Higher bounce rate is nothing less than a nightmare for online marketers. For those who do not know what bounce rate is; it is the percentage of users who leave the website after viewing one page. In this scenario, you have to keep the word ‘high’ in consideration. Normal bounce rate is not something of bigger concern. According to a study, websites normally see the bounce rates of 26% to 70%.
A general grading of the bounce rates is worth mentioning here.
- 25% of lower bounce rate: Something is probably broken in the site
- 26-40%: Ideal bounce rate
- 41-55%: Average bounce rate
- 56-70%: Higher than normal but could be OK for certain websites depending on their types
- 70% or higher: Not Ideal; something needs to be fixed
In this scenario, it would be worth talking about the reasons that can lead to higher bounce rate.
Slow loading pages
Pages which are slow to load often cause users abandoning them for an information resource which is quickly accessible. The matter of fact is that site speed is not a part of the Google’s ranking system. It means that improving the speed of site is just an ideal SEO practice. The reason is that Google wants its users to be entertained with positive site experience.
There are several tools available that you can use to improve the site speed. The most considerable ones include Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTMetrix.
Self-sufficient content
It seems like a wonderful thing to have the pages that tend to provide everything the users with specific requirements may want. Such users are not going to explore other pages of your site. In such scenario, you have to make sure that bounce rate is not a big concern for your site.And you are going to have to look at the time spent on the page and average session duration metrics in Google Analytics.
Disproportional contribution by some pages
While self-sufficient content can be of huge benefit, you have to make sure that you are not filling the page with too much of content. That disproportionate contribution might become a reason for the users leaving the page because they may not find it enjoyable.
Misleading title/tag and/or Meta Description
You will have to see if the content in the page is properly summarized by title/tag and Meta description. If it is not properly summarized, the users will enter the page thinking about the page to provide information promised by title/tag and Meta description only to get disappointed. They will leave the page in a matter of a few seconds.
Whether it is an innocent mistake by you or you have done it deliberately to get the viewers, you are going to have to fix it. Good thing is that you can fix it quite easily.
Blank page or technical error
In most of the scenarios, exceptionally higher bounce rate is due to the users finding blank page, a 404-error or any other problem with the loading of the page.
Look at the report to find the most popular browser your audience use along with the browser’s configuration. Follow these parameters to replicate their experience. This will help you fix the issue.
Bad link from another website
In many cases, there is nothing wrong with the website and it might still suffer from the higher bounce rate. The reason behind it may be the bad link building. If a referring site is sending you unqualified visitors, the bounce rate is going to be higher for sure. This is mainly due to the misleading anchor text or context of the link.
You can reach out to those websites and ask them to either remove your website’s link or place it n the right part of their content. That will surely help you in reducingthe bounce rate.
