SEO agencies rely on bounce rates and other associated metrics as a way to measure the general appeal of a website and how “sticky” its content is.

Defining Bounce Rates

Bounce rates let you know what percentage of people left a given page on a website without viewing any other pages. It’s important to note that Bounce rates and exit rates are different. Exit rates refer to the visitor leaving any given page, despite the amount of pages they have gone through and time spent. Bounce rates mean the visitor leaves shortly after landing on the first page without moving on through the site.

Why Are Bounce Rates Important?

Most SEO professionals rely on bounce rates as a signal to measure a site’s “stickiness”. When you own a website, you want visitors to find your site in search engine results and browse your site further.

When bounce rates are high, it may mean that people don’t find the content that engaging or useful. However, it is advisable to look at bounce rates in relation to other metrics as trends over time in order to evaluate how successful or not a page is.

There are no “good” or “bad” bounce rates on average as they mostly depend on the kind of site you have and the industry your site belongs to.

Remember that high bounce rates are not always a bad thing. Sites in which people are most likely seeking contact information or double checking a fact, for example, will naturally receive a high bounce rate.

How To Reduce Bounce Rates

If you know your site isn’t mainly used for contact information and you want visitors to your site to be browsing, then there are different factors that can help you bring down your bounce rates.

1. Check your average page load time

People tend to leave sites that take too long to load, according to Google if a site on mobile takes longer than three seconds to load people are likely to leave. Google’s new tool is a perfect place to start.

2. Avoid Clickbait

Most publisher’s sites have relied on clickbait recently. In fact, it is quite common to find garbage following articles which, if you click on, you end up finding yourself in really poor quality sites, full of pop-ups, pagination and lots of ads.

3. Avoid Annoying Ads

4. Avoiding intrusive rollover ads, pop-ups and auto- play audio.

5. Take Advantage of Internal Linking

Using internal links wisely on your content is a good way to keep users on your site. Inviting them to click on other interesting articles that are relevant to what your users are reading will help reduce your site’s bounce rates.

6. Place External Links Wisely

Placing external links early on in a post, especially when this link doesn’t open a new window, is an invitation to your users to leave your site earlier. Place them as near to the end of your post as possible and always make them open in a new window so that users can review them and then get back to your site comfortably.

7. Site Design

Your site needs to be appealing and engaging to your audience.

8. Recommend Related Content

Suggest ideas for other content or pages based on the article or page they are currently on. For example- this is a great article on the value of landing pages!

 

 

POLARIS is an SEO Agency in London providing SEO services across the Ecommerce, travel and B2B sectors. Please contact one of our account managers at info@polarisagency.co.uk today for a free audit.

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