When sending out our monthly Search Engine Optimisation reports, we are commonly asked what the 'Bouce Rate' is (found in Google Analytics which is reporting software on website activity such as visitor numbers, visitor location and traffic sources) and how it affects their websites performance.

What is the bounce rate?

The text book description is: Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Essentially, the Bounce Rate is all about measuring the quality of the visitor to a particular web page. For example, a high bounce would suggest that the site entrance (or landing) page isn't relevant to the visitors, thus causing them to 'bounce' off the website.

What Causes High Bounce Rates?

Common causes of high bounce rates is the wrong keyword research when deploying either a Paid Search or Organic Search marketing campaign. For example, if you have a webpage surround Chelsea Football Club and you are generating traffic through a keyword such as 'Arsenal Football Club' the bounce rate will be high because the corresponding page isn't relevant to the searchers query. This is pretty extreme, but this is extremely common and ensuring that you carry out keyword research prior to deploying a search marketing strategy is paramount.

To ensure you maintain an optimal bounce rate you must ensure that the webpages you are aligning to a target audience are A) Relevant and B) are of supremely good quality. At i3SearchWorx we encourage you to keep a close eye on bounce rates to ensure they are kept to a minimal.

As a guideline, a 'good' bounce rate is 40% - and anything above 60% is said to be cause for concern. Of course, this is dependant on the industry that you currently operate in. Some industries have a higher bounce rate than others - so use the 'benchmarking' tool in analytics to see an 'industry average'.

If you need some more information on bounce rates, feel free to contact us

Posted: 08/11/10 11:14