How to decrease Bounce Rate

So how do you reduce Bounce Rate, or the rate at which a person only visits one page of a web site and then jumps away to another site. Seems like I've been looking at this awhile now, with some page updates devoted to reducing Bounce Rate. I even see a blog posting from last May concerning Bounce Rate.

Yet I don't see any improvement. However there has been a slight improvement in a few sections of the web site;
Dictionary of Resistor Terms.
Component Derating.
But no changes in other sections.

Of course it's a bit hard to track individual pages, because there are so many. I could improve one page yet the bounce rate on another page decreases for some random reason.
Bounce Rate is important, but only because I see a steady decrease in page views, but no decrease in site visits. Which means the same amount of people visits the site, but over the last few years click to less pages per visit.

New Pages and the result [Title, Date added, Bounce Rate]
Diode Terms, 11/3/07, Bounce rate GOOD [80% last year to 60%]
Minimum Annular Ring Definition, 11/4/07, Poor, [75% steady]
Dictionary of Capacitor Terms, 11/17/07, Average, [60% steady]
Multi-Colored LEDs, 11/20/07, Average [60% falling]
CEC Interface, 11/29/07, Poor [80% rising]
MicroUSB, 11/28/07, Poor, [80% rising]

More Page Views equals a low Bounce Rate. Web Site; Personal Computer Signal Assignments.

Number of Daily Visits

Looks like there is an increase in Daily Visits to the site. January had on average about 8,000 total visits per day, with a few days having around 8,300 visits [as reported by AWSTATS].

This week the visits have grown to around 8,500 visits a-day, or up about 500 per day.

There is no way to tell why the site sees an increase, but it could be due to what ever work was added to the site back in December. Of course there is also no way to tell how long the increase will last.

The important points in the graphic are Number of Visits and Pages. Web Site; PC Bus Pinouts.

Hits for the 7th are no yet in the report. On average from Jan the highest hits come in on Tuesday and Wednesday. Monday is a close third after Tuesday. Visits start to fall off on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Slowing rebounding on Sunday, I assume from over-seas.

Total Unique Visits

I haven't posted this chart in a while. The chart to the left contains the same data for Unique Visitors as the last posting. The difference here is that the data goes back to 2001, and the chart does not contain the other traffic information. Click the chart for a larger view.

It may appear that there are large fluctuations in the traffic over the last few years, but the graph is misleading. The 'Interface Bus' site receives around 8,000 unique visits a day so a short month or a holiday will reduce those peaks by several thousand hits. A holiday could reduce the number of hits from 8,000 to 2,000, while a short month could lower the graph by 16,000 visits. Most of fluctuations are down 10 to 15,000.

In 2006 the server went down for a few days and the site lost more than 20,000 visitors. In 2005 the counter was changed to one that appeared more strict in counting. But a few months later the graph still showed more visitors regardless.

So as far as I'm concerned unique visitors to the web site have been flat from 2006 on. Stable is fine, but I would rather see some increase in site visits. I still work the site, but it seems the best I can do is keep things stable.

One common reason for a lack of any increase is interface bus obsolescence. Pages written years ago see less and less visitors as the topic moves to obsolescence. For Example the page on the PCI interface bus has fallen from 1,000 hits a week in mid 2006 to about 500 hits last week. The page on the AGP bus has seen the same reduction over the same time period. Because of PCIe both those computer interfaces were already on their way out by 2006.

The chart covers January 2001 to January 2009. I do have data back to 1999, but it would not help the graph and just make the graphic larger than needed.