If you are a website owner, there are a few essential things that you will need to be mindful of. The bounce rate holds a prominent place for them. Any website owner who wants to secure better rankings on Google should know the bounce rate. Continue reading, and we will share all the essential information you need about the bounce rate.
What Is Bounce Rate?
You may be wondering what bounce rate means. Some visitors who come to your website would stay there long. On the other hand, certain visitors will only stay on your website for a short period. If many visitors remain on the website for a short period, you will get a high bounce rate. In other words, those visitors who visit your website will bounce off quickly. This is why you should look for a way to reduce bounce rates. This aligns with the website bounce rate definition.
Bounce Rate vs. Exit Rate
When you focus on the bounce rate, it is also essential to look at what the exit rate is all about. Most website owners don’t have a clear understanding of the difference that exists between the exit rate and bounce rate. Website bounce rate refers to the total single engagement sessions related to a website. However, the exit rate refers to the engagement sessions related to specific website pages.
For example, let’s assume that a person comes to your home page and then goes back to the browser by hitting the back button. This is considered a bounce. But if that person visits another page and returns, it will be viewed as an exit. You can confirm that the bounce rate mainly happens due to a person’s lack of interest in the website. However, a high exit rate can occur due to problems associated with conversions.
How to Determine Bounce Rate?
Now you understand what is bounce rate in SEO, You will be able to determine bounce rate based on the amount of time a person spends on a website. This is where you will need to look at all visitors and see how much time they spend on the website. It would help if you considered all pages of your website here. That’s because it will assist you in understanding whether the problem is only with a specific page of your website or if it is associated with all pages.
what is an average bounce rate?
You should also know what an average bounce rate is about as you determine the bounce rate. If the bounce rate of your website is between 56% and 70%, you need to take immediate action. That’s because you are dealing with a high bounce rate on the website. An average bounce rate is between 41% and 55%.
What Is a Good Bounce Rate?
You are doing good if you can reduce the bounce rate to between 26% to 40%. You will need to try your best to maintain that. But if the bounce rate is lower than 26%, you should be proud of the website. Keeping up the good work and retaining the standard website bounce rate is essential.
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what is a good bounce rate for a landing page?
80% and over is viewed as a terrible bounce rate. 70% to 80% are viewed as poor. 50% to 70% is average. 30% to 50% is excellent.
How To calculate bounce rate?
The bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of one-page sessions by the total number of sessions on the site.
Website bounce rate = one-page sessions / total sessions
For example, if 500 users enter your website (unlimited sessions) and 25 leave without making another request (one-page sessions), your website bounce rate is 5%.
The bounce rate per page is calculated the same way. Still, the criteria are page-specific: Divide the number of single-page sessions that start and end on a particular page by the total number of sessions that begin and continue on the same page.
Page bounce rate = single page sessions per page / all sessions start from page
Following the example above: If 100 of those users enter your homepage and 4 of them leave without making another request, your homepage has a bounce rate of 4%.
Is High Bounce Rate Good or Bad?
Having a high website bounce rate is not good. That’s because search engines will assume that your website is not offering worthy content. Due to the same reason, search engines will penalize your rankings. This is why you should focus more on reducing bounce rates.
On the other hand, a high bounce rate means that your website is not offering any value to visitors. This is something that you should be mindful of as well. Then you can decide whether you are having a problem with your website and improve it. This will help you get the most out of your website at the end of the day.
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Why Do People Bounce?
Now you have a good understanding of the website’s bounce rate. While keeping that in mind, you should also figure out why people bounce and the reasons for the high bounce rate. This is where you should look at the most common reasons people bounce and take appropriate measures to reduce it.
The web page does not cater to the expectations
They will bounce if the web page does not meet the visitor’s expectations. For example, let’s assume you promote your website with the “Free shipping” tag on Google. But when a person visits the website, he will realize that he has to pay for shipping. Because of this, the person will go back. This will contribute to your bounce rate.
Problems with user experience
Having an ugly design on the website can also increase your bounce rate. That’s because people will usually rely on the design of your website to get work done. For example, let’s assume that your website is not mobile optimized. Then people who come to your website from their mobile devices will bounce back.
Low page speed
A slow-to-load page can be a considerable problem for bounce rate, and Google has a renewed focus on site speed, especially as a part of the Core Web Vitals initiative.
Visitors may get fed up and leave if your page takes longer than a few seconds to load.
Blank page or technical error
If your bounce rate is exceptionally high and you see people spend less than a few seconds on the page, your page is probably empty, returns 404, or does not load properly.
Please look at your audience’s most popular browser and device configuration page through Google Analytics (e.g., Safari on desktop and mobile, Chrome on mobile, etc.) to repeat their experience.
Low-quality content
Visitors may leave your website because your content is naughty.
Take a long, hard look at your page and ask your most judgmental and honest colleague or friend to review it.
