With the increasing number of businesses claiming their own online presence, nowadays, internet businesses are even in much fiercer competition. Thousands of websites are not only competing for higher rankings but for higher conversion rates as well.
The internet has served websites for businesses around the globe to further increase ROI and attract consumers. With the increasing numbers of businesses available with their own websites as the face of their companies online, the struggle is yet becoming more difficult as each tries to be the best and the most attractive among others.
Website owners and their chosen SEO company and consultant are working with each other in making their websites more compelling and more usable as they struggle to keep their visitors stay longer and browse their website longer which can help to lower down their site's bounce rate and ultimately increase their conversions.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is an internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site. A bounce occurs when a website visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.
Bounce rates can be used to help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the website.
The Importance of Bounce Rate
Generally, Google stated that a “high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors.” This means that a high bounce rate would indicate that visitors are not really finding your site’s entrance (landing) page relevant or compelling as opposed to low bounce rate which would indicate that your site’s visitors found what they wanted and decided to stay to get even more information. So, the more compelling your landing pages is to your site’s visitors, the more visitors will stay on your site and will ultimately convert - which is your site’s ultimate professional search engine optimization goal. But if not, the visitors who entered your site will just "bounce" - leave the site - rather than continue viewing other pages within your site.
Interpretation of the bounce rate measure should be relevant to a website's business objectives and definitions of conversion, as having a high bounce rate is not always a sign of poor performance. On sites where an objective can be met without viewing more than one page, the bounce rate would not be as meaningful for determining conversion success. In contrast, the bounce rate of an e-commerce site could be interpreted in correlation with the purchase conversion rate, providing the bounces are considered representative of visits where no purchase was made.
Reducing Bounce Rate
To reduce your site's bounce rate and optimize your site’s conversion rate, here are some effective SEO tips:
Optimize for proper Keywords and deliver - according to Google, “Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.” Avoid inconsistent and irrelevant content copy. Make sure that the keyword that you are ranking for on Search Engines mirrors or reflects the content on your website. A high bounce rate would indicate that your visitor finds your site is not relevant to the search they performed or they judged your site to be of poor quality.
Compelling web design and layout - according to Google, “The more compelling your site's landing pages, the more visitors will be encouraged to stay on your site longer and convert.” Your website’s entrance (landing) page appearance, design or user-interface alone can make your visitors stay or leave. It is said and believed that first impressions are long lasting and difficult to change. It only takes a few seconds or even a cursory glance for a person to make a judgment, and with many competitions out there and with people opposing to wasting time, it may be too late to make a good first impression. In many instances, a first impression is crucial.
Faster loading time - make sure that your site has a faster speed and minimum loading time. Avoid making your visitors wait - as if the average user are made to wait longer than 10 seconds for most elements of your page to load, out of sheer frustration, there’s a chance that they would leave the site thinking that there is something wrong with the site or your site is a waste of time. Moreover, Google now uses the site loading time as one of the signals to determine your Search Engine ranking. So if you want to highly rank in Google, as well as have a higher chance of conversion, then make your site speed faster.
Balance between content and usability - usually visitors landing on your website may be turned off by intrusive ads, videos, music, pop-ups. They might feel overwhelmed, intimidated and find it difficult to navigate your website and read your site’s content. Though advertising is a necessary evil for some websites, or auto play videos and music do sometimes add to the ‘experience’ of the site, in reality this can be quite annoying to a new visitor to your site. If it is really necessary to place ads or any third party content to your website, you must ensure that these are relevant to your page. You must try to create a workable balance between the level of advertising on the site and usability of the website to improve your web SEO.
Provide choices - make sure to optimize the position of your most popular links and call to action buttons on your site. Position them in the most prominent area of your pages. The best location for them is close to the top and towards the left of the screen. Give your visitors only 5-7 choices as if you only provide too few choices, people will see your site as having no value; while if there are too many choices, then people to tend to feel overwhelmed and feel paralyzed.