I guess you have to be a fan of Modern Family to get the reference of this article's title...
In an earlier post - SEO In 6 Easy Steps - we talked about the six primary factors that the digital community believes influences the Google SERP results today. After great, fresh, relevant content, your site needs:
- To be Mobile Friendly
- Fast (Jimmy John's fast!)
- Have your correct business information distributed across the web
- HTTPS:// security across the entire site.
- LOTS of customer reviews
- To Register your domain name for a long period of time
There is growing evidence that there may be another factor influencing your search results - Bounce Rate.
So what is an acceptable Bounce Rate? Anything that is better than yesterday's rate! Bounce rate is not as much a target as a measurement of improvement over time.
On average, we frequently can see a "normal" bounce rate of 40% to 50% on a healthy site. This means that 40%-50% of a site's visitors come to the site, visit a single page and then leave. So how can a 50% bounce rate be acceptable? Perhaps the visitor is simply looking for your phone number. "No need to look around - I am out of here!"
What I look for in a bounce rate is how it is performing over time. Ideally, if you graph your bounce rate, like we have above, you will see improvement over time. The above site appears to be making noticeable improvement in mid-November. Then at the beginning of the December, the bounce rate spiked up. Time to go back to work. But as a rule, you are better off looking at a longer period of time. 6 months to a year is a good starting point.
In a "perfect" website you would have a 0% Bounce Rate. However, this is virtually unachieveable. You are always going to have some bounce. What you should focus on (and what we believe Google follows) is the trend over time. A low Bounce Rate means that site visitors are finding engaging, interesting and relevant content, so they are visiting multiple pages. And if you are working on your website, adding new content, you should see an overall decrease in your bounce rate. But it is almost impossible to get it to zero.
It goes back to high school. Everybody wants to be friends with the popular kids. And Google wants to send you to a website with a low Bounce Rate - it means you are popular.
If you have questions about your Bounce Rate, give us a call at 419-776-7000. Or click the CTA below!
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