In typical SEO marketing programs, the bounce rate is a value that represents the percentage of users that visit one page on your website and leave immediately without taking any other action on that site, including the following:
- Selecting an option on any menus on the site
- Clicking a “read more” link
- Clicking on any of the internal links to other pages on your site
What Does It Mean?
A high bounce rate on a particular page isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It could indicate that the user landed directly on a page that provided the exact information that they were looking for and have no need to go anywhere else on your site. But some more likely scenarios might be one of the following:
- The site lacks useful content for the user you are trying to connect with.
- There are few (or no) internal links closely related to the content available on that page that may also be of interest to that user.
- Poor content quality that does not interest users or provide any value to them.
- Your site might be difficult to navigate or use.
- There may be a technical issue or glitch in your website code.
Bounce Rate Value
Typically, the lower the bounce rate, the better. There are some exceptions to this, but most of the industry agrees that a bounce rate below 60% for the average website is good. Anything between 45 to 50% is great, and anything under 45% is incredible.
What to Do About High Bounce Rates
Create content designed to interact with your target customer – Have a good idea in mind of what your target customer is looking for and provide it on your website. Encourage customer interaction by embedding links to related content on your webpages.
Start a survey – Ask your users what they’d like to see on your site and what kind of information is useful for them. This promotes some additional user interaction as well as help you learn important details about your potential customers.
Get a free website analysis – Reaching out to a search marketing services company, such as Search Marketing Resources LLC, and requesting a free website analysis report is a low-risk and easy way to try to identify issues that might impact your website bounce rate. You can also give us a call at 888-842-9033 EXT 11 or email us at sales@searchmarketingresource.com for more information about metrics for your website and possible search marketing solutions to help improve your online presence and increase search engine traffic.
