these many times, using the keywords in the title, and so on.

Yes, these things are important, and I strongly advise that you should use keywords in the title and in the copy even when you are not worrying much about your search engine rankings, but then there comes a time when instead of sharing your knowledge, you are constantly trying to improve your search engine rankings.

This becomes self-defeating. The more you try, the more you fail.

Is blogging no longer beneficial?

Blogging is still one of the best ways of improving your search engine rankings, engaging your audience and sharing your knowledge and experience.

Then why do so many people say that blogging is no longer beneficial?

They jumped on the blogging bandwagon just because they thought that blogging would improve their search engine rankings.

They had no intention of actually publishing engaging content to educate and inform and to add value. Their sole purpose was to exploit the platform to fill their websites and blogs with target keywords and key phrases.

The problem with this approach was, there were hundreds of thousands of people publishing blogs with the same attitude and the same approach.

How people search on Google and other search engines never changed. How many pages people were ready to check for the search results before giving up, never changed. The space was as limited as it was before.

The only thing that changed was, Google had more pages to crawl and index. The competition increased. The competitiveness of the keywords increased – it was harder to rank for the same keywords.

The more they tried to trick, the more “workarounds” they found, the smarter the Google ranking algorithm became at weeding out low-quality content.

Since these people mostly run behind razzmatazz, they began to find social media more attractive. They lost interest in blogging because well, running a successful blog is hard work. Rewarding, yet, hard work.

First they declared that email marketing is dead because they spammed the crap out of it – email marketing is still thriving and in fact, is more effective than it was 20 years ago.

Then they declare that blogging is no longer effective.

Blogging is still very much effective for those people who understand what blogs are for.

You need to understand that higher search engine rankings are a byproduct

Your higher search engine rankings are like money. How do you earn money?

Assuming you are not a swindler, or a robber, or a criminal in general (who work for the sole purpose of getting hold of money), you need to earn the money you have.

You are an engineer, and you are paid for your engineering skills. You are a web designer and you are paid for your web design skills. I am a writer, so, I’m paid for my content writing and copywriting skills. Famous performers become celebrities and they are paid for their ability to perform as well as for their celebrity status (which is, branding).

Hence, money doesn’t come to you for the heck of it. You do something else, and the money is a byproduct. Although, your ultimate goal is to earn as much money as possible, money can only come to you when you do something worth paying for. People, organizations, and businesses don’t just give you money because you exist. They give you money because you deliver something, or you satisfy some need.

The same happens with search engine rankings. Your rankings won’t improve because you desperately want to improve your rankings. Your rankings improve because you publish high quality content, content that people find useful. The more relevant your content is, the better search engine rankings you will enjoy. Hence, your search engine rankings are a currency.

This brings me back to the original question that I asked in the title of this blog post: Should you be blogging regularly?

This question was triggered by this Entrepreneur blog post that I came across yesterday: Why blogging should be on your weekly to-do list this year.

Blogging still delivers to those who understand the true essence of blogging – engaging audience by sharing valuable information.

The above Entrepreneur blog covers some important points about why you should be blogging regularly, but I will rewrite them here for my own audience.

Your blog gives reasons to people to visit your website multiple times

Familiarity builds trust. Whereas I definitely get new business queries from people who find my website on Google and have visited for the first time, people who actually end up becoming my clients (pay me for my services) have visited my blog or my website multiple times.

They have received my updates multiple times. They have read a few of my blog posts. They have come across my updates on LinkedIn.

Now, I’m not saying that I never get business from people who have just landed on my website – I definitely do – but most of my business comes from people who have visited my website multiple times.

This is true for almost every business. Nobody becomes your customer or client the first time he or she visits your website. People need some sort of familiarity. A blog that you regularly publish gives them a reason to access your content and consequently, become familiar to you, and then consequently, begin to trust you.

You get a chance to demonstrate your expertise through your blog

How do you convince people that you know your stuff? How do I convince people that I am a content writer who can provide engaging content to them and also help them improve their search engine rankings?

I regularly share my expertise on my blog. When people come to my blog, they know that I have covered practically every topic on content writing, content marketing and copywriting.

Hence, if you are looking for a content writer, do you feel confident working with a content writer about whom you don’t know much, or a content writer you are familiar with because he or she regularly shares his or her expertise through his or her blog?

Your blog gets you backlinks

As you regularly demonstrate your expertise in your field, people begin to respect you. They begin to look at you as an authority figure. After all, you need to have some knowledge to be able to write so much on your blog.

Also, very few people simply want to blow their own horn. They need validation.

Suppose I explain to you a particular method that can improve engagement on your website, I may also like to backup my claim by linking to another experienced content writer or digital marketing expert who says the same thing.

The more you blog, the more content you provide to other bloggers and publishers to link to. This improves your search engine rankings because backlinks are one of the most important requisites for higher search engine rankings. Especially the backlinks you earn through the strength of your content.

Regular blogging helps you build your mailing list

One of the biggest benefits of building a mailing list is that people trust you enough to share their email ID with you and give you access to their inboxes.

It shows they want to keep in touch. In case they are unable to visit your blog or website on their own, they don’t want to miss the great content that you are publishing. Subscribe to your mailing list only when you have something good to say regularly. They won’t be interested in you if you publish once or twice a month.

Regular blog publishing increases your search engine crawling rate

Google is constantly crawling the web to index new content and update existing content. But it needs to optimize its resources. If a website is updated once a month or once in two months, it’s no use sending out crawlers in its direction every day.

Hence, Google keeps track of websites that are published or updated frequently and then sets the crawl rate accordingly.

On one of my own blogs, I have observed that when I updated my blog multiple times in a day, my content was crawled and indexed within minutes. It was like, I published a blog post and then when I searched for it after a couple of minutes, it was there in the search results!

If you publish regularly then Google begins to crawl your website regularly. It means your content is crawled and indexed faster. Otherwise, it may take anywhere between one week or one month before your content begins to appear in search results.

In conclusion, blogging still holds the same benefits that it held a decade ago. It is still good for SEO. It is still good for engagement. It helps you promote yourself as an authority figure. It establishes you as an influencer. But only if you blog for the sake of blogging and not just for the sake of improving your rankings.

What is original content?

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Marketers and business owners are often worried about publishing original content on a regular basis.

Original content doesn’t always have to be a highly unique idea. I won’t go to the extent of saying that original ideas in this world are finite, but as someone wise has written, whatever was to be written, has already been written.

The blog topic you just came up with – hundreds of content creators may have already published blog posts, social media updates and videos on the very same topic.

Does it stop you from publishing a blog post on the same topic?

It shouldn’t.

An idea may not be original, but you take is always original.

When you write something about the same topic but with your own input and with your own writing style, the topic becomes original.

Be careful though, I’m not promoting plagiarism. What I’m saying is, there is nothing wrong in writing on a topic someone else has already written on.

Write in your own style. Use your own words. Inject your own experience. What is your point of view?

Just because you are writing it, it makes your piece of content unique and original.

Is longform content always better compared to shorter pieces?

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Is longform content always better than short form content

I have multiple times written about the benefits of longform content.

Longform content is very long blog posts and articles comprising of at least 2500 words, or more.

Medium-sized blog posts consist of webpages and blog posts having more than 1000 words and less than or equal to 2500 words.

Various SEO plug-ins will tell you that anything less than 1000 words isn’t good for SEO.

Is it really so?

This Content Marketing Institute blog post says that not every piece of content needs to be longform content.

The author of the above post rightly says that not every topic requires 2000 words.

Suppose, I want to explain to you what is longform content; do I really need 2000 words to explain what longform content means?

I can explain it in 200 words, or even less.

How do you decide how long your blog post or web page should be?

You can decide this by considering what sort of information will be useful to your readers.

If you write something like “15 tips on creating highly effective SEO content”, then, while explaining these 15 tips, you may go beyond 2000-3000 words. This is because you will be talking about 15 topics or 15 tips.

I have seen on many blogs that they unnecessarily go on throwing around statistics from scores of blog posts and articles just to inflate the number of words.

This can be exhausting for the readers. Even I find such articles off- putting, especially when I’m looking for some quick information to use.

Best thing to do is, create a roadmap for your blog post. If possible, use a mind mapping tool. Keep on adding points till you feel that they’re going to be useful to your readers. The moment you feel that a particular section is not going to be useful, remove it. It is not going to adversely affect your SEO.

Can you grow your business during the coronavirus pandemic?

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How to grow your business during the coronavirus outbreak

I know, talking about growing your business during this crushing coronavirus outbreak may seem a bit inappropriate.

The reality is, we all need to make a living, at least those who can.

We are all looking into a long spell of economic downturn coupled with a humanitarian crisis that hasn’t been seen for at least a century.

Hence, all the more reason to keep at least some parts of the economy moving and maintaining the cash flow.

This Green Entrepreneur blog post lists 7 strategies that can help you grow a business, or rather, a new business during the coronavirus pandemic.

Every challenge brings a collection of opportunities with it, and so has the current coronavirus pandemic.

With most of the businesses coming to a halt, you have time to focus on content marketing and expand your presence on the Internet. It will help you reach out to the existing market, however much it exists, and it will also give you a headway when the world gets on its feet.

The above blog post lists the following things you can do to grow your business while you maintain social distancing and remain confined to your home.

Enhance your content marketing effort

The good thing about content marketing is that content can be produced and published digitally. You don’t have to invest in raw material. All the tools that you need to publish useful content are already there with you.

You want to publish videos? You can use your mobile phone.

You want to publish podcasts? Even these can be done using your mobile phone or a standard microphone attached to your computer or laptop.

Want to publish blog posts? You can write them yourself or you can hire a content writer or a blog writer.

Content marketing helps you in normal days and it also helps you in these testing times.

Businesses haven’t disappeared. They are just recuperating, or they are functioning in a different manner. You have to reach out to them and content marketing is the best way to do so.

Work at improving your SEO

In the regular hubbub of doing business content marketing and SEO often take a backseat. This is a good time to focus on improving your search engine rankings and increase your search visibility.

The benefits of SEO come from many factors. As mentioned above, your search visibility improves. You get more targeted traffic. Your conversion rate improves. You get more back links because a greater number of people can find your content. You get more content to share through your newsletter.

There are various tools available that can help you figure out what sort of content you should publish to improve your SEO.

Invest in social media marketing

Facebook has nearly 2.45 billion monthly active users. At the time of the Covid-19 crisis, more people are logging on to Facebook to keep up with their loved ones and even to interact with their colleagues.

The same goes with other social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

Millions of your customers might be there. If you have never advertised on social media and social networking platforms, perhaps, now is the right time.

Be regular with email marketing

Email marketing needs to be a bit different during a pandemic. Ideally it should be different always, in the sense that instead of continuously pushing your products and services in front of people, you must add value to their inboxes.

Keep in touch with your subscribers. Send them good information about how they can keep themselves safe. If you feel that a bit of information can help them work better during their confinement, share it with them. The key is, provide value. They are going to remember you for that.

Aside from these actions, I would also suggest you spend more time on LinkedIn if you’re providing B2B services, like I do. Almost all my content writing and online copywriting clients come from the B2B segment.