There is a metric in Search Engine Optimisation language called “Bounce Rate”. The Bounce rate of a page is one of the most important metrics to keep an eye on and it’s one that Google keeps an eye on too. Bounce rate is essentially measured in percentages of people who arrive on a particular page, then leave the site without visiting any other pages.
Google has included bounce rate as a metric for us to track in Google Analytics, and one can infer from that inclusion alone that bounce rate is a considered attribute in Google’s algorithm.
Consider this: A person searches Google for “Wedding Photographer London” and your site is on Page 1, so the they visit your site and arrive on your homepage. If they then exit your site, without visiting any more pages – Google will assume that the search they performed, and the results they delivered were not a good match. If this happens too often then Google may start to deprecate your site for the given search term.
It’s a challenge for us photographers – especially those of use who are social photographers and rely heavily on our blogs. Inherently we drive traffic to, for example, a blog about a wedding. Many guests from the wedding will visit that page, but many will be completely uninterested in visiting any other part of our website.
The challenge is to make our content engaging, and our sites interactive, to encourage people to browse the site and commit to future content updates.
There are many mechanisms for making your content engaging on a photography blog – simply having gorgeous pictures isn’t one of them (though it is of course important). Here are some ways I try and make content engaging on my website.
Encourage Commitment & Comments
Ask, and ye shall receive…..or something like that. Encourage people to leave comments simply by asking them. At the end of each blog post its wise to ask people to leave a comment and share on Social Media. You can then use tools such as Comment Redirect (if you use WordPress) to encourage those people to sign-up to your RSS feed or a newsletter etc.
Allow Searching
Include a Search box on your website
How many of us have a search option on our website? Allowing people to search for further content is going to allow them to hone in directly to the content they want. Making it easy for people to find the content is key here.
Not only are you encouraging people to explore the site further, you are giving yourself a great chance of delivering the content to the visitor that they actually want (very few people will scroll onto page two or further in a blog post).
If you are using WordPress you can even utilise the search data to get an idea of what people are actually searching for (and if they are finding it), using the Search Meter plug-in.
Use Video
Seems odd to include this as essentially, the visitor will simply watch the video and do nothing else (if the video is doing its job).
However, I believe having some clips or videos on your site – demonstrating your photography, or your style….maybe an interview with you as a photographer or simply a favourite images of the year slide-show will entertain and draw in a visitor. If those videos are presented as a series, then even better as they are more likely to return or search the site for more, similar engaging content.
Encourage Exploration
At the bottom of my blog posts, where appropriate, I always include a “You may also be interested in” section which has SEO optimized links directly to fuhrer content within my website. Again, making it easier for people to navigate through the site and avoiding that dreaded “bounce”.
Calls to Action
Your visitors are humans. As humans, we need to be told what to do. All marketing campaigns (both online and off) have some kind of call to action and each piece of content on our websites should also have these calls to action.
Consider encouraging people to comment on blog posts or share on Social Media (you can use the icons at the bottom to do just that for this article if you wish 
). Always encourage people to do something at the end of a piece of content – don’t just leave them hanging. Push them around your site and drive them to more contextually related content.
So, remember, simply getting people to your website is not enough – you must encourage them to become “fans” and explore your site. Make them hungry for more content and give them ways to signup to be notified of new content etc.
Good luck! Remember, please feel free to share on Twitter, Facebook et al and I’ll respond to any questions you may have in the comments below.
Kevin
Very useful information here Kevin & a lot to think about. Thank you very much for the post.
Yep – that really has got me thinking! Good stuff.
Kevin – you really should give talks on this stuff
Thanks.
Dav
Hi Kevin,
This is a problem that’s really going to bite people out there that create content light “entry pages” that are optimised for a search term such as “wedding photos at the bingham” without the person ever having actually done anything there except have a coffee on the balcony and take a photo of the garden. The bounce rate of that kind of content is enormous, I know because I’ve been busy removing all of that stuff from my own website since looking at bounce rates : )
The second big problem is creating links that aren’t relevant to the page they, err, link to. For example Wedding Photography on the Moon isn’t going to do your bounce rate much good if it links to a page about Wedding Photography in Berkshire that the searcher instantly closes. Of course, one way around this is to put lots of text on the page and make them read through it looking for the relevant term or, even better, leave the page open to read later (it’s thought that a page being open for as little as 20 seconds is good enough for it to not register as a bounce”.
