Bounce Rate - Do You Need To Care?

I've seen a lot of noise about bounce rate recently and wanted to make this post to talk about it in more depth.

There's a lot of "Stat watching" that goes on in the IM world, particularly when you're new.

There's also a lot of misunderstanding, and some good old BS thrown in too!

So the question I'm answering today is...do we actually need to care about bounce rate as much as we think we do?

Making a cameo will be a few other questions:

• Is lower bounce-rate always better?
• How do we reduce bounce-rate?
• Does bounce-rate contribute to rankings?
• How to get the most benefit out of the bounce-rate stat in Google Analytics.

First off, let's define a bounce.

In a nutshell, if somebody visits a page on your site (or the homepage), then leaves without visiting another page, that's a bounce.

Please note, if somebody clicks an external link on your site, that's also counted as a bounce.

Is Lower Bounce Rate Always Better?

No.

Here are three scenarios where a HIGH bounce-rate is a good thing.

1.) Your sales page. Remember that WA or product review you wrote? If somebody visits that page, then clicks the affiliate link to visit the product page/join WA/earn you money, then that gives you a bounce.

Got 10% bounce-rate on your review page? You got yourself a problem there.

2.) Adsense. If someone clicks an advert and leaves your site, you earn money. What's more important here, money, or a bounce-rate? Bingo.

3.) Contact/Signup page. Yes, somebody filled out your contact form or subscribed to your blog then left. That's what you wanted them to do though right?

How Do We Reduce Bounce-Rate?

So on some pages, having a lower bounce-rate is definitely better. Let's say you're reviewing a scam, and you want people to click your link to read your WA review. Or maybe you're writing a keyword-targeted post, and you'd like someone to check out another page to learn more.

In this situation, a high bounce-rate means people aren't clicking. This still doesn't necessarily mean your site is bad (people might simply have got the information they came for, then left satisfied).

However, to reduce bounce-rate, try the following:

• Break up your text. Don't make your site look like hard-work to read. Use images and short paragraphs.
• Put your links in more than once, give people a couple of opportunities to click to another post/page.
• Add a related posts plugin like Yet Another Related Posts Plugin and tell it to display related posts as thumbnails. These are more attractive and will get clicks.
• Make sure your content is good, and relevant.

Does Bounce-Rate Contribute To Rankings?

Not in the slightest.

1.) As I explained earlier, it's a misconception that high bounce rate = bad.

2.) If somebody searches for information, finds the information on your site, then leaves, they're happy. Your site gave them what they wanted. This isn't something to penalize. Google wants to show sites that give information.

3.) Google has said in the past that it flat-out does NOT use analytics data of any kind to determine rankings. Maybe, just maybe they do..but please see points 1 and 2 above and disregard this argument.

How To Benefit From Bounce-Rate Info?

So basically, all your bounce-rate is doing is telling you whether people are clicking to another page on your site from that page. Sitewide bounce-rate is a pretty hard stat to gain anything from, but if you're looking at info on a page by page level in Google Analytics, then you can understand how people are behaving.

Bonus Tip: Pay attention to "EXIT RATE" instead. Exit rate points out where people hit the back-button or closed the browser (so doesn't include clicking ads or external links). You can use exit rate stats to identify potential weak pages of your site.

Again, bear in mind that something like a contact form page will have a high exit rate regardless.