Bounce Rate Reduction and Google
Bounce rate is a measurement of the amount of visitors to your site that ‘bounce’ straight off again, back where they came from rather than sticking around to read your content & view other pages of your website.
Google™ have, since as far back as the spring of 2012 been using bounce rate as an important indication of the quality and value of a site and its content.
In short, if a significant percentage of your visitors don’t stick around, then your site is considered to be of a lower quality then sites where visitors do stick around….. makes sense doesn’t it?
User Engagement
As a website owner, you don’t just need to get quality visitors to your site, but you need them to interact with your site when they arrive.
You need them to like what they find, visit several pages, stay on each page long enough to read your content and to not hit the back button.
Google™ can easily see for themselves if they send you visitors who mostly hit the back button and choose a different page and as a consequence you will drop in the rankings.
This algorithm change, which is a part of the far reaching Panda update program, means that it is now more important than ever that your website functions effectively for your visitors.
Ultimately, Google is just pressuring website owners into building better websites, with better content, so in the longer term, it is the website owners who address their ‘user engagement‘ factors who stand to gain the most.
If your site was making money with a high bounce rate, think how much sales will increase when your site retains many more visitors which you have paid to receive?
We have developed 20 tried and tested bounce rate reduction techniques, which when combined will reduce the bounce rate of almost any site.
All our research indicates that the magic number for your bounce rate is 55% as a maximum.
This is not set in stone however, as Google compares your bounce rate with that of the other sites above and below yours in SERP’s, so if your industry has a particularly low bounce rate, then 55% will in all probability not be good enough.
Because we can’t see your competitors bounce rates, we have to work on industry averages, and instead aim to put in place our 20 bounce rate reduction techniques in order to reduce the sites rate as much as possible.
Average Page Views
Working in conjunction with increasing the ‘Average Page Views per Visit‘ and ‘Time on Site‘, we can transform a poorly performing website into one that Google will consider to be of high quality.
In order to reduce your bounce rate and get it below that vital 55% level, firstly you need to know what you bounce rate is.
If you already have Google Analytics installed, log into your account, select a time frame and ….content… overview…. and you will see for each of your pages, what the bounce rate is.
Collect Traffic Data
If you don’t have Google Analytics installed yet, you need it….. http://www.google.com/analytics/ to open an account.
You will then need to wait a week or so to get a few days data collected.
** Don’t be concerned about providing Google with evidence to use against you by using Analytics. They have this data anyway from Google Chrome, Google Android, etc. **
To begin with, look at your home page and how it performs.
What is the average page view time? (The longer the better).
Across your site, what is the average page views per visit?
These are the three initial metrics you want to focus on.
Find your most popular pages, and work to reduce the bounce rate of these first.
Our research shows that Google will rarely exclude a whole site for having a high bounce rate, but is more inclined to drop poorly performing pages from its index, so your home page and the pages with the most traffic are your best starting point.
Follow our 20 step guide and you will find that your bounce rate improves drastically, which will result in your pages ranking higher in Google SERP’s.
Click this link to download our ‘20 Tried and Tested Easy Bounce Rate Reduction Techniques‘ guide.