Putting on armor....and asking for it..

1. 85

   DzyMsLizzyposted 12 years ago

   :-(  WHOA!!  According to GA, my 'bounce rate' is over 86%!!!
   
   WTH???  I'm sure that is one reason I'm not earning any money, but I would like suggestions...and this is not a specific hub.. 
   
   If some of you kind folks with more experience than I could do a general look-see at my hubs/topics, and offer a suggestion or two....
   
   I've been trying very hard to write about hot-button topics lately, that should draw a lot of traffic, but I am puzzled that these seem to have lower ranks and traffic than some of my other stuff. 
   
   I am struggling greatly to get so-called "organic" traffic, I've done a lot of tag tweaking/adding as well as adding summaries...I need to convince my husband that HP is more than a writer-to-writer mutual admiration society; he's not buying it.

   replyreport
2. 70

   lrohnerposted 12 years ago

   It's fine -- better than mine on here, actually. A bounce is just someone who reads one page on a site and then leaves. With the variety of topics on here, it's to be expected. If you had a personal site all focused on one niche, you would want the bounce rate as low as possible.

   replyreport
   1. 85

      DzyMsLizzyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Oh. 
      Perhaps I should have added that in conjuction with the bounce rate,  the average "time on site"  is less than a minute and a half. 
      That's not long enough to read through an article, which is why I found the bounce rate worrisome.

      replyreport
      1. 70

         lrohnerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Well, that time on site is only bad if they're not leaving by clicking on an ad.
         
         When time on site is really low, it's usually one of two causes: either it's not the information they thought they were going to get, or the intro isn't compelling enough to draw them in.
         
         Check the keywords that are driving traffic to your hubs and see if they mesh with what you're writing about. On some of my  hubs, the travel ones in particular, most of the traffic I get is from crazy off-topic keywords that has nothing to do with what I wrote about. The only thing you can do in that case is futz around with your primary keyword or add some additional keywords into the mix.
         
         If the intro isn't compelling enough, you know what to do there.

         replyreport
         1. 85

            DzyMsLizzyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            ok---since I'm still in the learning curve big time on GA,  I don't know how to tell which are the keywords driving the traffic.  I've barely learned about bounce rate, time-on-site, and traffic sources, as in geographical locations. ...
            Where do I look for "which keywords" are driving??

            replyreport
            1. 70

               lrohnerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               You can find keywords in HP and in Analytics.
               
               In Analytics:
               
               Go to Traffic Sources > Keywords. If you want to see keywords for a particular page, go to Content > Top Content and choose one of your pages by clicking on it. Look over to the right and you'll see "Landing Page Optimization." In that section, click on "Entrance Keywords."
               
               In HP:
               
               Just open up the Stats for an individual hub and click on the Keywords tab.

               replyreport
               1. 85

                  DzyMsLizzyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  Thank you very much!  This old dog is struggling to learn new tricks. 
                  
                  So--I've looked on HP, and under "keywords" on one of my "hot button" topic articles, it says, "no search terms found."  WTH???  I find it hard to believe in these economic times, that no one is searching for information on contributory factors focusing on mega-corporations!!

                  replyreport