Bounce Rate and Exit Rate – What is the Difference and Why They’re Important
Two of the most important metrics in internet marketing are bounce rate and exit rate. Many people find it a bit confusing to know the difference between the two. If you are one of them then this article is for you as it is intended to take the mystery out of your website’s bounce rate and exit rate.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage o
f visitors who view only one page of your website before leaving. In other words, the visitor ‘bounces’ on and off your particular page. Exit rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who leave your site from a given page based on how many visits that the particular page has received. This visitor who leaves or exits could have been on many pages of your website but simply exited on the specific page. An example would be a visitor who has found your site after conducting an organic search, clicks a page inside your site and then leaves from that page.
In contrast, if this visitor simply landed on your site from the organic search and did not visit any internal pages, it would be considered a bounce. Generally speaking, an ideal bounce rate to shoot for is between 20% and 25% provided you are targeting relevant, core keywords. If your bounce rate increases past 35%, you should look at the usability factors of your website. Of course, some search queries do generate high bounce rates such as in the cases of specific informational queries like ‘what flavors are available in Sam’s Coffee?’
A high bounce rate
on a home page is usually an indicator that something is wrong so if you find that most of your visits are only to your homepage and nothing more, you will need to optimize your site by improving its functionality, user-friendliness and/or by providing nicely written content visitors will find very helpful and very informative.
Berry Berry Angry – The Top 13 News Headlines Lashing Blackberry
Dear Blackberry, do you know what the #iPhone said to the #Blackberry? ..#iWork! (Retweet)
Irregular and scattered outages of BB messaging and email service have caused havoc across the globe. These problems don’t seem to be having an end date and have entered US and Canada as well while for Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa it’s the 3rdcontinuous day of hardships and problems.
BBM services which allows users to connect with each other doesn’t seem to work either and to add fuel to the fire, Apple released its iOS5 version yesterday, which offers features almost similar to the BBM services. With sagging sales and competition from Apple, only a miracle can save BB now to restore faith and trust amongst its users. Also lack of information from the top management is another reason for negative word of mouth against BB.
Here the Top 13 headlines lashing at BlackBerry, from across the globe:
Compensation calls as BlackBerry breakdown spreads to US
Angry BlackBerry users have called for compensation as the internet outage that has crippled their smartphones continued through Wednesday and spread to North America and Asia.
RIM scrambles to end global BlackBerry outage
BlackBerry outage blamed on ‘extremely critical’ network failure
Blackberry’s message goes missing
BlackBerry Outage Spreads to U.S., RIM Responds
BlackBerry outages spread to US, Canada
BlackBerry outages spread to North America
RIM: We’re still working on restoring BlackBerry service
For BlackBerry Maker, Crisis Mounts
BlackBerry’s Service Hiccups Spread; Five Continents Affected
Berry berry angry
Blackberry backlash: Slough headquarters in the dock over global phone meltdown
10m users hit by the three days of chaos
BlackBerry services out for third day
BlackBerry’s Response on Facebook
Not very convincing!
Here’s what some twitter users have to say:
Though RIM authorities are working against time to restore the services, this outage of BB services has come as a bolt from the blue for RIM which is already struggling with slow sales, an almost failed tablet and ultimately falling market share.
Given below is a poll of how many of you still have faith in BlackBerry, cast your vote as well!
Also a hilarious video which would go well with what’s happened:
5 Must Do’s to create a “Sticky” Website
Having strong online presence is necessary for any business in the current global scenario. However, just having a website is not enough. In our last post, we discussed the importance of “sticky content” in reducing the bounce rate and thereby improving your search engine rankings.
So while it’s already been established that having a “sticky” website is necessary, the million dollar question pending an answer is, “how do we go about creating sticky content?” Well, we feel that there are 5 absolutely essential must do’s for your site, if it has to stand any chance of being “sticky” enough to engage your users.
1. The content should be authoritative and engaging
Usually people browse the Internet seeking information. They are under the impression that who ever has created the website is an authority on the subject. You need to make sure that your content is well researched. It should provide relevant and in-depth information to the visitor. For example, if you have a website on pet health, you need to ensure that you have all the relevant details about the subject. 
If you just publish a list of pet care products with pricing, the visitor is not likely to spend much time on that page unless you could also save them the trouble of providing enough information about each product. Before working on your content, list all possible questions people may have about the subject. Ensure that your content answers all these questions. It is also important to ensure that you engage your visitors. Most of the time visitors reach the landing page, read the content and move away. It is advisable to have something on the web page which would encourage them to take further action. For example you may help them with how to go about ordering a product. You may even have a poll or a small quiz. However you need to make sure that all these are relevant to the subject.
2. Provide links to reputed sources
It is advisable to pro
vide links to trusted and reputed sources. It adds to the credibility of the website. It alsoconveys to the search engines that you intend to provide the best information to your visitors. For example, if your website is about photos of nature or animals, you may have reference link to websites like the National Geography. To put it simply, your content should convey that you are the authority on the subject. Also allow users to share the information they find on your website. This can be achieved by integrating social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook into the web page.
How To Revive a Dead Site
Dead sites, dying sites or sites languishing in various stages of inactivity can give even the most seasoned webmasters nightmares. Quite honestly, inactivity (or any other signs of morbidity) is a term I hope to never utter in conjunction with my site. However, I realize if I am not careful, I can get complacent and let it creep upon me, or my site to be precise. Thankfully, there are ways to prevent such unwelcome and ill-fated eventualities, and help a site live a full and healthy (read, active) life.
