Blog Bounce Rate & Placement in Site Navigation

[stageagent]

Hello,

I'm attempting to perform an SEO review of the blog on www.aplossoftware.com. Aplos Software sells financial software and the blog is intended to bring in new visitors to the site with the goal of eventually converting some of them to customers. Here's my questions:

1. On aplossoftware.com site navigation, the blog (http://www.aplossoftware.com/blog/) is currently linked to in the footer in the lower-right under 'Resources'. Do you suggest we keep the site navigation link to the blog in its current location or move it some place else in the footer or in the header?

2. The bounce rate for the blog is over 81%. What is a reasonable goal for a bounce rate for a blog on a business website? What are some tactics to improve the bounce rate?

3. Do you suggest including a call to action to sign up for a free trial on the blog home page and/or individual posts?

Thanks!

[94501]

I suggest, on all of those issues, doing some A/B testing, like with visual website optimizer or similar.

Also, you may want to look at your in-page analytics in G/A to learn more about what folks are engaging with and then experiment from there.

Since there are infinite variations, getting some data through testing would be the way to go.

[EGOL]

Do you suggest we keep the site navigation link to the blog in its current location or move it some place else in the footer or in the header?

If they are proud of this blog and want people to read it then it should have a link that is slappin' the visitors' face.

The bounce rate for the blog is over 81%. What is a reasonable goal for a bounce rate for a blog on a business website? What are some tactics to improve the bounce rate?

The best way to reduce the bounce rate is to give the visitor something juicy to click.

If you want people to read a second article then featuring the best posts that your visitors will want to see, in a way that visually stands out and mentally speaks to the visitor.

I would get rid of the wordcloud and change the category names to something more meaningful.  For example: "Church"... I would make it "Church Accounting"..... "Payroll" would be "NonProfit Payroll".  In the content manager I would change the visible title tag for this to "Church Accounting Software" and "NonProfit Payroll Accounting and Software".... Right now your title tags are simply "church" and "payroll".  Add more detail to compete for better traffic.

The blog also need some visual appeal.  I would change that tiny gray font to something larger, blue and clickable - put more space between the lines to make them more readable.

Do you suggest including a call to action to sign up for a free trial on the blog home page and/or individual posts?

Yes.  And, a sign-up for people who want to receive an email message when a new blog post is published.

Do these guys get lots of questions about the software?  If they do then "tips" might be good subject matter for the blog.

My response here is not an answer to your question.  It is a starting point for a possible brain  storming session with the client.