If you're learning about the importance of SEO, you've probably heard mention of 'Bounce Rate'. Another piece of jargon to learn, right? In today's article we will dive into what exactly is bounce rate, and why you should pay attention to it!
What is Bounce Rate
Sadly, it has nothing to do with how bouncy your site, product or service is.
A 'bounce' is a single page view of your site - when the user only goes to one page and then clicks away. Your 'bounce rate' is calculated by dividing your single-page sessions (bounces), by your total sessions. I.e. the percentage of your visitors that only ever hit one page instead of clicking through to multiple pages.
In your Google Analytics this is shown as a percentage - with higher percentages being bad (more single page views), versus lower percentages being good (fewer single page views and more multi-page views).
A bounce rate of zero is likely to be an error with your analytics code. A bounce rate between 26-40% is considered excellent. 41-55% is average. Anything higher than 56% is considered high, but not necessarily detrimental (depending on your site), unless consistently over 76%.
Ways to improve (lower) your Bounce Rate
- Make it pretty - yes, I'm sad to say that how your site looks can impact your bounce rate. Make your site look pretty and make people want to click through your content!
- Improve UX - is it hard to find your content, products or services? If people can't navigate easily and their User Experience is marred, you'd expect a higher (bad) bounce rate.
- Add images and videos - people like engaging visual content. Make sure your site isn't all text. Embed rather than link to videos, so people stay on your site.
- Site speed - if your site is slow, especially on mobile, people will bounce right outta there and onto a faster site for their answers.
- Google Analytics - Keeping track of your analytics is a good idea, it helps you identify what is working and what's not. It can also help you deep dive into which pages might have a better bounce rate than others.
