SEO | READING TIME: 6 MINUTES | 30 NOVEMBER
Reduce Bounce Rate
User engagement metrics, what people do when they land on your website, have become an increasingly important factor for organizations trying to engage with their visitors online. The most important SEO factor is Conversion Rate, how many visitors complete a goal (sales, contact form fills, newsletter signups, etc). However, the conversion rate is dependent on other factors, one of which is the Bounce Rate.
Google and other search engines make use of certain metrics that help them gauge whether users are engaging with your site. According to industry expert Neil Patel, these engagement metrics are key to good SEO performance. According to SEMRush, the bounce rate is the 4th most important ranking factor on SERPs.
Since bounce rate is such an important factor, it is important to know how to improve (decrease) the bounce rate of one’s website. In this article, we will provide tips on how you as an organization can reduce the bounce rate on your website.
However, before we delve deeper into the activities that can reduce the bounce rate of a website, let’s get a better understanding of what exactly the issue is; what does the term ‘bounce rate’ mean?
Bounce Rate: A Bane For All Marketers
According to Google, a bounce is a single-page session on your site. A bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the analytics server during that session. In layman terms, the bounce rate of a website is calculated based on the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking any action, such as clicking on a link, filling out a form or making a purchase.
That being said, it is important to define if the bounce rate of your website is high or low, according to your industry standards. Backlinko has provided a breakdown of the average bounce rate for certain online segments. If your website has a higher bounce rate percentage than mentioned for your industry, it is an indicator that you should take actions to improve the bounce rate of your website.
Tips To Bounce Back From A High Bounce Rate
1. Be Fast Or Be Last
According to Pingdom, there is a clear correlation between page speed and bounce rate. For example, their study reveals that less than 10% of visitors bounce when a page loads within 2 seconds. On the other hand, when the page takes 7 seconds or more to load, over 30% of visitors bounce from your website.
So, if you’re struggling with how to reduce bounce rates, consider speeding up your website. Here are a few easy activities that can help increase your page load speed:
- Reduce image sizes
- Eliminate unnecessary scripts
- Deactivate plugins you don’t use
A popular example of companies benefitting by increasing their page load speed is when Firefox reported the number of downloads on their website increased by 15.4% after they reduced the average load time to 2.2 seconds.
2. Content Can Only be King if Readable
It is important to ensure that when a visitor lands on your website, they can read the content without any difficulty. If the user finds it hard to read the content present on your website, they will most likely leave your website and continue browsing other websites.
Consider font size and line height, for instance. A healthy balance between the two characteristics improves readability. You can also improve readability by increasing white space. When you have more white space — also called negative space or blank space — the reader feels less overwhelmed. White space makes the copy scannable.
A great case study of optimizing content to improve bounce rate and eventually conversions is Forex Trading. The company made the content’s font bigger and added more relevant images to their landing page. By simply making these smaller edits to their page, their bounce rate decreased and they noticed a 99.4% increase in conversions.
3. Don’t Confuse Or Lose
If your website is difficult to navigate, the visitor will likely leave your website. Hence, you need to cater to the user’s expectations while creating your website. Instead of focusing too much on creativity, it is recommended to follow best UX practices instead, that will make your website user-friendly and in the long run reduce your bounce rate. For more information on how you can make your website easily accessible for users, we have provides the best UX practices that you should follow while building your website.
