You get a visitor to your site. He or she looks around. Then what? Does he or she there to do some reading, searching, thinking and buying, or is that drop of your traffic stream searching for the fastest way to get the hell out of Dodge?

If visitors' stays are brief, you have to find a way to make things stickier. You can spend on SERPs a million different ways and go into debt to get that high position at Google, but if that traffic jumps ship after seeing what you are offering; you've squandered your investment.

Visitors: Get them, keep them, sell them.

Recently, I read a piece on this subject by another freelance writer. He discussed bounce rate (the percentage of people who recoil in terror or who otherwise flee from your site in a matter of seconds) and argued that if a bounce rate is up around 30% or higher, there is a serious problem afoot.

I haven't crunched numbers on this, so I don't know if 30% is the magic point on the spectrum, but I do know keeping bounce rates down makes good business sense.

You see, webmasters come to freelance writers and demand keyword rich articles for the sake of SEO. They want better SERPs and loading up with material loaded with keywords can help. However, there should be some balance in terms of quality and keyword density. At some point, even the best SERP-promoting content in the world is a loser if it's doing nothing to encourage visitors to stay on-site.

So, if you have a site and you are noticing high bounce, you need to make some adjustments.

Two quick observations:

First, bounce is bad. Your objective as a webmaster is to convert visitors into spenders. If they are hitting that left-pointing arrow five seconds into their scan, you are wasting potential customers and erasing the value of your overall SEO investment.

Second, better content can reduce bounce. Timely materials capture interest. Well-written text keeps people around. People bookmark informative articles. Good stuff gets return visitors. Strong copy captivates audiences and removes wallets from back pockets. If the rest of your site looks okay, and your bounce is still high, content adjustments are a great way to solve the problem.

Looking at bounce is a good way to help people see the value of quality content in action. It also points out the costs of running with low-grade material.

None of this is anything new. It's the same old story:

Good content keeps people and converts them. Junk, even if Googlebots gobble it up and turn it into good positioning, doesn't do the job once you get the visitor.

Create good content or hire someone to write it for you.

***

Never rely on random bid board suppliers, unknown amateurs, or "cut and paste" plagiarists for your SEO content needs. Partner with a content pro offering top-notch material at prices that make sense.

Content makes the online world go 'round and Content Done Better will keep it spinning in your direction!

You need it. Content Done Better writes it.

Visit Content Done Better for great SEO content writing!