What Is a Bounce Rate & Why Lowering It Is Good For SEO
Contents
What Is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the metric that measures the percentage of users who click on your website and leave without first navigating to other pages on your website. If, for instance, your bounce rate was 40%, this would then mean that 40% of your users only visit one page before "bouncing" out of your website completely.
However, 60% of your users in this example would click through to other pages on your website. In this case, 60% of users are the type of users you want to have visiting your website. These users are more likely to convert, become regular customers, or take the actions you want your users to take, regardless of the type of website/business you have.
What Is a Good Bounce Rate?
A good bounce rate is between 10-40%. In general, you are most likely not going to get lower than a 20% bounce rate, but it can happen, and you should strive to get as low as possible because this means that 80%+ of your users are the type of users most likely to convert into actual revenue.
Not many people are aware of this fact, but the majority of websites are much closer to a 50% figure as far as bounce rate is concerned, and oftentimes, this figure can be even higher. Meaning that most of the traffic the vast majority of websites get will leave automatically.
You want to avoid this for obvious reasons, so if you find that your bounce rate is close to 50% or more, you need to begin taking steps to improve your bounce rate as soon as possible.
How Can You Improve Your Bounce Rate?
Below, we'll share three ways you can improve your bounce rate. All of these are fairly easy to implement on nearly any website, and all of which should be used on any website anyway.
Improve Your User Experience
One of the biggest reasons people leave a page automatically is if the user experience is horrible. Think back to a time when you were frustrated with a website. What did you do? Did you suffer through it? Well, chances are, unless it was some government website you had no choice to use, you probably left it in favor of an easier-to-use competing website.
Ensuring you optimize UX (user experience) to the highest degree you can is essential to improving your bounce rate. In fact, without a good user experience, you will absolutely see your bounce rate get much, much worse.
Ensure Your Content Is Mobile Friendly
Mobile-friendly content is right up there with having a good user experience because they touch on the same points. Regardless of their devices, you need to make sure your content is easy and - ideally - enjoyable to use. Taking extra time to ensure that your content looks great, functions properly, and loads quickly on all devices - even your grandpa's phone - will do wonders for your bounce rate and, consequently, your conversion rates.
Optimize Your Content Based On Data
Another huge reason bounce rates are high is because the content on the page either targets the wrong people or targets the right people in the wrong way. Doing proper research in terms of the types of keywords targeted on a specific page and, more importantly, the search intent users have when they use the keywords you are targeting is very important information to consider.
We'll release content talking about search intent and going over why it is important to consider when researching keywords for content you plan to create. To be notified when we release our search intent page, join our newsletter with the form below!
Why Is Improving Your Bounce Rate Important For SEO?
Improving your bounce rate is important for SEO because the lower your bounce rate is, the more invested and interested in your content your users are. A direct, measurable relationship exists between a lower bounce rate and a higher conversion rate. While in some industries and on some websites, the relationship doesn't exist, in most cases, improving the bounce rate will increase conversions.
Bounce rate is one of the most important metrics to track when carrying out any type of SEO campaign, and the best way to improve it is to do well during on-page SEO. Check out our on-page SEO guide to learn what SEO tricks, tips, tools, and information will help you improve your bounce rate.
What Is The Difference Between Bounce Rate & Exit Rate?
Exit rate tracks which page was the last page a user visited before leaving the website. Exit rate tells us which pages need to be improved and dialed in regarding their relevancy to our ideal audiences.
If a page has a relatively high exit rate, it can mean the page isn't very relevant to users, and this can be a sign the page needs to be improved and adjusted so it resonates more with users.