Because I know that there are many out there, living in constant fear of their site dying on them, in dire need of some site-revival intervention, I shall list 9 ways that will surely help breathe new life into a site.
1. Don’t Take A Break From Building Content: Imagine that you are a restaurateur… will you ever consider serving your customers stale leftovers? Of course, you won’t! Setting up a website is just another way of serving your customers, by providing them the freshest and most relevant information. If you fail to do that, you won’t ever have any repeat customers (or visitors). This customer satisfaction angle aside, not updating your site can negatively affect your search engine rankings too. So, if you wish to see your site thriving with a steady stream of traffic, and stay high up on the SERPs, it is important that you regularly create content and update your site.
2. Build Links: Most people make the mistake of disregarding the substantive importance of links and building links. 
In addition to the obvious SEO benefits link building offers, it will also help you be connected to other relevant sites. The whole web works on the principle of interconnectedness, so a site that chooses to isolate itself and refrains from connecting with other sites cannot be anything but a failure.
3. Give Your Site A Makeover: If the current design of your site seems old and tired, don’t hesitate, initiate that redesign that you’ve been thinking about. Take inspiration from some of the most popular sites on the web; surfing the web, more than anything, is a very visual experience, keep that in mind while you decide on the design.
4. Update On Popular Demand: 
If updating the whole site on a regular basis is beyond you, try, at least, to update the pages that are visited the most. This way, even if you don’t succeed in attracting new visitors, you won’t lose out on the old. Writing on current events, or the latest developments in your field, while choosing a nonconformist, if slightly controversial, slant is a great way to hook people.
7 SEO Predictions For 2010
We are settling nicely into this new year; though things have been turbulent in the real world, the web has enjoyed an easy, peaceful feeling so far – no major upsets or updates (some would argue they are both the same) have happened. Yet, late last year, Matt Cutts was definitive when he mentioned that the Caffeine roll-out can be expected after the holidays. Well, the holidays are over and the second month of the year almost upon us, so, those of you who haven’t yet taken stock of your SEO efforts, now would be a good time to do it. For, though SEO has remained largely unchanged over the years, this year will see some changes wrought to it thanks to the tremendous growth enjoyed by social media, and various developments in search technology. With this post I hope to bring you up to speed on all the changes you can expect to see in SEO this year and tell you just what you should do to claim a place on the SERPs.
1. Social Media Optimization Is The New SEO – This wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; in the last two years or so, SEOs around the web have come to realize and accept the immense optimization potential that social media offers. Now it’s even more important that you no longer see social media optimization as something that will take away from your SEO effort, but as something that will help boost it. Be it building good backlinks from individual social sites or building a robust network, or developing a strong social media presence with good profiles (that will also help you land on the first page of the search results) or even ensuring you’ve got a piece of the real-time search pie, using social media as a crutch to take forward your SEO efforts will (only) be a good idea.
2. Site Speed And Other On-Page Factors – If you belong to the group of people who think it’s all right to ignore on-page factors, then it is time you changed your way of thinking and got optimizing, the site load time in particular. In their (latest) effort to school the web in good behavior, Google has decided that a slow loading site doesn’t just align itself with their ‘Don’t Be Evil’ policy and hence needs to be ‘penalized’. Site speed will figure prominently in the algo this year, so will the oft-neglected Meta tags. So, get your Webmaster working on tweaking your on-page factors adequately or prepare to miss one crucial ranking opportunity. (Or many, for that matter) Read more
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Other Services
In addition to our flagship directory submission service, we offer an array of other services that can assist you in optimizing your sites for search engines.
Some of the other services we offer are:
Social Bookmarking has become one of the most important methods to get traffic to your site. In Social Bookmarking, we bookmark your site with all the major bookmarking sites like Digg, reddit, StumbleUpon, delicious etc. and this bookmark can be viewed by and shared with others as well. You can even submit inner pages or a particular article in a page for social bookmarking. We charge 19 cents per bookmark and all the bookmarks are guaranteed. We give you the final link location in the report itself. As more and more people view and share your bookmark, the traffic to your site will increase.
Social bookmarking will give your site instant exposure, links and a fair amount of traffic as well.
Directory Maximizer Launches Its New Social Bookmarking Service – Social Maximizer
Directory Maximizer is thrilled to announce the launch of its new Social Bookmarking service, Social Maximizer on the 20th May ’09.
Having recently revamped Directory Maximizer to give it a classy new look, we have since been working hard to come up with the best social bookmarking service for you. However, before going into the launch, a quick note on what social bookmarking is.
Social Bookmarking is the practice of saving your bookmarks online using a public website rather than doing it on your home/office PCs and categorizing (tag) them according to their content. With Social Bookmarking you can not only bookmark your favorites; you can share them with others as well. You can share your bookmarks with your specific group of acquaintances or with a network of people, with the lever of privacy in your hands. Another advantage of Social Bookmarking is that it is not necessary to submit only the home page URL, you can submit any page from your site or blog, you can even submit a particular article or post if you want. You can submit the page for which you want maximum exposure and as more and more like minded people view and share your bookmark, the traffic to this page increases. This fact has been well recognized by website owners and affiliates and they have been using this tactic to get more and more traffic to their site.
Having seen the rage with which the bookmarking fever was spreading across the internet, Directory Maximizer wanted its esteemed clients to benefit from it as well and it was then, that we decided on the concept of Social Maximizer.
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