Bounce rate is a metric that measures the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page.
A website visitor who lands on a page of your site, views it, and then immediately exits has “bounced.”
That’s why it’s called bounce rate.
They don’t click to another page, fill out a form or make a purchase. The visitor simply views one page and leaves.
What Will I Learn?
Bounce rate tells you how engaging and relevant your website content is to your users.
Let me explain:
If someone lands on your page and immediately leaves, it typically means one of two things:
Both are possible and both tell two very different stories about the user and your content.
That’s why bounce rate is considered more of a user engagement metric. It highlights how well your website and content meet visitors’ expectations.
Does that mean a high bounce is bad?
Short answer – No, not necessarily.
A high bounce rate isn’t always bad, and a low bounce rate isn’t always good. It depends on the type of website you have and your overall business goals.
Let me give you an example:
Let’s say you run a travel blog and have a great piece of content about where to stay in Paris. Someone searching for “where to stay in Paris” lands on your travel blog, gets the information they need and immediately leaves.
In this case, they “bounced” from your site.
Does that mean your content was unhelpful?
No. In fact, it’s the opposite.
You gave them the information they needed and they left. From a user satisfaction point of view, your content did exactly what it needed to do!
That’s why a good and bad bounce rate depends on your website and objectives.
Yes, bounce rate is still important and something you should improve. But it’s not as important as it used to be.
Here’s why:
Google has moved away from using bounce rate as a ranking factor because it is ambiguous.
As I said before, you can’t say that a high bounce rate is good or bad.
It depends on the individual situation.
That’s probably why Google made it less of a core metric when it released Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
The truth is that Google is more focused on other user engagement metrics like:
These metrics all paint a clearer picture of how users interact with your site and whether they are getting the information they are searching for.
But don’t ignore bounce rate completely.
It’s still a useful metric for understanding user behaviour and improving your website user experience – It’s just not at the top of the list!
A good bounce rate is typically between 40% and 85%, but it depends very much on the type of website you have.
Here are some of the benchmarks for individual site types:
Website Type | Average Bounce Rate |
---|---|
Ecommerce & Online Retail | 20% to 45% |
B2B | 25% to 55% |
Lead Generation | 30% to 55% |
Content Sites | 35% to 60% |
Non-profit | 60% to 70% |
Landing Pages | 60% to 90% |
Blogs | 65% to 90% |
Remember:
These are just general guidelines. Use them to loosely benchmark your own website and get an idea of your website type averages.
Then, you can start focusing on what you can do to improve your bounce rate.
You also need to keep in mind that bounce can depend heavily on the type of traffic you get. For example, SEO traffic typically has lower bounce rates than traffic from paid social ads.
To calculate bounce rate, divide all the single-page sessions by the total number of sessions and multiply it by 100.
As a formula, it looks like this:
Bounce Rate = (Single Page Sessions / Total Sessions) x 100
For example, if your website had 1,000 visitors and 650 of them bounced, your bounce rate would be 65%.
(650 / 1,000) x 100 = 65%
The good news is that you don’t need to calculate this manually. Most analytics tools, including Google Analytics, automatically calculate this metric for you.
So, if you want to track and improve your website’s bounce rate, just use Google Analytics.
No, bounce rate doesn’t directly affect SEO and is not a specific Google ranking factor. But a poor bounce rate can indirectly negatively impact your rankings.
Here’s what I mean:
From the algorithm leak in 2024, we know that Google tracks click data through Google Chrome and uses engagement metrics for rankings.
But bounce rate isn’t one of those engagement metrics.
In saying that, Google cares deeply about user experience and bounce rate is a decent metric for understanding the quality of your website’s user experience.
For example, a high bounce rate might indicate poor user experience, which can hurt your SEO in other ways:
These factors all contribute to your search rankings.
So, why bounce rate doesn’t directly impact your rankings, it can be a good indicator that you need to make some improvements.
Use these 7 proven tips to improve your bounce rate:
Understanding search intent is essential for reducing bounce rate.
Your content needs to quickly answer the user’s search intent at the beginning of the page. This is one of the best ways to lower bounce rates.
Answering search intent does 3 essential things:
This significantly increases the chance that you will engage the user on your site and reduce the likelihood of them bouncing.
Your content can’t just be good…
It needs to be great! Engaging content is the key to building trust and engaging every person who visits your site.
Ensure that content is written using key SEO copywriting principles and provides tons of value to the reader.
Breaks up large chunks of texts with:
And more! This will make your content easy to scan and digest.
Don’t forget to write conversationally.
Write as you speak so it feels like you are talking directly to the reader. This will have a massive positive effect on user engagement and lower bounce rates.
Slow-loading pages are a major cause of high bounce rates.
Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify and fix speed issues on your site.
Take advantage of website caching and serve images in next-gen formats like AVIF and WebP.
Lastly, compress and remove unused JavaScript, CSS and HTML on your site.
These optimisations will boost your website load speeds and improve your core web vitals.
Check out our complete increase website speed guide to learn more.
Over 64% of searches are done on mobile devices.
That means about two out of every three visitors to your website are on a mobile device. If your website isn’t optimised for mobile, visitors will simply bounce to the next site.
Ensure that your website theme is responsive to provide a seamless user experience across all devices.
Your website should look as good on mobile as it does on desktop.
This seems pretty straightforward, but I can tell you from experience that most people get it wrong.
Here’s what I mean:
When website owners look at keywords, they are mostly focused on two things:
But these metrics alone aren’t enough to tell you whether you should target a keyword.
The truth is that you should only target keywords that will help you accomplish your business objectives. That usually means going after long-tail keywords that drive actual leads and sales.
What does all this have to do with bounce rate?
Simply put – Everything.
Targeting the right keywords means attracting an audience that is likely to convert.
For example, you might get readers on a blog post that ultimately leads to them clicking on a landing page for a lead magnet.
Targeting keywords relevant to your end business goals will lower your bounce rate because you will have the right people on your site.
You’ll also grow your business much faster!
I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve audited a website only to find that the main issue was navigation.
Your goal should be to help users navigate your site efficiently so they can find the information they want as quickly as possible.
Simple, right?
The best way to do that is by implementing a clear silo structure and strategically adding internal links to connect pages.
This creates an easy-to-understand navigation and encourages users to explore more pages.
By default, you will naturally reduce the bounce rate!
Clear calls-to-action (CTAs) guide users on what to do next.
They should be strategically integrated into all website pages, including blog posts and static pages.
Place relevant, compelling CTAs throughout your content to drive users to your landing pages and product pages.
Not sure where to start?
Identify your highest-converting landing and sale pages.
Then, place relevant banners, buttons, and links throughout your site to funnel people to these pages.
It’s that simple!
Well-designed CTAs will significantly reduce bounce rates by giving visitors a clear path to follow on your site.
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