This article is to get a clear idea on What is bounce rate and How to manage it in order to improve Good user engagement to gain more profits and returns on investment in terms of SEO job roles and responsibilities.
“Bounce rate” is an user engagement measurement in Google Analytics. This metric used to evaluate the website traffic and user engagement with proper landing page optimization.
in other words it is a % of single landing web page visits on the website.
To say simply, “I came… I read… I left”
When it is generated?
Bounce generates when a visitor exited from the landing page, without going another page.
It begin with user or visitor entry, reading the page content, leaving the webpage immediately
What it tells?
Bounce rate is one of the content analytics metrics and an indication of content relevancy with user search needs also how the visitors/audiences are engaged on your website.
It denotes the relation of website content with search engine practice and audience engagement.
How to measure Bounce rate in Google Analytics
Search Engine Optimization is a component of an online marketing. Every website is get optimized with content. Content generates the web traffic with more site visibility on online. This visibility causes the qualified traffic over the web sources.
For online businesses and content based websites the Bounce Rate is a major SEO success measurement parameter.
Formula to calculate Bounce Rate
Google Analytic calculate Bounce rate = Visits With Only 1 Page view Divided by Total Visits
Activities causes Bounce Rate
What makes bounces for a website:
Here are few ways to identify how visitors leaving your site.
A bounce can occur for several reasons, they are,
- Clicks the back button (most common)
- Closes the browser (window/tab)
- Types a new URL
- Does nothing (session times out after 30min)
- Clicked on external link
- Different tracking code settings for each webpage
- The visitor clicked on one of your ads.
- The visitor used the search box on his browser
- Page is not compatible with the viewing device
- watching an embedded video on a social sites profile via the widget, Ex: Facebook page
- More than 30 minutes of inactivity on a web page
- Visits a inner page with different Google analytics tracking code (ex: sub domain)
- Visits a inner page does not contain Google analytics tracking code (ex: sub domain loading in the same tab instead of opening in a new tab)
How do you track bounce rate?
The best and easiest way to track bounce rate on individual pages is by installing the Google Analytics code. After the code is added on the webpage in the HEAD section, it will take a little time one hour to few hours to collect the metrics to analyse and identify the generating content engagement on your site.
Best way to find out the bounce rate of a particular site
What is standard % or % good/average bounce rate?
Bounce rates vary from industry to industry, and from business to business. They can vary even from season to season and website to website.
There is no exact percentage of good bounce. The good bounce rate can be varies by:
- Industry
- Brand credibility
- Type of site
- Type of page
- Type of content
- Optimized keywords
- Keyword efficiency
- Click depth
- Type of audience
- Visitor sources
- Purpose of the page
- Stage of the customer lifecycle
- User intent … and many other content, traffic and user search engine factors.
What is a good / standard bounce rate for a website?
Google Analytics Benchmark Averages for Bounce Rate
40-60% Content websites
30-50% Lead generation sites
70-98% Blogs
20-40% Retail sites
10-30% Service sites
70-90% Landing pages
Pages with high bounce rates on each website
- About us – Add history, add summary of all services and product categories, link to imp pages
- Contact us – retailers, restaurants and other localized event services need to focus more
- Blog articles – Add interesting article on product usage with snapshots
- Thank you page – Give image based links to top pages + Good page layout
- News and dynamic webpages – add conversational keywords, decrease the number of external links
- Payment or Checkout – Focus on site and page security, use exact matched conversional keywords
- Customer support pages / forum – Answer the user FAQ, Add FAQ page, Add call tracking code like Marchex or Mongoose Metrics or Google call tracking. Get more here at – http://certifiedknowledge.org/blog/integrate-phone-call-tracking-and-google-analytics-with-mongoose-metrics/.
How to consider user needs and intent
- Location SEO (Local SEO)
- Device – desktop user, tablet user and a mobile user
- New vs Returning
- Medium – direct, organic, paid etc.
- Landing pages vs exit pages
Reasons for a high bounce rate
Here is the probable reasons for high bounce rates on websites –
These causes can help you in identifying the exact and specific reasons for high bounce rates on your site.
