5 steps to write a brilliant blog post that save readers time and reduce the bounce rate

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When you write blog posts, its important that you need to highlight what you are writing. Most of the readers don’t bother to read it completely, so what happens is skimming. Your blog post should be intelligent that the readers will get the essence of the post in minimum time. Have  a look at these simple techniques through which you can take your blog post to a different level.

# Step 1. Split your blog post into sections – Save readers time.

You need to split your blog post into sections, that readers can stress on the parts they are interested. For instance, imagine that you are going to write a movie review( say Fast and Furious 6). And you are writing all your views in one or two paragraphs, without headings or sub headings. If your reader is  interested in the performances of the actors in the movies only not about the story and other stuffs, why wasting  his time looking over the other contents. As far as a movie review is concerned you can split it into

  • Plot
  • Performances
  • Genre description (Action/Comedy/)
  • Theater response
  • Overall rating

You can use this theory for all your articles, ultimately its reader who is going to decide the popularity and success of your article, so give respect to his time. According to surveys, non sectioned content is one of the major reason for  increased bounce rate.

# Step 2. Divide your articles in sections, say ” 5 steps to achieve something “

This is not practical always, but if you are able to achieve this , your article will get in to another level. By this what I meant is, for instance, assume you are writing a tutorial of something. The major thoughts running inside the mind of a reader would be,

  • Would this article be useful, or will  I waste my time?
  • How long will it take to finish reading?

These will be the major thoughts in a readers mind . Here we are dealing with the second point. The reader need to know when he is going to finish the reading. If you split the tutorial into different steps the reader will get a clear cut idea about the time required to finish reading. For an 8 step tutorial, by reaching step 4, the reader comes to know that he’ve  reached almost half way. He can also skip some steps if he already knows about  it. Ultimately this also saves the reading time . Wikihow follows this steps strategy, which is very effective.

# Step 3. Use appropriate colors (don’t overdo this).

Using colors are really important. There is a scene in the Spielberg movie Schindler’s List, where the  kid walk through the dead bodies of Jews. Thats  the only colored scene in the movie, all the other scenes are in  black and white. No one will forget this scene if he’ve seen the movie. Its a perfect analogy for using colors in  blog post . Likewise If we use colors wisely , it would be very effective. You can use one color(may be red) for the points which you don’t want the reader to miss.

# Step 4. Use one or two images.

Using images are really important, this will make your article a little more fancy. It should be something which represent your article. In fact image will the be first thing the reader would be noticing in your article, So that’s something dealing with first impression of your article. Using a clean and apt image will boost the credibility of your blog post.

# Step 5. Use a brilliant and catchy title – Get the reader into the post

The title is from were a reader gets into your blog post. Title should be a perfect representation of your blog post in 10- 20 words. As an example,  consider two post titles .

  • a. Learn WordPress.
  • b. Learn WordPress in 2 hours.  

Which title is more catchy? I bet its the second one, its a kind of assurance which the writer is giving         to the reader , and if you are able to keep this word in your article you can really feel the difference.

Such kind of small changes will bring lots of differences to your blog post. Ultimately no bloggers would exist without a readers. Some may think that they would get traffic from Google anyway (they are well optimized ), but quality in your competitors article and increased bounce rate will bring you down ultimately. So its really important to focus on your article quality and user experience. This article follows all the 5 steps which I mentioned above, hope you enjoyed reading this, post your views as comments.

About the author

Linjo Joson

Linjo is a PHP developer who loves to write about online businesses and marketing ideas

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