If your business has a website then you may have heard or seen in Google analytics the term bounce rate? But what does it mean? A bounce is a single page session on your website in other words when a visitor comes to your site views one page and leaves. The bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits when a person comes onto your website, views one page and takes no further action and leaves your website
High bounce rates
If your website has a high bounce rate this means many visitors are visiting the site without taking any action. However, whether your website has a high bounce rate can be dependent on what the objectives are for your website and the type of site you have. The majority of websites are likely to have between 26% to 70% bounce rates according to industry research. However, a low bounce rate of 25% or lower could also be an issue and may suggest that maybe something is not working correctly on your website. Anything over 70% again maybe signal there is a problem. The bounce rate for your website can be found in Google analytics, which is a free tool, under the audience overview tab.
Reasons your website may have a high bounce rate
There are several reasons that your website may have a high bounce and some are easy to fix. Here are 5 that are worth checking:
1. Webpage that is slow to load
If your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load you may find visitors will not wait and just leave. You can review your page loading speed using several tools including Google Page Speed Insight and Google search console. These tools also have recommendations to improve your website’s page speed for example compressing images.
2. Bad link from another website
Your website could be performing well however if your site has a link from a referral site that is not performing well. Maybe the referral site has misleading text or anchor text for adverts. If so then you may find this gives your website a high bounce rate. The best way to try and cure this is to ask the other website to remove the link to your site.
3. If a page is not mobile friendly
Most of us are aware the importance of having a mobile friendly website and how negatively Google sees websites that are not optimised for mobile. Then this is almost certainly going mean your website has a high bounce rate. Even if you think your site is mobile friendly but notice a particular page is has a high bounce out rate then it could just be this page. Once identified you can talk to your web developer to help you ensure all the pages are mobile friendly.
4. Technical error or blank page
If Google analytics identifies any pages where visitors are spending less than a few seconds on the page then it is likely this page either no content, not loading correctly or has a 404 error. Review the page on more than one of the popular web browsers to understand what your visitors are seeing. Once identified you can either resolve it yourself or speak to your web developer.
5. Poor content
Is the content on your website engaging? Is it offering your visitors valuable information or is its poor quality? If you are not sure then ask someone else to read the content and provide honest feedback. If they feel that the content is good then maybe it is not optimised for Google. When writing content, it is good to keep these things in mind:
- Write short simple sentences.
- Does your content answer questions your target audiences they are likely to ask?
- Does it have header tags and can it be easily scanned by a reader
- Do you have images to break up the copy making it easier to read?
- Are your title tags and meta description for the page matched with the content and provide a true summary of the page’s content.
If any of these are no then you need to review and update the content on your webpage so it meets these criteria.
Review your website
You should be regularly reviewing the performance of your website as things can change. Google has tools you can use to do this such as Google analytics and Google search console; Identify any issues and correct them. Look to add new quality content regularly as this is also seen very positively by Google. All these activities will help your website perform well on Google and have a positive impact on your local search results. If you have any questions about your website or any other marketing activity. Please get in touch call 07753941231, email or complete my online contact form and I will be happy to have a no obligation chat.
