How to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate with 8 Effective Techniques: A company or brand website is a powerful and significant tool for developing your business. And for it to be useful and give visible results, it needs to be regularly improved, work on optimization and usability. That is, this channel requires a lot of effort, time, and a professional approach.
In general, SEO promotion, namely the semantic core collection, linking, working with meta tags, texts, and eliminating duplicates, is now done by everyone. After all, the place of the resource in the Google search results depends on this. However, despite all this, site owners often neglect such an important parameter as the bounce rate. And it’s better not to forget about him, and now we will tell you why.
What is the website bounce rate?
Bounce Rate or Bounce Rate is the ratio of the number of site visitors who left the resource after viewing the first page and the total number of visitors. That is, these are the people who have not viewed more than one page on your site.
Bounce rate measures by Google Analytics:
This parameter will have different meanings for different search engines. In Google Analytics, this metric is one of the most confusing for SEO specialists and analysts. It is measured as a percentage and provides information on the number of visits when users left the site after viewing the landing page.
In Google Help, an opt-out refers to a session that resulted in only one request to the Google Analytics server. The average bounce rate is always calculated as a proportion of the total number of sessions over a given period.
How does the bounce rate affect website rankings?
Higher the Bounce Rate, the lower your site will appear in the search results. This indicator indicates that the resource is not attractive to the audience and does not meet visitors’ needs.
However, if you dig deeper and disassemble, for example, a website with services or a one-page resource, you can draw an opposite conclusion.
Indeed, such projects are always characterized by high bounce rates. They will indicate that the user has found the necessary information at his request. But for all other sites, you need to work to reduce this parameter because it negatively affects conversions, CTR, and, in general, the user experience of visiting the resource.
1. Speed up the site
The first and rather obvious way is to work on the loading speed of the web resource pages. Users won’t wait more than 2-3 seconds to get the information they need, especially when the system offered them dozens of results in the search results. When they see the site is taking too long to load, they will leave and try to open another.
2. Improve navigation
She’s usability. That is the ease of use of your site. You may think that the resource is as comfortable and understandable as possible. However, the situation may be different for users. To ensure the usability of your site, use Google Analytics.
In the report, look for the link map and statistics of visitor interactions with the page. And also, here, you can find out what part of the page users see without scrolling. Use all this to understand which elements are superfluous, which ones are missing, and then analyze what leads to the site’s closure.
3. Check site responsiveness
Today, most people surf the Internet using various devices: smartphones or tablets. And if your site does not display correctly on such devices, you risk losing precious traffic. Make sure the web resource is flying on mobile devices.
4. Update content
Another point that can be easily forgotten in the case when the site has a multi-page complex structure. Track the relevance of information in each article or section. Updation is especially proper of the pages to which the advertisement leads. Also, always remember to add the date and time of publication of this or that material. After all, the user needs to know and understand what it is: new information or updated.
5. Cancel or fix pop-up windows
Do not overload the site with advertisements and windows that frequently appear from above and from the side. Pop-up windows are annoying and discouraging for visitors. Often, users leave the site precisely because of the excessive number of advertising banners and windows that overlap the page or do not allow them to focus on the information they were looking for.
6. Organize an internal search
30% of users are looking for information on the site. Make this search convenient for them. Organizing an internal search will have a positive effect on conversions and reduce the Bounce Rate. According to research, only 15% of companies are working on internal search optimization, and 42% do not deal with this issue. You choose which category to top up.
7. Adjust the website bounce rate
Another powerful way to reduce your bounce rate is to adjust it. To do this, you need to calculate the time during which the user remains on the page. Next, you need to make changes to the Google Analytics code that handles this event.
8. What is the average website bounce rate?
The average bounce rate plays an important role in “How to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate.” It all depends on the subject of the resource. For example, here are some rough numbers for several site directions that can be associated with a good bounce rate:
sites advertising services and services – 10-30%;
online stores – 20-40%;
thematic resources – 40-60%;
landing page – 70-90%;
blogs – 70-98%.
These are indicators that you can focus on. But it’s best always to monitor your site’s performance and check the bounce rate for different pages. Be careful even in cases where the rate is low. The reason may lie in a technical error:
when the bounce rate for individual pages is 0% or 100%, the likelihood of data corruption in Google Analytics as a result of spam traffic; the event tracked incorrectly: configured for a video or a form that appears a few seconds after the site is loaded; several Google Analytics codes are included, and several events are recorded simultaneously from one visitor.
The bounce rate with the ability to analyze data allows you to quickly get information about your site’s problem areas. With the help of the obtained numbers, you can learn more about the behavior of your audience. Also, remember that a high Bounce Rate is not always a bad thing.
You can read about this in Google Help. However, a sharp drop or rise is worth analyzing immediately. If you have any questions about this topic, “8 Tips to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate: Complete Guide”: comment below and tell us your thoughts.
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