I am not talking about making a site more engaging to the reader or providing more relative content.

How about simple coding that will reduce the bounce rate of a site?

If we use the simple coding below on text links will it reduce the bounce rate?

<a href=”URL Link” target=”_blank”> <img src=’Image URL’/> </a>

If we take the time to place this on every link (yes extremely time consuming), would it make a difference to bounce rate?  More importantly, will the reduced bounced rate which is more apparent to search engines, than the visitor increase the page rank?

Last night and early this am (we all know how that goes),  I changed the coding on several of the main pages of a newly launched site.  It currently has a PR 0.  Keep in mind that this is a website and not a blog.  It is a niche site, rich in content and has targeted videos.  There is no advertising on the site.

This site was launched in March.  It is a PR 1.  It gets traffic for highly relevant keywords. The market is down for this particular industry, so it is essential that we present ourselves to the market that is looking for the services of our client.  We always put forth the utmost effort, but now it is a matter of their survival. 

• 36 Absolute Unique Visitors
  • 145 Pageviews
  • 3.37 Average Pageviews
  • 00:03:25 Time on Site
  • 53.49% Bounce Rate
  • 76.74% New Visits
  • 43 Visits

    

   

   

We will follow up with this post.

——————–Okay, today is 8/8/09 and the bounce rate for this site has dropped significantly.

We are now at a 33.3% bounce rate.  No other changes to the site and the time on the site is up by FIVE minutes.  Therefore, this site is not a good example for the test.  I will try this again with a stagnant site that gets at least a couple hundred visitors per day. 

Together we will drop our bounce rates!