One possibility is that your content is excellent, but you did not optimize it for online reading or the target audience.
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How to Improve Website Bounce Rate?
Based on the website bounce rate definition, you know what bounce rate is all about. On top of that, you also understand what bounce rate can do. Therefore, looking for ways to reduce the bounce rate is essential. Let’s take a look at some of the most prominent tips on how to reduce bounce rates.
1- Check your Loading Speed
Website visitors are impatient. Therefore, you should ensure that your website has a perfect loading speed. In other words, a web page should load within just two seconds. Otherwise, you will be irritating the visitors.
Your web host plays a significant role in the loading speed. You can check and see whether you are on a shared hosting plan. If you are on a shared hosting plan, you will need to go for VPS hosting or dedicated hosting, which will help you to improve the loading speed.
You will also need to look at the factors of your website which can slow it down. For example, having many plugins and themes installed on the website can slow it down. You should also fix the JavaScript issues and optimize images.
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2- Optimize for Mobile
Most people in today’s world visit websites on the internet through their mobile devices. Around 62% of visitors use mobile devices to access the internet. They tend to do this for multiple purposes. The convenience of browsing a website through a mobile device holds a prominent place. You will need to think about optimizing your website for mobile devices. You should ensure that an accelerated mobile page or AMP is enabled on the website.
3- Add a Clear CTA
To reduce the web bounce rate, you need clear call actions. A call to action will enhance the engaging nature of your website. When your visitors are engaging, you can effectively reduce bounce rates. This is why you must get a clear call to action for the different pages on your website.
4- Check Your Browser Capability
People will use different browsers to visit your website. You must check and ensure that all those people can go through the content of your website without a challenge to decrease the bounce rate. In other words, you need to make your website cross-browser compatible. You must ensure that it loads perfectly on desktop and mobile browsers.
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5- Don’t Use Backgrounds That Give Headaches
Some websites have flashy backgrounds, which can give headaches to visitors. If you have any such backgrounds on the website, you should immediately get rid of them. The backgrounds should be simple and visually appealing. A white background or a background in any other charm color is highly recommended.
6- Customize Your 404 Page
404 pages of your website would lead your visitors to confusion. This is why you should think about customizing the 404 page. If you can make the 404 more helpful, you will assist people in navigating to the areas of the website that they wish accordingly.
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7- ADD LINKS TO OTHER PAGES
An excellent internal linking structure within the website is also essential to reducing bounce rates. This is where you will need to look for ways to add links to other pages as much as possible. Then you will be able to guide your visitors and boost conversions. You can expect to reduce the web bounce rate in the long run.
8- Simplify your navigation
Navigation issues can often lead your visitors to problems. Therefore, anyone who wishes to improve website bounce rate should think about simplifying navigation. It would help if you made the navigation progressive as much as possible. Then people will need to go ahead with the flow and get their work done.
9- Add videos
If there are videos on your website, people will usually take a look at them. This will increase the total time a person would stay on the website. Hence, you may also call it an effective method to improve website bounce rate. However, it would help if you were careful not to over-optimize the website with bounce rates. Just have some videos on the website, and it would be enough.
10- Pop-ups
Pop-ups can disturb people who are visiting your website. Any person who wishes to improve the website bounce rate should eliminate pop-ups. It is OK to have a pop-up to get the email address or display something important. However, it would help if you refrained from adding pop-ups to every website page.
11- Unnecessary plugins
You must go through the list of plugins that you have installed on your website and see if there are any unwanted ones. That’s because unwanted plugins can slow your website and increase bounce rates. You should carefully review the list and eliminate all unwanted plugins.
12- Poor usability
Poor usability issues can also lead you to problems. This is why you need to consider fixing all sorts of usability issues on your website. People should be able to get around the content without encountering any struggles.
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13- Title tags and meta descriptions that aren’t properly optimized
Even the title tags and meta descriptions play a significant role in the ability you have to improve website bounce rate. Therefore, you should ensure that you are correctly optimizing all the title tags and meta descriptions. This will eventually help you deliver a better overall experience to your website’s visitors from the moment they see your website on search engines.
14- Blank pages and technical errors
It would help if you devised a proper mechanism to work with your website’s blank pages and technical errors. If there are blank pages, you should figure out how they ruin the experience you deliver to the visitors. That’s because blank pages can make visitors feel clueless. You should try your best to overcome them.
15- Improperly implemented Google Analytics setup
Google Analytics will assist you in getting a better understanding of your website’s bounce rates. This is why you should think about adequately implementing Google Analytics. You will be able to overcome most of the issues you face by properly implementing Google Analytics. Hence, you should go through the Google Analytics setup and implement it properly.
Final words
Now you know “what bounce rate is and how you can improve it.” Adhere to all these tips, and you can increase your chances of securing better rankings for your website on Google.