Bouncing All The Way - How To Understand Your Bounce Rate And What It Means For Your Site

The dreaded bounce rate is seen by many as an instant failure when it comes to the success of your website, but sometimes you have to look a lot deeper at the actual source of the visitor and then match the bounce rate and referrer up before hitting the panic button. Although Google Analytics is one of the most important tools for any webmaster, it is important to remember to look at multi levels of data so that you can truly understand the impact this has rather than just assuming every minus sign is doom and gloom.

The rate is so called because of the likening to a rubber ball - it goes up and then down - in the website world this means the visitor comes, looks at the page they land on and then goes no further, basically closing their browser or going elsewhere. The most common mistake when trying to understand the bounce rate is to simply assume that if it goes up you are doing everything incorrectly or that your site is not good enough, but you have to take a much broader look at the data and then delve into another level to really understand.

So, what to do if you notice your bounce rate has risen and you are concerned:

Once you log into Google Analytics, on the right hand side click onto Traffic Sources. This now brings up a list of the most common referrers to your website, or where the person has come from to look at your website or page within your website. If you then click onto "all traffic sources" which appears under this menu, you will then be presented with a screen that offers a wealth of information, but you need to focus on the referrer and the bounce rate, both of which can be seen on this page.

If you see a very high bounce rate from a couple of the referrers, then you can begin to find out why the traffic from these places is not really sticking around on your site, or it could be that they have found what they needed to and gone else where, satisfied and fulfilled.

For example, you might have one of your articles linked to from another site, but the other site only offers an introduction or a teaser. The reader then has to click on the link to read more, ends up on your website, reads the article and then goes elsewhere, either with the knowledge they required or without. You could expect a high bounce rate from this link because it might be your article explains how to do something or offers a guide that the person only needs to read once.

There are lots of reasons why some referrers could lead to a high bounce rate and these include incorrect linking, misleading descriptions, and incorrect page linking and so on, so it's important to find out from which referrers the bounce rate is highest and then tackle the reasons why. If the bounce rate is high from your Pay Per Click campaign, then you might need to look at your advert, keywords or linked to page to try and understand why the rate is quite high.

A high bounce rate is rarely a good thing, but it is vitally important that you take a deeper look at the main source or sources of the high bounce rate before you start to really worry about the quality of your site.

Ian Spencer works for Clear Web Services, a SEO Web Optimisation and Web Design company serving the Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire and South Wales.

He has worked in the SEO and Internet Marketing world for many years, and working in partnership with another company has launched the new SEO business.

http://clearwebservices.com/ For More Information, please call 01594 835 857 or email info@clearwebservices.com