Free SEO Tips
Bounce Rates in Search Engine Optimization
I have just spent the last few hours looking at posts from the past few years about bounce rates in Google Analytics and I think that there is a lot of information out there that Google must laugh at. In this post about bounce rates, he talks about how someone else says it better than he does and he passes on the torch to another useless post about bounce rates. At least one truth from both of the posts is that a low % is a better %, however breaking them down into what they are for and what they can tell you is completely off kilt.
- Low bounce rate is telling you that people come to your site and at some point and time during their visit, go to another page. Meaning that a low percentage of the people that visit your site only visit the first page. This doesn’t mean your home page necessarily, it could be a product page if you are an commerce site, or another post within your huge blog.
- High bounce rate means they came, they saw, they left. No clicks to anywhere else in your site, just viewed the landing page and left.
- There is no time limit on how long a person can stay on the page before clicking to another page, if they click in and click out 2 hours later, it’s a bounce.
If your bounce rate is high, evaluate the type of site that you have, if its a blog, expect people to hit it and forget it. That is really what a blog is for, to provide available information quick and easy. That’s why you need to make sure that the content within the pages of your site are right to the point, don’t have too little or too much information. You don’t want to misinform or bore your site visitors.
Bounce Rates in Pay-Per-Click
There are a few things to think about when you are looking at the bounce rates of your ppc campaign, you have to look at the possibility that your price is too high, product wasn’t really what the searcher wanted, or your page itself doesn’t have enough stickiness to keep them on the page. When someone is shopping they are more likely to leave the site entirely to “shop around” rather than shop around the site that didn’t provide them with the content they were looking for. Make sure that your landing page supports the words you are paying for, because even if they click on your site and bounce off, it still costs YOU money! Knowing what to expect before hand does make it easier to swallow, it still doesn’t take away the costs you are going to incur. Good luck and happy bouncing.