Never knew what a bounce rate was until now. Thanks Kevin for those pearls of wisdom…:)
Hey Kevin! Great article! Thought I’d engage, and get your opinion
– I have a post ‘Whalton Village Hall’ and visitors who land there get a fairly detailed ‘review’ of the place as a venue – except my bounce rate is pretty high (even though to my mind its a relevant post), and I also thought bounce rate is when people leave within a few seconds? Without reading the content… Is bounce rate actually where the visitor could spend 10 minutes reading said blog post, but ,importantly, not click through to something else? Hope that makes sense! Thanks everyone!
You are right Matt – it’s noted in a few seconds – but that is generally enough time for people to disappear any way. It’s a problem for all of us with photography type sites and that’s why I encourage actively trying to engage with the visitor to encourage them to move further into the site.
Great stuff – thanks Kevin, I’ve taken your advice, and added some engagement options – its easily my visited post, GA is telling me its getting around 120 pageviews/month – so I want to utilise these visitors more, so have added a number of links to further (hopefully!) interesting content.
Great stuff!
M
Matt,
If you are doing a review of venues, why not try just putting images of the venue’s exterior, and then in the review a link to a gallery or posts of wedding blogs you have done at that venue and invite them to visit those.
Eg. Why not visit my gallery of Whalton Village Hall wedding images, to see how this fantastic venue could look like for your wedding.
I am planning on doing that for my website.
Hope this helps.
Gary Smith
Excellent article Kevin – so many people think it’s about stuffing posts with keywords and not about whether the reader’s actually going to get anything out of it & therefore want to come back!
Hi Kevin,
I haven’t read the whole article yet and I already have a burning question regarding bounce rate.
I used to have a clikpic site which I hated, my average bounce rate was around 20-25% (i have no idea if this is good or bad). I moved to pro photo blogs. My website has thrived and done really well and got a lot more business. However I noticed my bounce rate is now around the 40-45% mark. I thought this was odd and months ago put it down tot he fact that my prices page is part of my drop down contact page (making it easy for brides to contact me once got an idea of my prices which they often go for first). Now, I have noticed through a little experimentation that when someone clicks on my drop down prices/contact page it doesn’t register with analytics (or I assume google) as a page viewed. I haven’t really cared until now (many months later)…
If a bride finds my site, heads for ‘prices’ as many do, then exits, it wont be registering as a page viewed. If my prices page was a separate page, it would. If this is true, my bounce rate will be much higher (which it is) and therefore will this we calculated by the googlebots.
Kevin, does this appear true? what do you know on this?
Many thanks
David Stubbs
That shouldn’t be the case David and if it is you would need to take it up with NetRivet – but it really shouldn’t exhibit that behaviour.
You may just find that because you have a more SEO friendly site you are moving up the rankings for lots of phrases and by inference that will lead to a higher bounce rate.
Thanks for the reply Kevin. In analytics, there is no mention anywhere of my pricing/contact dropdown at all. It is as if it doesn’t exist. I have tested myself from a friends computer by visiting my site’s home page, looking at the pricing/contact drop down, then exiting, all done at a slow-ish pace (minute+). On my analytics it recognised my visit as just seeing 1 page, the home page.
I’m going to try having a discrete pricing page for a while and see if it makes any difference at all.
Thank you again Kevin, such valuable information and food for thought.
David Stubbs
Right! I have create a discreet ‘prices’ page on my website and going to see if that effects my pages viewed and bounce rate on analytics. I’m convinced it will. Should be able to tell pretty quick as ‘prices’ is a popular page view for any site. Will update with my findings here…
Kevin, I would like to report my initial findings…
My average bounce rate before change: 58%
Average bounce rate after changing ‘prices’ page from dropdown: 42%
I really do believe that when a page is a ‘dropdown’, it doesn’t register with analytics as a new page.
Now my bounce rate appears to have improved, this might help improve my ranking… maybe? just maybe?
Kevin, what are your thoughts?
David Stubbs
This is a great article. I don’t have a particularly high bounce rate (my wish is to get more enquiries from the site).
When I post a blog of a wedding I have done, it gets posted on Facebook. I get a few visits from the Facebook links, and as you mentioned they are only interested in that post. I will try to encourage interaction from my visitors, especially to the blog.
Thanks for the post.
Gary