What is Bounce Rate?

In the world of internet marketing, there are plenty of terms that can be confusing. One of the terms most commonly confused is “bounce rate.” Bounce rate refers to the occurrence of a visitor who arrives on your site, views one page and then immediately leaves. Therefore, the bounce rate is the total number of visits with only one page view divided by the total number of visits to your site. Essentially, bounce rate is the average number of visitors who are not sticking around out of the total number of people coming to your site.

A high bounce rate is not what you want for SEO, as it can show that people coming to your website did not find what they were looking for and left right away. For search engines to remain competitive, it is in their best interest to rank pages with lower bounce rates higher, since they appear to have more valuable content.

It is important to note that there are good bounce rates and bad bounce rates that can have different effects on search engine optimization. It all depends on the average time each visitor spends on the page. If the website has a high bounce rate but a decent average time spent on page, that means visitors are taking the time to read the page and may have found exactly what they needed.

On the other hand, a bad bounce rate is one where the average time on page is close to 0. Visitors to your site are not staying very long and are not reading your content. In this situation, you may want to find different ways to make your page more appealing in order to hold the attention of your visitors.

How to Improve Your Bounce Rate

Are there things you can do to minimize bad bounce rates? Absolutely. The best thing you can do is make sure that you have professionally written website content. Well-written content will not only help you rank higher, it will also keep your visitors reading longer. Bad bounce rates can also be helped significantly by updating your website design. Studies show that many visitors quickly leave sites that look old or amateur, so a refresh of your website can make a huge difference.

If you’re looking for help overcoming bad bounce rates, CyberMark International is here to help! We specialize in search engine optimization and search engine marketing, and can help you get your website on track! Contact us today for a free website evaluation.