Optimizing your website for search engines is a process comprising various tasks. Your content marketing should be on point. The content should have adequate keywords. Your website should be mobile user friendly. Images on the website should be optimized. And these are just a few things to name. Another very important thing to take care of is improving dwell time and to check the bounce rate. Now, what does that mean?
Dwell time implies the duration of time a visitor spends on a website. However, if your visitors exit your page or bounces back without engaging with your website, it counts against the bounce rate.
The main difference between the two is that to add to dwell time, the visitor has to engage with your website by clicking on various links and/or accessing more pages within it. Whereas, when a user exits your website without engaging with it in such a way, it adds to your bounce rate.
Hence, the bounce rate implies the rate at which visitors exit your website without clicking anywhere. It isn’t entirely undesirable. A person comes to your website, finds the required information, reads it, and then leaves. So, that’s good enough. Right?
Ideal bounce rate
However, the number of people leaving your website after visiting one page shouldn’t be too high or too low. A high bounce rate can imply visitors aren’t able to derive much value from your website. While if it’s too low, it may imply that no one’s visiting your page. Search engines take into consideration both things. Hence, you need to maintain a balanced bounce rate.
According to SEO experts, the ideal bounce rate varies for different types of sites. However, for a broad idea—a rate below 20-30% or above 80-90% is generally undesirable.
Therefore, you need to keep your bounce rate in check.
That being said, let’s hop onto-
Ways to measure the bounce rate for your website
Firstly, you need to understand how bounce rate is calculated. The basic formula is:
Number of one-page visits ÷ Total number of entries on a website
This will allow you to ascertain the bounce rate of your website. You can follow a similar formula for determining the bounce rate for a particular section of your website.
Below are some of the software tools that can help you measure your website’s bounce rate:
- Google Analytics
- Yandex Metrica
- Matomo Analytics
How to check bounce rate of your website?
# Improve page speed and website loading
Many times, your visitors will turn away without engaging with your website if your website loading and page speed are slow. And wouldn’t you too if you ended up on such a website. Therefore, you should make sure that your website/pages are quick to load. This will increase the chances of visitors engaging with your website and visiting more webpages within it.
# Employ responsive web design
People see your website in SERP and click on it. However, upon visiting it, they find that web design is unresponsive on their mobile devices. So, the visitors leave the website. And there, it adds to your bounce rate. Moreover, the responsiveness of a web design is an important factor in search engine optimization. Therefore, it is important to employ a responsive web design.
# Your content shouldn’t be visually intimidating
You find a new term that you don’t know the meaning of. What do you do? You Google it. That’s how most people use search engines. Suppose someone searched “explain SEO” and land on the blog of a SEO agency in Pune. Given the nature of this term, they find a long article. Since, people generally look for quick and short information on the internet; the chances are that users will bounce back from that website. Therefore, you need to make sure that your content does not intimidate people. You can do so in the following ways:
- Use headings
- Insert subheadings
- Add suitable images
- Divide information with bulleted points
# Post quality content
Just like in content marketing, the quality of content is also important for checking it. If a person visits your website and doesn’t like your content, they’d simply bounce back and look for other options. This adds to your website’s bounce rate and search engines may penalize your website. Therefore, it is important to consistently post quality content on your website.
# Include effective Call to Action
Call to Action or CTA works like signposts indicating to visitors the path for a particular action. Such elements can be used to direct visitors to a different page. Hence, you can your CTA for linking webpages on your site with each other. Suppose, a person is reading an article on the blog of a digital agency in Pune. There, she finds CTA for more related articles. So, chances are she’d click them and further engage with the website. Hence, it is important to employ effective CTA in your website. Make sure your place your CTA elements in such a way that it is clearly visible and is enticing to click on.
Conclusion
SEO is an indispensable function of digital marketing. And the bounce rate is an important factor determining the search engine ranking of a website. Too high or too low of this rate can adversely affect a website’s visibility. Therefore, it is important to maintain a balanced bounce rate for your website. This can be done by improving page speed & website loading, employing responsive web design, posting quality & easy content, and including effective CTA. This way, you will be able to maintain a bounce rate ideal for your website.
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