The answers are next to your nose. If you use Google Analytics to track your blog’s statistics, you might want to check the bounce rate of your blog and you will probably see that your bounce rate is over 50%. Considering how bounce rate is factored into how highly search engines rank you in search engine result pages and how important a bounce rate is to advertising conversion, you should be worried. You should start thinking of solutions. You should start thinking of ways to engage your readers. It really all boils down to engagement. If people don’t find your content engaging the first time they see it, they will quickly bounce. You have to remember, bounce rate counts the percentage of people that leave your page almost immediately after they land on your page. Bounce rate doesn’t count people who have been on your page for a minute or more than 30 seconds. These are people who quickly scan through your post, scroll down and then maybe saw something they didn’t like or just clicked the back button. No, it doesn’t count that. Bounce rate counts people that almost immediately leave your page. In other words, it reveals a serious problem. The higher your bounce rate, the less engaging your content is. Make no mistakes about it-your content is your bread and butter in online marketing. You’re not going to make much money if people don’t stick around long enough to see your ads and click on the ads. How can they if they have already left after they landed on your page? There is really no opportunity to convert those people. Reducing bounce rate is crucial.

The good news is that the answers, a pair of them, are located right next to your nose. That’s right, the answer to your failure to engage your readers lies in your eyes. Let me rephrase that: the answer to low content engagement is content appearance. Let’s face it, when people land on your website, they’re not speed readers. They can’t completely scan through your page and make quick judgements based on that. What do they see? They see the format, they see the font, they see the graphics or lack thereof, in short, they see the page elements. This is what they see and the secret to effectively engaging readers is to make them want to stick around. That is the key and a lot of these or course turns on appearances. Follow the tips below so you can dramatically increase the visual appeal of your content and reduce your bounce rate.

Experiment with fonts

When you land on a page that has just one jive block of text, how would you feel? You would feel intimidated. You would feel scared that you wouldn’t have to read all that stuff and you would click the back button. The modern reality of the internet is that you have to treat people like they have ADHD. You have to treat people like they really short attention spans. The reason for this is that they don’t have time to read and dig deep into the goods of your content and see how engaging it is. If your content is formatted in such a way that it scares people off, they’re going to bounce. It truly is that simple. A key reason for this is the font. If you use a really small font or really boring or uninteresting font that looks blocky, it’s going to drive people away. There has to be enough space between the words and the backgrounds and the right space to make your content easier to read. You might have the best content in the world, but if you format it like crap, people are going to leave. It really is that simple. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out.

Graphics move readers along

Even if your text has really interesting fonts that are easy on the eyes, your reader will still get tired if your page is all text. Use the power of graphics to push your readers along. Usually, if your article is broken down into four major parts, it’s probably a good idea to put a graphic for each of these parts. If anything, the graphics offer a place for the reader to rest his or her eyes as the reader continues to move down the page. If you use the right graphics and you place them in the right places, your readers have a lower chance of getting tired and many more of them can read your post completely. Use the right graphics. I cannot emphasize this enough. Don’t just use images that are irrelevant to your text. Your images must have something to do with your text. The best types of graphics are actual diagrams or infographics that break down what you’re talking about and present them in a visually engaging way.

Make the power of spacing work for you

The power of your online text is not just restricted to the text that’s on a page. The spacing of that text also has a subconscious effect on the reader. If words are squeezed together and the content is presented in a very compact form, guess what, your readers are going to get tired. Your readers are going to stop reading. Eventually, your readers might even stop going to your blog. Why? Your reader at a subconscious level thinks that reading your material is a chore. You really have to have excellent content to overcome this subconscious bias on their part. Don’t make it hard on yourself by using a blog theme that compresses content text in such a way that it is a hustle to read. Instead, you’re going to leave space in your text so that it’s easy on the eyes. A large part of this is in your selection of fonts, however, this piece of advice also applies to how you space your content. Make sure that you format your paragraphs in such a away that they are evenly spaced and that they are easier to digest. This is like eating a big meal. A big meal is easier to digest and process if you cut it out into smaller bites. It really doesn’t get any simpler than that. If you are discussing something very heavy or you just have a lot of text, it’s always a good idea to space it out into parts and add graphics. This way, when your viewer looks at your text, it’s like they don’t see a hustle or they don’t see a chore, instead they see an opportunity. Make it easier on them by cutting off and equally spacing your text.

Experiment with different colored texts

Text color has a dramatic impact on emotion. Some of the biggest online properties actually use different colored text for certain parts of their article format. You might want to learn from these top online publishers and leverage the power of different colored text. Why are colored text so powerful? When the eyes of your readers get tired, the different coloration of certain parts of your content provides some sort of visual excitement. Your readers get a slight push that gets them to keep reading your content. This is very important because you don’t want your readers to conk out in the middle of your text. Allow them to read all the way through. Why? The more they read, the higher the likelihood that you would become an authority in their eyes. The higher the likelihood that they would get to like you enough that they trust you. All these page formatting tips all lead to one place and one place alone. What place is that? It’s the bank. It’s all about optimizing your content so you can turn your traffic into cold hard cash.

Create an experience, don’t just offer text

One of the biggest misconceptions failed online publishers and failed bloggers keep making is that  they think that their job is just to offer content. They think that their job ends when they write high quality content and they drive traffic. If you think this way, chances are, you’re not going to make much money with your blog. Let’s face it, more and more people are really stacking up their game and decreasing content quality. While content quality is great, it’s just part of the equation. You have to wrap your piece of gold in an attractive wrapper. Just because you produce gold, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people will love your stuff. People will still have to first recognize that you have gold before they become your fans. One way to quickly gain some visual engagement is to include different multimedia elements like videos, infographics, slides, and other rich media resources into your blog post. When you do this, it increases engagement because your listeners are not just reading your materials. They’re watching videos, looking at slides, inspecting infographics, in short, they’re doing many other things. This reduces boredom, this reduces fatigue, and this reduces bounce rate. Of course, you shouldn’t knock yourself out or go bankrupt on producing these sources yourself. There are many resources that are available online that producers of these rich media content will be more than happy for you to feature their materials on your blog post as long as you link back to them.

When it comes to making money online, it’s a rough road out there. You need to quickly realize that producing high quality content is only going to get you part of the way to the success that you want. If you want to go all the way, you have to make it easy for the readers of your blog. You have to make it easy for them to process your content, you have to make it easy for them to scan your content, and most importantly, you have to make it easy for them to engage with your content. Follow the tips above to make your blog content more visually appealing.