How Can Bounce Rate Improve Your Page Performance?
Can you improve your page performance using your bounce rate? The answer is YES!
Relax. It is not clickbait.
Many think that Bounce rate is a bad indicator of page performance. If you ask me, Bounce rate is neither a lousy metric nor a good one.
Google thinks the same. When asked, “Is high bounce rate a bad thing?” Google says — It depends.
Many marketers and analysts who use Google Analytics have various perspectives on bounce rate. But the common misconception is “Time.”
Is Bounce Rate About Time?
Bounce rate is not about time. Time is considered one of the factors if it is a page with informational intent.
Think of this! — When could your cheque bounce? Only when there is no further financial transaction possible from your bank account, right?
The same goes for your site.
Now relate it — Your site is your bank account, the bank is Google, and your page is the cheque. If the user cannot get the money (service/ information) from the cheque (your content) in that one transaction (one page) issued by the bank (Google), the cheque bounces (the page bounces).
Be it a google form, a transactional page, clicking a link, or a blog page — if the user is not satisfied with what that particular page provides, he/she moves to the next one.
Note: If time is your constraint or a measure, you can check out the dwell time rather than the bounce rate.
Is High Bounce Rate A Serious Issue?
Again. It depends. A high bounce rate is not an issue for a blog page (But it will affect other SEO metrics), but a serious issue for a landing page looking for conversions.
You can have a highly engaging page and still can have a huge bounce rate. It is ok for two reasons.
- Your page is an information page, and frankly, not everyone loves to read from tip to toe.
- Your blog page is written for a target audience but promoted to a broad group of audience.
Bounce rate is a serious issue when you have a high bounce rate for your
- Primary landing page or a Conversion page.
- One-page website
Brothers of Bounce rate — Exit rate and Dwell Time.
What if you want to know the percentage of visitors leaving a specific page (without initially landing on that page)? That is where the Exit rate comes to help.
The exit rate and Bounce rate are similar, with a small difference. Exit rate helps you to know the percentage of visitors who lands on the target page from some other pages and gets out without taking action. Bounce rate helps you to know the percentage of visitors visiting a page and leaving without taking action.
But Dwell time, to say, will help you to identify the length of time a visitor spends on your webpage. It is the time interval that calculates when a visitor clicks your link, comes in, evaluates the page, and clicks the back button.
If you want to understand the user psychology, bounce rate, exit rate, and dwell time will be of great help to you to come to a decision.
How To Fix Your Bounce Rate? Long cuts and the short cuts
If you ask me, fixing the bounce rate is unnecessary. Overemphasizing the site or page for bounce rate may go down south, and you may miss out on other significant metrics.
Rather than fixing the page for bounce rate, you can fix it according to the user journey.
When asked about the bounce rate, most SEOs say — It is poor content. Yes, it may be true. Content is one of the significant metrics that make the page bounce. But there are other things too.
- Design and User Experience (UX)
- Lack of Content Strategy
- Promoting to a wider audience
- Multiple CTA that makes the page looks like a clickbait
- Pop-ups with irrelevant messages or content
Long Cuts to Improve your page performance
- Page speed
- Pleasable UX
- Identify user intent — Target Audience
- Create Hooks or Bucket brigades!
- Compelling content that sells! — Readable and digestible.
- Create a content marketing strategy
Short Cuts
There are no shortcuts to creating a user-centric page. You have to put in your work.
Wait, I do have some shortcuts that might work for reducing your bounce rate. Here are some!
- Embedding Videos
- Create infomercial conversion pages.
- Work on Your URLs — Avoid Multiple redirections.
- Keep your page — Mobile Optimized or Mobile Friendly.
- A/B testing — This is not basically a shortcut, but it will help you identify which version your visitor loves.
Bounce Rate — What To Do and What Not To Do?
What to do — Do create engaging and experienced ( It is now E-E-A-T folks) content that satisfies the user intent and TA.
What not to do — Think that Bounce rate is a ranking factor and stressing out!
Again -The bounce rate is not a ranking factor, but it can impact some SEO metrics, as discussed above.
What Do I recommend?
Instead of worrying about a high bounce rate, use the bounce rate to create a marketing and content strategy! Just focus on your audience and work on satisfying them. You will see a change in the bounce rate without working on it.
