Bounce Rate

Google Analytics defines bounce rate as the percentage of sessions in which a user left your site from the page through which they entered it, without interacting with it.

Not only does a high bounce rate indicate that a business has lost a number of conversion opportunities, but there’s been evidence to suggest that high bounce rates can damage a website’s search visibility.

With the launch of Google Analytics 4 in 2023, bounce rates (although still visible) were demoted to be a secondary metric by which analysts can review site performance. Engagement rates, which uses a completely different model for analysis, has become the main metric in Google Analytics.

Some pages will naturally have a high bounce rate

Some pages, like contact or FAQ pages, will likely have a high bounce rate through no fault of your own. Because pages like these should be highly informational, it is likely that a user might find whatever information they are looking for without the need to delve deeper into your site. Some of these searchers might not yet be at the purchase stage of the buying cycle, and will therefore need to do more research before they decide whether or not to make a purchase, and who from.

Even so, it is still important for there to be clearly visible calls to action and/or links to key service pages on these entry pages, and indeed most of the other pages on your site.

How to lower your site’s bounce rate

Improve User Experience

The quality of a site’s user experience (UX) is often closely related to its bounce rate, simply because consumers don’t want to stay on a site which is difficult to use.

At Go Up, we understand the importance of perfecting the user’s journey to and through your site; from your site’s visibility in search to the conversion process onsite. That’s why we have a team of highly skilled designers, who work in tandem with the SEO team to produce sites that provide a high quality UX to your customers.

First, your website navigation and structure must be simple and intuitive. A well designed website structure will not only improve UX, but it will also allow Google to crawl your site more effectively, and promote the flow of link juice.

Once they’ve reached your site, users also need to be able to see the necessary information, like details about your product and why it’s better than your competitors. The human attention span is getting shorter, and if a user can’t find the information they need to make a conversion fast, then they are far more likely to bounce off of the page.

To promote conversions rather than bounces, those all-important calls to action should also be easily locatable throughout your site, especially on the homepage and on the key service pages. Even blog posts, which are so often linked back to in link building campaigns, should have links taking users back to service pages.

Perfect your copy and keywords

Avoiding high bounce rates is another excellent reason why your business needs to be highly selective about the keywords you optimise for.

If your site ranks in SERPs (search engine results pages) for regularly searched keywords/search terms, it is likely to pull plenty of traffic through to your site, but it might not lead to a high number of conversions to match. Instead, it could very well lead to users bouncing off of your site when they realise that the keyword which your site ranks for has little to nothing to do with that they are searching for.

Therefore in addition to being readable and concise, your copy should only be optimised for the keywords which your digital marketing team decide are the most relevant, following in-depth research. A decent search volume is important, but only if the keyword in questions is relevant to your product or service.