What is Bounce Rate Optimization?

Bounce Rate Optimization (BRO) refers to the process of reducing a website’s bounce rate, which is the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page. It involves improving user engagement and encouraging visitors to explore more content. BRO aims to enhance website design, user experience, content relevance, and call-to-action placement to capture visitors’ attention and guide them toward desired actions. Implementing BRO strategies can increase conversions and improve website performance.

What is Bounce Rate Optimization?

Bounce rate optimization is how you work to decrease your site’s bounce rate. In doing so, you’re also working to optimize your conversion rate. By working to serve your users better, you’re keeping them on your site longer, so they are less likely to bounce back to Google and onto the following search result. Instead of asking yourself why your conversion rate is so low, ask yourself why your bounce rate is so high. Our SEO Services include bounce rate optimization and conversion rate optimization.

  1. Your bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or the percentage of visits where a user leaves your website from the page they landed on without browsing your website any further. The higher your bounce rate, the fewer users find what they want on your site.
  2. Find your bounce rate in Google Analytics by going to your main dashboard. It’s on your home page, where you see users, sessions, and session duration.
  3. Note your bounce rate – and make a plan to reduce it.

What Goes into Bounce Rate Interpretation?

If your bounce rate is high – it’s not always bad – but it depends on several factors, such as:

  • What kind of website do you have
  • Traffic source
  • Quality of your landing page
  • User intent
  • Your industry
  • Quality of content
  • Quality of traffic
  • Visitor type
  • Device type

Web Development

Type of Website

Different types of websites will have varying bounce rates. If you run a blog, a high bounce rate is typical. Visitors read your post and bounce off to the next thing.

If you have a single page on your website, your bounce rate can be 100%.

Have a website built entirely in a flash? You could see an incredibly high bounce rate if you’re not tracking flash events.

Traffic Source

The source of your traffic will significantly affect your bounce rate. Traffic from social media sources tends to have a higher bounce rate than organic traffic from a search engine.

Landing Page Type and Quality

People who visit your Contact Us page are likely looking for contact information. When visitors find that information, they’ll probably bounce and move on because they found what they needed to contact you.

That said, if you have a cluttered landing page with unnecessary text, full of ads, lacks a clear call to action, or is just visually unappealing, you’ll likely see a high bounce rate, too.

User Intent

User intent is the reason people are looking for your website. They either want to do something, know something, want to go somewhere online, or want to buy something. There’s an entire marketing movement built around user intent – known as micro-moment marketing.

Building content to serve your prospects at various customer journey stages will match user intent. When you can provide material that satisfies the user intent, you’ll automatically reduce your optimize your bounce rate. When the content on your landing page doesn’t match user intent, you increase the bounce rate.

Your Industry

Specific industries will have higher bounce rates than others. For instance, the publishing industry is where high bounce rates are considered normal. DigiShuffle has a “Bounce Rate Bible” that lets you look up the average bounce rate by industry and use the benchmark to guide your bounce rate optimization efforts.

Type of Content

If you’ve got any complex content to consume, users may bookmark the page to return to your website when they have spare time to read it.

Quality of Traffic

Your bounce rate will be high if you don’t accurately target your traffic.

Visitor Type

New visitors are much more likely to bounce than return visitors since they are unfamiliar with your brand.

Device Type

The bounce rate will vary from device to device. If your site isn’t responsive or mobile-friendly, you’ll have a higher bounce rate for visitors from mobile devices.

Reduce Your Bounce Rate with These Methods

Edit Your Site Content for Readability

Is your content written in large paragraphs? Or is it written with plenty of line breaks, headings, and bulleted lists to keep it easy to read? Then it’s too hard to read on a screen. That’s fine for a novel but not for the web. Write in shorter sentences.

Write with shorter paragraphs. Use headings and lists to break up the text and make it easier on the eyes. When people can scan the web page to find what they need, they are less likely to bounce. If they come to your site and see large blocks of text, it’s easy to see why they’d get overwhelmed and move to another site that can prove the same information.

Target Keywords with High-Value Traffic

Keywords easily make or break your content marketing campaigns. Targeting high-value keywords to improve search performance would be best because that’s where you’ll find the high-value traffic. When evaluating keywords, you must find the phrases that meet all four of these metrics:

  • Traffic value
  • Conversion Value
  • Persona Value
  • Brand Value

Remember, user intent falls into informational, navigational, and transactional. High-value keywords are the ones that support the in-depth content that your users will spend more time reading. The longer you keep them on the site, the better – because that’s not a bounce. The more this happens, the lower your bounce rate will be.

