Anyone creating web site content should learn from their site’s bounce rate.
The bounce rate for a web site is the percentage of web visitors that land on a page on your site, and don’t look at anything else. They don’t read other articles on your site…and if you’re writing a blog, this should probably concern you.
What does your site’s bounce rate tell you?
Landing Page Targeting
First, you should be able to see the bounce rate for various search terms people have used to find your site. If you cannot, switch to something like Google Analytics, which gives you this info.
If some of those search terms have higher bounce rates than others, that tells you that the landing pages for those terms are not highly targeted. People are coming to your site looking for specific information, and not finding it.
This is a terrific opportunity! Look at the search terms that have higher than average bounce rates, and write landing pages for them that are highly targeted. Link to the highly targeted page from the one that the search engines are sending traffic.
Eventually the search engines will send traffic directly to the new pages, but for now visitors should see the links and be able to get to the targeted pages. By giving your visitors what they’re looking for, you can increase your site’s value to them.
For example, Online Opportunity gets some hits for the search phrase “diy tracking affiliate links”. Those hits go to my post about DIY Link Cloaking. Traffic for that search phrase has a 100% bounce rate, because they’re looking for tracking links, not link cloaking.
I could write a post about tracking affiliate links, and my keyword research has already been done for me by Google Analytics. I know there’s a (small) demand, I know what keyword to use, and I feel that I know what the visitors are looking to find.
You don’t often get guaranteed targeted traffic handed to you, unless you pay attention to high bounce rates on your site.
What’s A Good Bounce Rate?
That’s impossible to say. That’s why I suggested you look for bounce rates that are higher than average for your site.
Bounce rates vary widely based on:
o) Your niche
o) The type of your site (e.g. store, blog, info site, MFA site, etc)
o) Your style of writing
o) The quality of your writing
o) Your use of graphics
and more.
When Is A High Bounce Rate Good?
There are times when a high bounce rate is good. Primarily, if you’re running an MFA (Made For Adsense) site, you don’t care about keeping visitors on your site. You want them to click through to ad links that earn you money. So a high bounce rate isn’t really an issue for you.
Overall, though, you want to keep bounce rates low, so that people see more than one page on your site. That gives you more than one opportunity to take search engine traffic and convert them into regular readers.
What sorts of bounce rates do you typically see?
This is a very interesting thought!
However, some caution may be needed before going out and doing all this work. You may have bounce rates for search terms that have no marketing value for affiliate work (not buying keywords). So the only hope for income is through google or yahoo ads, etc.
Best then to leave it alone.
Or, on the other hand, you will find people appreciate that you have answers to their issues (non-buying keywords) and remember where they got the answer. They come back, or refer you (backlinks), when they help others. So go ahead and write a short, informative article.
Obviously, if you’re selling things, keyword research is always important, regardless of where your keyword ideas come from.
On the other hand, if you’re monetizing traffic via ads, nearly any keywords that get traffic are good ones.
I have a bounce rate of approximately 75% for my site(not good).
I will go now back to Google Analytics and have a closer look, I certainly want to have a lower figure.
Great article, thank you !
Paul
Bounce rate is very useful. I had a bounce rate of 80% on my home page. I included some pictures and a video, I’ve got it down to 30%!