You probably hear the term “bounce rate” a lot. It  is a big one when it comes to page visitors. But in terms of SEO, it’s relatively easy to understand. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your site but leave without visiting any other pages.

So if your bounce rate is 80%, that means 80% of the people who come to your site are only visiting the page they initially landed on, without navigating your site and visiting other pages.

Technically, it means that Google Analytics server didn’t receive any kind of trigger from that particular user.

While the visitor could have spent some time on the page they came to visit, but they made zero interactions. They didn’t click on a menu item, didn’t expand a “read more” link, check out your About page, or navigate to any other links on the page.

I’m guessing your next question is: why do visitors bounce?

The answer could be one of two things:

  • Your website wasn’t engaging enough
  • Your website is attracting the wrong kind of visitor
  • But First, How Do You Find Your Bounce Rate?

For that, you turn to the master of all things traffic-related: Google Analytics.

Google explains its calculation of bounce rate like this:

“Bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.”

Basically, this is saying it’s collecting all sessions where a visitor only one page divided by all total sessions. To find the bounce rate of your page, you’ll sign into your Google account and select the website you’d like to view. Once there, you’ll click the Audience Overview page. Click on Bounce Rate to view the bounce rate of your entire site.

Bounce Rate in Google Analytics
You can also view the bounce rate of individual pages by navigating to Behavior > All Pages. In the table that pops up, you’ll find a Bounce Rate column.

This will show you how each page is performing (and more importantly, which are underperforming), so you know where to focus your efforts in the future.

You can also select different periods of time to see how each page has performed historically.

Okay, So What’s a Good Bounce Rate?

So most people have bounce rates! It all depends on the purpose of your site, and having a high bounce rate isn’t such a bad thing.

Some sites are designed with a singular purpose in mind; for example, a singular blog post, contact form, or a page designed specifically to spur a call-to-action (call this number, product listings on other pages, etc.) But generally speaking, the lower the bounce rate the better.

A good bounce rate, however, will vary by industry. In our next blog post we will explain how you can lower your bounce rate in a few simple steps.

If you are interested in receiving a free consultation on how to improve your site’s performance, and get a customized plan, reach out to neil@mysocialbiz.net to get started!

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