High bounce rates also mean you should stop targeting keywords and marketing channels sending you low-value traffic. Use analytics to determine the traffic sources sending poor-quality traffic. Then, either stop investing in that campaign or readjust by targeting the right keywords and landing pages.

Yes, you’ll still have an exit rate, and many people may never leave that landing page. But those people aren’t bouncing because of their time reading your content.

Finding the High-Value Keywords for Your Niche

  1. Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. If you’re not already logged in with your Google Account, log in.
  2. Enter your main keyword and a qualifier into the search box, then click “Get ideas.”
  3. In this example, we’ll enter “SEO strategy.”

The high-value keywords here are:

Best SEO company.”

SEO pricing.”

Now, let’s take a look at the intent behind these keywords. At these stages, people aren’t ready to buy – they’re looking for more information or a deal before they decide with whom they do business.

With “best SEO company,” the searcher wants to find the best of the best to work with, and with “SEO pricing,” they want to know how much they can expect to spend on SEO services should they decide to hire a company.

So how is this high-value to you? You can create a series of articles with your content that leads the customer from one page to the next, reducing your bounce rate. You could showcase various companies and why they are the best, including their prices, what to expect, and more. You’re providing the information people seek and keeping them on your site longer.

Turn the high-value keywords into headlines that attract clicks and social shares. Remember, don’t stuff keywords. Instead, focus on keeping the content written for the user, and include other words and phrases in the text that would naturally be part of the conversation.

Use Split-Testing to Determine What Your Audience Responds to Best

Split-testing tools allow you to test everything from the colors you use on your site to the layout, copy, call to action, button placement, and more. It works by randomly delivering two different versions of your website to your visitors. When you test one element at a time and pay attention to the analytics data on each release, you know what your audience prefers. The more split testing you do, the more refined your design becomes, allowing you to decrease your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate.

Treat Your Meta Description as a Call to Action

Your meta description is the short description that appears underneath your link in the search engines. It describes what users should find on the page when they click it and is free advertising. Use the description to entice readers to click.

Build Out More Landing Pages

If you’re getting the right kind of traffic, but the landing pages are satisfying the user’s query, then you will have a bounce. Pay attention to the searches bringing you traffic and ensure your landing pages provide the information users seek.

Make sure those landing pages include a prominent call to action. Keep that call to action relevant to your landing page. The call to action itself can cause people to bounce.

When you build landing pages or update your existing ones, keep them clean, visually appealing, and make sure they load fast. We thought that informative landing pages would help keep visitors happy since it’s easier for them to get directly to what they want to know.

The more landing pages you have, the better off you are because you’re creating a better user experience. You increase your search click-through rate when you have more landing pages.

Improve Page Load Time

If your page doesn’t load within two seconds, you’re giving traffic to the competition. Nearly half of consumers expect to see your site in two seconds, and if it takes longer, you’ll see a higher bounce rate. Because Google also pays attention to site speed, something that takes too long to load could easily slide down the rankings.

Use a tool like Pingdom Speed Test Tool to see how quickly your site loads. If it’s too slow, there are several things you can do to improve speed.

  • Optimize images
  • Enable browser caching
  • Use a content delivery network
  • Compress your HTML and CSS files.
  • Optimize CSS
  • Keep scripts below the fold

Set External Links to Open in New Windows

Setting an external link that opens in new windows keeps people on your site while they are also visiting another, increasing the time of the visit. But, more importantly, it prevents back button fatigue and enhances usability.

Ensure Your Website is Mobile Friendly

Mobile traffic has finally surpassed desktop traffic, and Google wants you to ensure your site is mobile-friendly. If your site isn’t responsive already, you need to take action to get it that way as soon as possible. People who can’t navigate your site easily from their mobile devices will go to the competition.

Use Trust Symbols to Show Credibility

In our post about social proof and how it helps improve your brand with consumers, we discussed trust symbols and how they affect credibility. It’s not about what you say about your company but how others perceive you. If you’ve got large brands for clients, show off your skills. Remain transparent and focus on providing value to your audience.

As with anything else in business, focus on meeting your customers’ needs. The better you can do this, the easier it will be to succeed online and off.

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