Your Website’s Bounce Rate Might be Costing You Money

Google works hard to improve the quality of its search results and provide Google users with the absolute best search results possible. Over the past two years, Google’s focus has been on improving the quality of material being delivered. In doing this, they have focused on many new elements, including social engagement and a site’s bounce rate. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't know that, nor do they know how, ultimately, a low bounce rate affects their income - negatively.

What is Bounce Rate?

There are a lot of competing definitions for exactly what counts as an official “bounce”, but the only one that really counts is Google’s. According to them, a Bounce rate is “the percentage of visits that go only one page before exiting a site.” Now, although Google have been analysing bounce rates for a long time,  they have only recently added a lot more weight and credibility to the statistic. What does this mean? It means that we now need to be taking a harder look at our site’s bounce rates and what we can do to improve them, especially if a page isn't ranking well in search results.

How Do I Find My Site’s Bounce Rate?

The easy way to get this information is directly from Google. If you don’t already have Google Analytics connected to your site, you need to take a few minutes to set it all up; Google Analytics really is a great way for you to monitor you traffic. Not only does it allow you to reflect the data that Google uses to rank your site, but it’s also free. The average bounce rate for a content based website is approx. 50%. However, if a website can get its bounce rate down below 50%, it will start to see search engine ranking improvement. But how do you do that?

How Do I Improve My Bounce Rate?

There are actually many ways you can tweak your website that will help keep your visitors on it. The key is to get them to click on other, internal links to additional content on your site. A few quick improvements you can make to help facilitate an improvement in bounce rate include:

• Ensuring you have at least two contextual links to other, relevant pages within the body of your page. If you're a blogger, you could link back to a previous post or two which is relevant to the one your current visitors are reading.
• Add an “Other Articles You May Enjoy” section at the end of your content. Sites that showcase more content on each page typically get more clicks to internal content. This maximises the traffic you’re already getting - and Google likes that.
• Reduce the number of outbound links on your page or at the very least, have them open in a new window. Simple enough.
• Encourage social engagement through comments.  The longer you keep them engaged on your site, the better the odds that they click to another page.

There are many other factors that can affect your site’s bounce rate but this is a great start. If you improve on these elements you should start to see a slight reduction in your bounce rate over time. We know it may seem like a lot of effort, but ignoring your website's bounce rate may cost you money. The higher your bounce rate, the lower Google will rate your website - resulting in lower search rankings and a loss of potential customers visiting your website. We like to encourage questions and communication, so if you have anything you would like to ask us please feel free to call or email us.