It wasn’t long ago when I noticed that the new beta for Google analytics had one major, bolded statistic on the dashboard. The bounce rate smacked me in the face a couple times until I realized that this must be a major factor that Google uses to decide whether or not you website will stay at the top of search results. I had my theory and it was time to test it.
Although I know that you need at least thirty or so websites to really prove a theory, I feel confident that my findings are accurate from testing just six of my clients’ websites and a couple of my own. You be the judge!
I’ve always known that Google paid attention to depth of visit and pages per visit, but for some reason I didn’t think too much about the bounce rate until the new Google analytics beta was released. I started brainstorming ‘bounce rate reduction strategies’ with my designers and programmers. The results of our brainstorming session are as follows.
1. Make almost everything on the homepage click-able. That includes flash and images. Make sure that the image maps lead to relevant content, not just some random page.
2. Make sure that your contact information is on every single page of your website except for the homepage. This forces those would be callers to dig at least one page.
3. Come up with catchy tag lines or call to actions. This can be a ribbon, tag, or flash advertisement. Examples would be Free Catalog Download, Competitive Price Matching, Free Shipping, Client Results, Free SEO Tools…etc.
4 If you or your client is using Adwords or CPC programs, make sure that your ads directly relate to your website. Google still includes CPC traffic when calculating the bounce rate for each keyword or phrase.
THINGS I ADVISE AGAINST
1. I believe you will fail if you try things that look like horrible advertisements. This could be something like… WIN A FREE IPOD or WIN A FREE PS3 This might actually increase your bounce rate, as some visitors will get the first impression that you have cheesy ads on your website.
2. Don’t have flash or image maps that link to irrelevant web pages or might end up being confusing to the visitor. This might reduce your bounce rate, but could decrease your depth of visit or length of visit averages.
All of the websites I tested these solutions on experienced an increase in rankings within two weeks or less. Keep in mind that you must pay attention to your bounce rate day to day to make sure that your newly implemented strategy is moving you in the right direction. Good luck!
I hope someone finds this article helpful and if anyone likes it, you may start to see more from my bag of SEO tricks.
