Your Bounce Rate is the percentage of your website’s visitors who arrive on your webpage, and then leave your site without exploring any of your other pages. This is important because a low bounce rate tells you that visitors like what they see on your site, and are usually sticking around to learn more about your products or services. This also means a higher conversion rate, which leads to more sales revenue.
Bounce Rates can be tracked through Google Analytics (which I have praised in my previous posts). Ideally, you want as low of a bounce rate as possible, although it’s really impossible to ever expect to see less than a 10-15% rate.
There are many reasons why you may be experiencing a high bounce rate:
- Irrelevant Content & Keywords, Attracting The Wrong Audience
- Confusing Landing Page
- Unclear Call to Action
- Long Page Load Times
- Wrong Landing Page Content/PPC Ads
So how can you fix it?
- - Keep Your Pages Short & Sweet – Not only do short pages reduce loading times, but they also keep visitors from getting lost in the dreaded wall of text (Wall of Text Crits You for Over 9000!). Yeah, sorry, video game nerd joke. Anyway, we all know web surfers skim through content, they don’t read it.
- - Create Clear Paths of Navigation – Place menus toward the top of pages, and do the same with Call to Actions. Also include text hyperlinks within your copy, and use relevant keywords to as link text. Keep pages organized and consistent, as to not confuse visitors.
- - Use Informative, Well-Written Content – From your page titles and meta tags down to your keyword rich page content, make it useful and consistent. Relevant and informative content ranks your website high in Google’s SERPs, and is also beneficial to online visitors. If they find your information intriguing and interesting, they will surely be back to check you out in the future.
- - Design the Site Well – Either use a professional website template, or hire someone to create one for you. Aesthetically pleasing sites are much more likely to earn higher conversions and lower bounce rates, because they simply look professional, and instill a high level of trust.
- - Use the Correct Keywords – When designing a PPC campaign, or when optimizing a website for specific search terms, choosing the correct keywords is crucial. If a person searches for “small green widgets”, then arrives at your site to find out you only carry “extra large industrial sized blue widgets”, they will likely immediately leave your site. This bounce will be your fault, because you likely did optimize your content to describe the exact style of widget you carry. Remember, the more specific you can get, the better. You may see less traffic, but the relevant visitors you do receive will be searching for exactly what you have to offer.
- - Earn Quality Links – “Link Juice”, both inbound and outbound, are still important factors to consider when creating a website. If you have get other relevant sites to link to you (especially with relevant anchor text hyperlinks), it will not only rank your website higher in search engines, but it will bring visitors from their sites to yours, which is perfect if your sites feature similar content.
- - Track Your Analytics Reports – Google Analytics are a great way to track your visitors’ interaction while on your website. You can track bounce rates, time on site, percent of new visitors, page views, and total visitors. These stats are very informative when defining and analyzing company goals, and to watch the long-term occurrences of your site.
Watch your bounce rates, make some of my recommended changes, and watch the changes via Google Analytics. Over time, I guarantee you will see improvements in your bounce rates. Keep checking back with TriMark Solutions’ Insider Blog for more SEO and internet marketing best practice tips!
