Have you looked at your bounce rate lately? As a website owner, your internet marketing efforts can positively benefit from analysing this statistic.
If you have never heard of this term, or even if you have but don’t know how to use it to your advantage, then read on for the low down on bounce rate.
What’s The Bounce Rate?
A website’s Bounce Rate refers to how many visitors click through and then immediately leave. Some website statistics programs refer to this as the exit rate. When you see that someone lands on your website and only looks briefly at the landing page, that is a “bounce”.
There is a specific formula used by an analytics program to determine how many bounces occur at your URL: Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visitors Viewing 1 Page ÷ Total Number of Visits.
Bounces happen when a visitor clicks on an outbound link, closes an open browsing window or tab, enters a new URL in the search bar at the top of their browser while on your page, clicks the back button, or experiences a session timeout (usually defined as 30 minutes with no activity).
Why Do Bounces Occur?
Most commonly, a bounce occurs when someone clicks on your page only to find that it does not contain the information they were looking for, in other words the page is not relevant to their search.
This might be due to the search engine indexing your site improperly based on inappropriate meta tags. It could be the menu tab or search engine preview text for your URL is not descriptive enough. It could also be that something on your website is turning visitors ‘off”.
How To Use This Information
According to one of Google’s gurus, “It is really hard to get a Bounce Rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying”. If you are experiencing a high bounce rate on an e-commerce site, you need to take immediate steps to correct the problem.
Some website owners use black hat techniques to try and trick search engines. For instance, they may use meta tags and site descriptions that would make someone think their content is in regards to something inconspicuous when in reality it is a site offering something else. Such a site will certainly experience a high bounce rate – and ultimately get removed from Google’s index.
A high bounce rate usually indicates that you are not using the right keywords or not properly describing the content and intent of your pages. This is important information, particularly if you are running a pay per click campaign.
But even if you are not paying for online advertising, bouncing visitors do not result in any benefit to you. In fact, it could cause web surfers to become frustrated, and even angry, that they ended up on your site because of inaccuracy in your page’s design.
The best way to reduce your site’s Bounce Rate is to ensure that you are very honestly and openly advertising its contents through appropriate meta tags, headlines, titles, and text. Traffic from bounces is not beneficial; concentrate instead on attracting targeted traffic and then effectively converting them to customers with your site content.
About Sean Rasmussen
Sean, what’s your personal take on bounce rates? I am really not that concerned about over 50% bounce rates. I think it really depends on what kind of site you have, and what your goal is. Personally, I don’t consider a 50% bounce rate worrying.
It would depend on whether or not you are paying for your leads. If you are paying good money to attract visitors to your website and are experiencing a high bounce rate, this would be worrying to me personally. If this is the case, I would take a look at your target keywords and your landing pages (and make sure both are relevant to each other) as a high bounce rate would indicate that visitors are not getting what they want when they arrive at your site after doing a keyword search. If you are solely using SEO for traffic, this would not be so worrying.
I high bounce rate can be a bit of a kick in the teeth if you are pouring your heart and soul into your blog. Especially if you are using only organic search as your main traffic source.
For organic traffic would 50% be worrying? The site is pretty new so it is still being developed
Hi Sean,
I find that my bounce rate varies all the time. The worst I have ever seen it is over 60%. The best was in the thirties. I think it had to do with the posts I was writing.
Hi Sean
Thank you for this article I have now fully understand what “bounce rate” is. I have just started my website and at the moment bounce rate is really high. I will do something about it. Thanks again.
My pleasure Marietta, hope the article helps you to reduce your bounce rate! Keep working on it as it’s always a work in progress