Bounce Rate directs the percentage of website visitors who land on the site, but leave the site spontaneously after viewing a single page – without clicking on anything. In this article, I will be discussing what Bounce Rate is and other things related to it.
Keep reading till the end to find out more information about the same!
About Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of people who land on a page and then leave without performing a desired action. By actions it indicates – for example, clicking on a link, filling a form, staying for a particular amount of time or even making a purchase.
Is Bounce Rate Considered To Be A Ranking Factor?
The bounce Rate is not a confirmed ranking factor for Google. It is just a simple metric. Google has continuously said that it does not directly have any influence on the rankings.
A higher bounce rate can signify weakness in other Search Engine Optimization factors like – poor quality design of the webpage, the slow loading speed of the page, poor mobile optimization, and a mismatch between keywords and content.
Tip: A good bounce rate is about under or up to 50%. It all depends on the industry/niche of the site though. |
Common Reasons For Having A Higher Bounce Rate
Here is a list of a few reasons why pages have a higher Bounce Rate:
Having Bad Links
The referring site can be sending you unqualified visitors. Or it may be the case that the context or anchor text is misleading. This can frequently be a result of loopy copywriting.
If this happens then you would need to reach out to the publisher first, who has linked your site wrong. If you notice that the publisher isn’t responding then you can bring up the issue to the Webmaster or the site’s editor.
Bad UX
If you put too many CTA features like email subscribe buttons, and pop-up ads – then that can be heavily off-putting for the visitors. The Core Vitals of Google’s Core focuses on user experience. These are not only just ranking factors but it also leaves a great impact on the visitors and audience’s satisfaction.
Not Mobile Friendly
It is very important to have a website that is mobile-friendly. Google announced its mobile-indexing first, back in the year 2017. Despite that, there are a lot of websites that cannot be considered to be mobile-friendly.
The websites which have not been optimized for mobile viewing do not look good on mobile devices – you will notice that they do not load faster as well. This would directly lead to a higher bounce rate.
Unrelated Meta Description Or Title
You need to make sure that the content of your page is aptly summarized by the meta description and title tag that you provide. If that is not the case then the visitors may enter expecting something else – and when they do not get that information, they would be sure to click away. It would be considered clickbait and that is just wrong.
You need to make sure that two of those things are related to the content that you are providing.
Tip: If you see a 100% bounce rate then that would indicate that no one is engaging with your page and all of them are leaving. This is generally not a desirable outcome and you should actively analyze the “wrongs” in your website. |
Ways To Fix Bounce Rate?
Here are a few ways how you can fix your Bounce Rate:
Set Up Youtube Videos
Adding videos to a page is a clever idea for making the visitors spend more than the average time on your page. This also effectively leads to lower Bounce Rates and the visitors spend more time on a page.
Page Loading Speed
There have been many analyses on the fact that slow loading speed relates to a higher percentage of Bounce Rates for a page. The people who are online always are naturally busy most of the time, hence most of the time they won’t wait for the slow page to even load – before clicking away.
You need to make sure that you are making sure to keep the speed of your site at max. Some tools can give insights regarding these factors like the – PageSpeed Insights tool of Google.
Easily Readable Content
Make sure the content that you are putting up is easy to read. The people do not have time to read gibberish and are in a hurry to take in the information they are interested in. You need to keep in mind that you are making sure to properly regard the following factors:
- Make sure that you are providing lots of white space.
- Section out different paragraphs and do not make the sentences too big.
- Use subheaders to break up the content. This will make the content easily skimmable.
Effective Website Design
There’s also the visual cue factor to account for when considering Bounce Rates. An amazing page design would be able to keep the visitors interested in the page for a long time.
Improve Mobile User Experience
Mobile traffic is known to account for more than half of all the web traffic received worldwide. If you want to have a lower bounce rate then you need to make sure that your website is working well with tablets and phones. This also includes these in your site – responsive images and large fonts.
To Wrap It Up!
You must make sure that your website’s Bounce Rate is not exceeding average then that would make your site deem ineligible for making any conversions.
That was all for information regarding Bounce Rate and what it is. Thank you for reading up till here. I hope you found the information regarding this topic useful.
Additional: