Rauru.com

Posted on August, 4 2008, under SEO by Ikki | 3 comment(s)

Hi guys,

Goggle Analytics is -in my opinion- the best free site analysis service on the web. It can deliver a lot of useful information about your site’s performance and how your visitors are interacting with it. If you’re not using it yet, then sign up today (it’s not a referral link, don’t worry :P) and start learning more about your website!

One of the most important web metrics shown at Analytics (and at other web analysis tools, too) is the famous Bounce Rate. What is that, you say? Well, this metric represents the average of visitors who come to your site and “bounce” away to a different website without viewing other pages on it.

A little more on Bounce rate, please …

There’s no official standard for Bounce rate. However, most agree that a rate between 20% and 25% is acceptable for static websites. For blogs, in the other hand, a bounce rate between 60% and 70% is OK.

I know, you must be asking yourself “why are blogs different to static pages when it comes to bounce rate?” - I asked myself the very same question at the time I was writing this blog post and did a bit of researching to find a solid answer about it. Here’s what I found: for any kind of informational sites as news sites, blogs, etc., many visitors come to “scan” headlines and find what they need in the first page. Some of them are likely to bookmark a page, read it (or save it for a later reading) and bounce right away off to another website. The page did its job but you still get a high bounce rate which in the end affects the average of the entire site.

In other words, having a low bounce rate means that your pages are being deeply checked by your visitors and that they are actually enjoying your site. A high bounce rate, however, is telling you that something is not right. You must find out what it is and fix it.

Here’s a short list of things you should avoid in order to get your visitors to stay at your site:

• No real valuable / useful info: Your site’s purpose is to offer something valuable to your visitors. If it doesn’t, people will find it like an empty shell and bounce away to another site.
• Poor design: people enjoy visiting nice looking sites. A good layout with a nice color scheme -and valuable contents, of course- will make people want to stick around and become regular readers / visitors to your site.
• Lack of personality: add your own touch to your site. Develop your own writing skills and be natural. Don’t try to copy someone else’s style because it simply won’t work and people will notice that you’re pretending to be something else. Just be yourself. People will like you
• Disrespect: sooner or later, you’ll be facing negative comments from people who disagree with you on a certain topic. People have their own views on things - you’ve got to respect that. Avoid commenting on if it’s not necessary, but if you have to remember that diplomacy is far more effective than anything else.

Most of these are major reasons why people leave your sites inmediately - and some of them may not come back again.

How can I improve my Bounce rate?

Improving your bounce rate isn’t an easy task. You won’t be seeing any improvements in the short term as it takes some time. Here are four useful tweaks / tips to help you improve your site and lower your bounce rate:

• Ask some friends to browse your pages. Their feedback will help you determine which areas of your sites need improvements / changes in order to offer a better user-experience to your visitors.
• Add links to other useful articles at the bottom of the page / post or within its contents. Keep your visitors browsing your pages!
• Make all your links highly visible and keep them relevant to your page / blog post.
• Find the pages with the highest bounce rate. If you can figure out what’s wrong with them and fix it, you’ll surely see a considerable drop on your average bounce rate.

So, what’s your Bounce rate now?