Understand How Bounce Rate Can Affect Search Engine Rankings
Improve ROI by reducing bounces from your website
Briefly defined, bounce rate is a measurement of the number of people who leave your website after only visiting a single page. In the world of search engines, it is generally believed that a high bounce rate will cause your website's position on the search engines to drop, because a high bounce rate is an indicator of less relevance. Therefore, improving your bounce rate may have an impact on your search engine positions. Most of the time you can find out about your bounce rate by installing an analytics program like Google Analytics.
How can you reduce your bounce rate? First of all, make sure the webpage presents relevant information as quickly as possible. Try to reduce distractions like animations and bright colors that aren't relevant to your call to action. Make sure the page loads quickly, and view the page as if you were a visitor, not the site owner. If a customer needs to take a particular action, put buttons or form fields "above the fold" where they can be seen. Keep in mind that most website visitors are browsing, so if you can keep their attention you are more likely to make a sale, even if the customer comes back days or weeks later.
What else can the bounce rate indicate? If you're getting traffic from sponsored links like Google Adwords, Bing, or Yahoo Search Marketing, then a high bounce rate is costing you money. It may indicate that you are targeting bad keywords, or your landing pages are not sufficiently relevant to the words you are buying. In a manner of speaking, keyword ads make a promise and a landing page keeps it, so always make sure your top keywords are represented above the fold where they more actionable.
Notes and Special Information
Special note: Conversion optimization and search engine consulting can help you get good traffic, reduce your bounce rate, and improve your ROI.