How Incorporating Videos into Your Blog Will Improve Your Bounce Rate

If you have a blog, your number one goal should be to attract more visitors to your website. There are many strategies to attract them successfully, but you may be finding that they tend to leave quickly. Maybe they didn’t find what they were looking for or there was nothing there to hold their attention. As initially disappointing as that may be, the more important point is that their exit reduces your conversions and search engine results whilst increasing your bounce rate.

Although you can look to solutions such as implementing exit-intent technology onto your site to convert your abandoning visitors, you can also change things by simply incorporating videos into your homepage or landing page.

#MarketingTips: Video could be your website's answer to a better bounce rate. See how! Click To Tweet

What is Bounce Rate?

You may be familiar with SEO and conversion rates, but you may not be completely familiar with bounce rates. It’s the percentage of people who visited your site but didn’t stay for long or interact with it in any way. That means fewer sales for a business owner and fewer advertising opportunities for the average blogger.

There is no such thing as a “good” bounce rate. Rates vary depending on your industry, but a commonly acceptable scale is:

• 30% or less is excellent
• 30%-50% is average
• Over 60% is poor

If your goal is to convince each visitor to your site to spend $10 and your bounce rate is 60%, that means 60 out of every 100 of your customers aren’t buying and you’re losing $600 of revenue. Over time, that adds up. You’re not only losing money, but you’re also losing potentially loyal customers. Then, just to pour salt on it, your search engine rankings go down.

Having an excellent bounce rate is extremely important to every business and blog owner, but that doesn’t mean that a 50% rate is necessarily bad. However, you can still significantly improve your rate simply by incorporating video into your website.

Why Videos Work

There are many reasons why videos work better than text alone.

First, placing a video on your home or landing page instantly grabs your visitor’s’ attention and invites them to directly interact with your site by clicking the “play” button. Once they do, they have consciously decided to stay on your site, sometimes as much as two or more minutes than without a video being there. And, they will usually watch the entire video. You can even incorporate a WordPress slider plugin like Soliloquy onto your home page that enables site visitors to watch multiple videos one after the other, keeping them on the page for longer. With text alone, people may not read to the end unless the content is excellent.

People also follow social signals. When they see the number of likes, pins, shares, and tweets you have, they are more likely to watch your video and share it. Plus, people just like sharing videos, which is good news because when your video is shared across multiple platforms you have more engagement and you build quality backlinks that increase your video’s social relevance and your page’s ranking. The result is your SEO goes up and more people find you.

Two other reasons videos work are because people enjoy watching videos more than reading text and they often feel too busy to read at all. Videos help them get the information they want faster.

But first your visitors need to find you. Videos help here too. According to a study conducted in 2009, when you incorporate video into your site, you are 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google search results, which is highly coveted property.

But not just any video will work.

Choosing the Right Video

Videos with quality content now rank higher than those based on keyword optimization. In other words, Google is mainly concerned that the content in your video answers your visitor’s questions, which is why you’re seeing more informational or explainer videos than ever before.

It doesn’t mean that you should grab your phone and try a DIY recording (unless you are extremely skilled in doing that), and reposting cat videos won’t work either. Quality is paramount here or else your video will lose its effectiveness and all your work will be for nothing.

Consider hiring a professional videographer to create a video that fits into your budget. It’s a worthwhile investment that could result in overwhelmingly more sales and downloads.

General Guidelines

There are several general guidelines you should follow to create a video that engages and converts.

Keep It Short

Remember that a person’s attention span tends to be, unfortunately, rather short. In fact, one study found that the average person can only hold their attention for less than ten seconds. That gives you a very narrow window of time to engage your visitor and lead them deeper into your site.

With this in mind, keep your videos short, no longer than four minutes. One to two-minute videos are even better. If your video ends up being longer than four or five minutes, it’s time to redo it so it’s more concise.

Also, let your visitor know up front how long the video will be. People who know that a video won’t take up much of their time are more likely to watch.

Disable Auto-Play

Most people are annoyed by videos that begin playing without their consent. Yes, it may capture their attention, but they will be more apt to click off your site. People don’t care much for music blaring out of their speakers when they don’t expect it, and they don’t like getting clunked over the head with a sales pitch.

Disable auto-play and allow them to make the choice of whether to play your video. Those who press “play” are the ones committed to stay engaged and more likely to convert into a sale.

Answer Their Question

There’s a reason why someone landed on your site. They are looking for specific information that helps them find what they’re looking for or answer to a question. Make sure you give them that answer in an easy to understand way in your video.

If your content just ends up being a sales pitch or has little to do with your brand, they won’t hesitate to click off your site and move on to someone who does. Keep your content pertinent so your visitor finds value in your expertise.

Create Thumbnails

Make your video more visible by placing an appealing thumbnail preview of your video with a description of its content on your page instead of a text link to click. If your visitor can get an idea of what your message will be, they are more likely to watch.

Put It Above the Fold

Where you put your video is just as important as its content. Make your video more visible by placing it in the top section of your home or landing page so it gets noticed without having to scroll down.

Use an Accurate Title

Don’t sensationalize your titles. Keep them honest so your visitor doesn’t feel tricked. If they do, they most likely won’t return.

Don’t Forget the CTA

Videos don’t inherently equal more conversions. Help your visitor take the next step by including a call-to-action button directly next to the video.

More Value, Less Bounce

Quality videos placed appropriately on your site not only improve your bounce rate and increase your search engine ranking, but also make your visitor’s experience more enjoyable so they potentially keep coming back. Their loyalty matters, so give them what they want. That is a short, engaging video with valuable content.

Video guidelines that people (and @Google) love: Click To Tweet

This is a sponsored guest post provided by Zoe Price. If you’d like to learn more about sponsoring content for yourself, please click here.