The bounce rate of a website has been a main topic of discussion for marketing agency Dallas and SEO experts. Often times, business owners fixate on the bounce rate and assume a website is not performing up to par because there is a “high bounce rate.” 

What is a bounce rate? 

Google Analytics states that a bounce rate is, “a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.” 

What does this mean? This means that a bounce rate is a single-page measurement of how many people click on the page and abandon the page without navigating to other pages of the websites. The bounce rate is NOT a measurement of how long someone is staying on a single-page. That is a different metric in Google Analytics. 

The breakdown 

The bounce rate is not always a good indication that a website is or is not working. Let’s break down all the pages on your website and how their bounce rates are calculated to give you an overall percentage in Google Analytics.

Optimizely gives a great example of a bounce rate, “..if the homepage of a website receives 1,000 visitors over the course of a month, and 500 of those visitors leave the site after viewing the homepage without proceeding to any other pages, then the bounce rate of the homepage would be 50 percent.” 

This example shows the Analytics from one of our internal accounts from Oct. 2 to Oct. 16. What does this show? The bounce rate is 76 percent. This is where a business gets concerned and tries to figure out what is wrong with the website. The answer is nothing. There are several different indications of why a bounce rate could be high, from the industry to PPC ads affecting this. 

The next question that follows this is, “Well, what is a good bounce rate?” 

Search Engine Journal breaks it down for us on what these percentages could mean.

• 50 percent and anything lower is above average

• 56 percent to 70 percent is high but nothing to worry about 

• 70 percent and higher means there could be an issue with one page of the website.

Our bounce rate is a bit high, but this can be accounted for PPC ads and an increase in website traffic. 

Why and when it matters 

When it comes to explaining the information above, it can be difficult for clients to trust the process. It is normal to see a high percentage, which is associated with negative connotations, and start to freak out! A marketing agency Dallas is here to tell you when a high bounce rate matters and when it does not. 

The owner of Dallas Media Group says the following about bounce rates in Google Analytics, “the bounce rate is a very prominent metric within Analytics. So prominent that Google has put it up alongside pageviews within and total visits. Would you believe me if I told you that the bounce rate doesn’t matter? At least not in the way I believe that you think it does. A single bounce rate metric – one, for your whole site, is not only misleading but also uninformative.”

Misleading? Uninformative? How is that even possible? This is because a bounce rate can be a 10-minute visit or a 10-second visit on a website. Google Analytics cannot accurately tell you how long these people stayed on a single page. It guesses due to inactivity and other metrics. If a business focuses on a bounce rate, it is not the right metric to focus on. 

Let’s use an example: 

The bounce rate of 90 percent can be bad, but so can’t a bounce rate of 30 percent! If a bounce rate is measured of a single-page such as a landing page, this can be great! If a PPC ad landing page has a high-bounce rate, our marketing agency Dallas have created a PPC ad that works! 

On the other hand, if a blog has a high-bounce rate, stop stressing over it. At Dallas Media Group, blogs are created for humans to read but mostly for SEO strategies. A high-bounce rate will not be the end of the world for a blog. 

So, what metrics on Google Analytics should a business be focusing on? Our marketing agency Dallas will explain that in more detail next week!