Add “Bucket Brigades” To Slash Bounce Rate and Boost Time On Page

When people stick on your page like superglue, Google thinks: “This is a great page. Let’s give it a rankings boost”. But when people leave your site like a sinking ship…That’s when Google drops you like a stone.

If you want higher rankings, you NEED to keep people on your site.

How? Bucket Brigades.

Bucket Brigades are words and phrases that keep people on your page.

For example: You may notice that I tend to use short sentences that end in a colon, like this:

That’s a Bucket Brigade. But what are Bucket Brigades, exactly?

Bucket Brigades are an old school copywriting tactic that were originally designed to keep people reading sales letters. 

Bucket Brigades for SEO content's results are, crazy. In fact, here’s Backlinko’s average time on page:

A good chunk of that above-average Time on Page is due to the fact that I sprinkle Bucket Brigades into every post.

Now it’s time for me to show you how to use Bucket Brigades to boost your Time on Page:

Find a place in your content where someone’s likely to hit their browser’s “back” button…and add a Bucket Brigade. Start with your intro.

Here’s an example where two Bucket Brigades are used in intro:

The Time On Page for that post is over 7-minutes:

You also want to use Bucket Brigades in the middle of your content.

Here’s an example from one of my recent case studies:

Bottom line: whenever you have a section where someone may get bored and leave, add a Bucket Brigade.

You can make up your own Bucket Brigades, like I did in the example above (“The secret to publishing content that people want to share is this:”).

Or you can use these tried-and-true Bucket Brigade classics:

  • Here’s the deal:
  • Now:
  • What’s the bottom line?
  • You might be wondering:
  • This is crazy:
  • It gets better/worse:
  • But here’s the kicker:
  • Want to know the best part?

And — bada bing, bada boom — you’re set.




6.8
Implementation: 3 hours
Effectiveness: 4/5
Difficulty: 5/10
TAGS
#Copywriting #Conversion #SEO