Manage your readers’ expectations to reduce the average bounce rate of your posts. It’s hard to get people’s attention online. But holding that attention is harder. In fact, it takes less than a second for most site visitors to form an opinion about your page. All this time they have to decide whether they will stay or not. So having a clear message that is easily understood is essential. You need to show people what your post is about. And why they should stay a little longer than those first seconds. Managing readers’ expectations can instantly convince them of the usefulness of your post. And reduce bounce rates at the same time!
You may already be well aware of this, but you only have half a second to make a good first impression online. That’s why it’s so important to meet your readers’ expectations. The second they land on your page.
You can do this by being clear and honest in your title, introduction, and meta description that people will see before they visit your site.
But also tell people what they can expect from your blog post or page right away. Help your readers understand your text to reduce your page’s bounce rate. And keep them hanging around for longer.
Of course, there’s more you can do to keep people coming back to Google, like improving page speed and page experience.
But here, we’ll focus on some simple steps to optimize your content. And get people to stay!
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Add a table of contents and average bounce rate
Remember all the different textbooks you had to read in school? Finding the right chapter to discuss in class or do your homework was made easy with the table of contents at the beginning of the book. You can find all chapters in an overview. And check on which page your chapter starts.
Of course, most textbooks today still have it. But what about online text? We do a lot of our reading online, and especially when it comes to long posts, a table of contents would be handy. So why not count them to your online placements? This allows you to directly manage your readers’ expectations of your text. Providing insight into the topics you will discuss.
Visit our schedule block and average bounce rate
Did you detect that this placement has a table of contents? It’s built with a Yoast table of contents block, which automatically takes all your (sub)headings and creates a table of contents with it.
To guide readers to the correct paragraph, this table of contents block creates hyperlinks for each heading in your writing. People can simply click on this link in the table of contents and go to that part of your text. Another amazing thing about these hyperlinks is that you can operate them to link to these parts of your text on other pages! Helps direct users to the right information immediately. And if there is a (sub)heading that you want to leave out, you can do so by clicking on this heading in the editor and removing its HTML anchor under the Advanced tab
Give an estimated reading time and average bounce rate
Another thing you may notice is that we have given an estimated reading time at the beginning of this post. This is a great way to show readers how long it will take to read the entire article. Of course, some people will scroll straight through or click on the part they’re interested in, but providing an estimated reading time is great for site visitors who want to read your entire post. Especially when you have some long articles on your site, this can really help manage your reader’s expectations.
Meet our estimated reading time block and average bounce rate
Of course, you can just read your text and make an estimate of how long it will take people to read it, but there is a faster (and safer) way. Which is using estimated reading time blocks in Yoast SEO Premium.
When using Yoast SEO, you can find blocks by approximate reading time in the block editor
When you add this block to your content, it will automatically calculate and display the estimated reading time based on the length of your article. You can safely add it to your write time, as this block will automatically update the estimated read time.
Even if you add some content at a later moment, the estimated reading time block will always give you up-to-date insight into the length of your article. Another great tool for managing your readers’ expectations!
Help people navigate your content
One way for your readers to determine how relevant your page is to them is by scanning the title, title, and introduction.
Before they even land on your page, your meta description can tell them what your page is about. So be sure to manage your readers’ expectations by being clear and honest about these elements of your page
Use descriptive titles and headings and average bounce rate
Your page title should sum up its content with just a few words.
We understand that this is a lot to ask and can sometimes feel close to impossible. But try to take the perspective of your reader who just wants to know if the page will contain the information they’re looking for. What is the main topic of your page and what questions are you answering? Determining this will help you come up with a descriptive and great page title that gives readers an idea of what to expect.
Of course, it’s always great to use a catchy title or title that gets readers interested in what they’re about to read. But don’t be too cryptic and try to keep them descriptive about your page content. This will help your reader understand what topics you will be discussing on your page It’s important to think about how you use headings on your site.
SEO Analytics in Yoast SEO gives you feedback on your SEO titles and headlines. This helps you keep their focus on the main point of your text so that readers immediately know what that part of your text is about. Using headings to enhance the readability of your text thus helps you manage your readers’ expectations.
Write a clear introduction
When landing on a new page, people often take a quick look at the first few lines of text to get an idea of its content. We call these first few lines of text the introduction. The introduction gives you a bit more room to elaborate on what your page is about and what different topics you’ll be discussing. or perhaps what products people will find on this page.
Be sure to keep it short, as a long introduction can give readers the impression that they have a lot of reading ahead of them.
Yoast SEO gives you feedback on the introduction of your page, making sure you’re using the main topic of your text on it. This may seem a bit straightforward, but we can tell you from experience that people forget to use their focus keyword in the introduction of a page.
Want to learn how to write a great intro or the best SEO copy in general? In our SEO copywriting training, you’ll learn how to write great copy for both your audience and search engines (and you’ll now get access to our premium plugin and other courses too!)
Your meta description to be honest
A meta description is a piece of text that accompanies your page title. And URL in search results when a search engine shows your page in results. And yes, your meta description wants people to click on your site. But it’s more important, to be honest about what you can offer them. You don’t want people to leave immediately. And you want to make sure the right people land on your page.
So make sure your meta description is catchy. But explains to people what they will find on your page. Managing your readers’ expectations will help you connect with the right people who actually want to visit your site
The Yoast SEO plugin allows you to check. And change your meta description by showing an example of your Google preview.
You can view and edit your meta description in Google Preview in Yoast SEO
Giving Google a tip for your meta description will help increase your visibility in search results. And ensure the right people click on your page. So don’t forget to add an honest meta description and don’t leave it to chance!
Make sure to meet the reader’s expectations and average bounce rate
In this post, we discussed the importance of managing expectations to prevent people from leaving immediately. Adds a table of contents, and an estimated reading time. And a descriptive title. But also, write a clear meta description and introduction to your page to get and keep it. Don’t feel like you have to use them on all your pages
But think about meeting your readers’ expectations and the elements that can help you do that.
One thing we haven’t discussed is site speed. Since a slow site can cause people to leave right away, we’d recommend working on your site speed to reduce the bounce rate of your pages
But before you dive into the next article we want to hear if this article met your expectations as a reader. Give us a comment!