- Single page site
- Incorrect implementation of tracking code
- Poor Site design
- Changing in keywords
- Improper Landing Page Optimization
- Lack of relevancy to user search queries
- Pop-ups
- Improper Navigation and Usability
- Lack of calls-to-action terms on pages
- Irrelevant calls-to-action terms on pages
- Too Many Calls to Action phrases
- Lengthy video or audio content
- Confusing Page Layout
- Intrusive Ad Placement
- Pagination
- Non display of relevant (Series of) articles/content pieces
- Related content links in the content area of the site
- Static content pages
- Complexivly coded pages
- Low Code to Text ratio
- High pageloading speed (slow loading websites)
- Unclear Headlines (non search intent based)
- Multiple link texts or tabs linked to the same URL
- Attracting wrong type of traffic from search engines, referral sites, emailings
- Targeting wrong keywords
- Flash contents on your landing pages
- Offering download option on external site links from on your page
- Lack of proper conversion path (1 to 3 steps. Ex- product page-form filling page-thank you page)
- Achieved search rank position SERP results
- Email marketing and News letter marketing
- Lack of organic rank for domain name or brand name
- Links loading in the same window
- Excessive direct visits
- Larger image file sizes
- Excessive webpage file size
- Lack of visitor friendly and user oriented Page title (Meta Title) and Meta description
- Crawling errors or barriers
- Hiding the Product quality indicators like color, price range, brand, rating, and size, reviews,
- Technical information
- By analyzing page quality indicators like page layout and loading speeds,
- Lack of branding image for your products
- Outdated webcontent
- Lack of or less number of internal links
- Thin or shallow content
- Broken landing page URL
- Negative testimonials and reviews, ratings for your brand or products or services
- Lack of Effective Headline
- Lack of Effective visitor click oriented meta title and meta description
- Improper readability
- Turned On the Autoplay option of video
- Non mobile friendly website and content
- Lack of minimal amount of useful content on your landing pages
How to determine Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate can be determined by calculating from website level and individual page level.
1) Individual Page Level: Bounce rate is the ratio of visitors exited from the landing single page without visiting internal or external pages.
Formula = single page visits / total entries to the site through that landing web page.
2) Site Level: It can be calculated as single page visits / total site visits.
Required data to find the bounces of website:
- the amount of unique visitors of a site over a chosen time period for a particular page and
- the amount of single pageviews for a landing page over that same time period.
Divide (B) by (A), then multiply by 100. That’s the entered page’s Bounce Rate percentage.
Example
If A is 5,000 total unique visitors, and B is 4,000, According to formula “Divide (B) by (A), then multiply by 100”. i.e. single pageviews/unique visitors*100
then 5,000 divided by 4,000, = 0.8 multiplied by 100 = 80% is Bounce Rate.
Tools used to track your site pages bounce rate:
Bounce Rate is a content, visitor traffic source quality indicator for a website. So to track this rate, it needed to submit the website to some online softwares and tracking code on all webpages in the head section.
There are 2 methods exists to track the content engagement and performance.
They are namely 1) Installing analytics code 2) Collecting user feedback from various sources.
Installing analytics code
These online analytical tools will provide all clear details on audience and visitors engagement.
- Heatmap
- Crazy Egg
- ReInvigorate
- ClickDensity
- MouseFlow
- TeaLeaf
- Google Analytics
- Omniture
Feedback feature
- 4QSurvey (FREE)
- FreeOnlineSurveys (FREE)
- Ethnio
- SurveyMonkey
- Qualaroo
- Kampyle (Feedback feature)
- Shortcomings
- FiveSecondTest
- Loop11
- Usabilla
- UserTesting
- Visitor Surveys – knowing visitors’ experiences on your site and reasons for leaving your website
- Website user-behavior analysis with On-Screen Video Recording with enables the recording of mouse movements, clicks and website browsing behavior of the site visitor
- Page analytics in Google analytics
- Conducting Usability Tests – To Understand your site from the user’s point of view and track any
- Website internal search analytics
- Determing the Click-through rate
- Retun on Investment calculation
Content writing tips to manage Bouncerate
Before asking to your content or copy writer, tell to your in-house or freelance content writers about your idea on engaged customers. “Regular visitors won’t make your business more profitable, Only engaged visitors will”.
- Update the regular or previous content with fresh statistics
- Find new examples
- Add a case study
- Incorporate new insights and analysis method
- Know your target and qualified audience
- Develop content for all kinds of online visitors
Here is the helpful interesting posting on Best tools for content writers http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/05/21/tools-for-writers/
Few Informative references:
- Read more: http://www.seotakeaways.com/geek-guide-bounce-rate-optimization-google-analytics
- http://www.dipietro.biz/marketing-tips/bounce-rate.htm
- http://www.seotakeaways.com/two-powerful-ways-to-reduce-bounce-rate/
- http://www.seotakeaways.com/optimizing-contents-for-sales-and-conversions-through-profit-index/
- http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate/
- Find here how to adjust – http://analytics.blogspot.in/2012/07/tracking-adjusted-bounce-rate-in-google.html -(Tracking Adjusted Bounce Rate In Google Analytics)
Hi Visitor, Question for You?
How to manage your site bounces to improve traffic engagement?
What are best ways to reduce webpage bounces?
Do you know how to adjust your Bounce Rate in Google Analytics?
