Bounce rate is a measurement in percentage where it measures the percentage of your visitors leave your web page after reading your content.
So, assuming you have 10 visitors landed on your home page and nine of them immediately navigate to another website, this means that you have a 90% bounce rate which is not a good number here.
As a result, the more you keep your visitors around your site, the lower your bounce rate and the better the statistic of your site is.
The easiest way to measure your site bounce rate is by using the Google Analytics. You can check out this post to learn how to install one for your WordPress blog.
What is a good bounce rate?
To disappoint you, there isn’t a magic number here for a good bounce rate. It really depends on what type of website that you are hosting, your niche and your content.
If you are writing articles on how to solve critical problem, your audience that navigate at your site does not have the time to browse other article but to just get straight to the point.
On the other hand if you are writing something that a little more easy reading type, then you audience might just spend the whole Sunday reading them and you will have a nice low bounce rate.
Although I can’t give you the exact number, but I can give you a range of bounce rate on what you should expect for you site here.
Sites with more than 80% bounce rate.
For site that has only few pages that sell a product, you will be expecting a very high bounce rate. There isn’t anything that you can do here because you will be busy optimizing your sales page instead of building more contents.
As a result, it is very normal if your bounce rate is high here because for a sales page, bounce rate does not matter that much. The thing that matters is the conversion.
Sites with 40%-60% bounce rate.
If you are running a blog like this one, I will be expecting you to target around 40%-60% bounce rate. It is not difficult to achieve such bounce rate for a blog unless you are writing something really irrelevant all the time.
There are also some blogs that might ended up a little high in the bounce rate but that is okay because as I said, not all site is the same. There are some basic things which you can do for a blog to reduce bounce rate such as site design, adding related post plugin and etc.
You will only need to worry if your bounce rate is like 80% or more.
Sites with less than 40% bounce rate.
It is possible for sites to have 40% bounce rate or less such as forums or discussion site. This is because their visitors will stick to their site very closely for example login into the forum, clicking on the thread to see the forum post, clicking on user information and navigating the pages.
For such site, it is very unlikely the user will bounce off. Although the bounce rate is low, that doesn’t mean putting Google Adsense ads will make you a lot of money because it is harder to get targeted traffic that will click on the ads.
My verdict on Bounce Rate
I love to run blogs and for a blog, usually I will expect my bounce rate to fall between 40% to 60%. At a very bad time, I might have as high as 65% or as low as 35% but that should be the limit that you can go.
Although there isn’t any fact that says the bounce rate will affect your site SEO, but it is best that you assume it will. Take an example here, if you had been producing great contents all over your site, isn’t it your bounce rate has to be low?
On the other half, if Google knows that people kept leaving your site after landing there, you might just tell Google that your site does not have any other great contents to read anymore.
As a result, I would recommend you to look into your Bounce Rate improvement if it is more than 75%.
So, what about you there? Care to share your bounce rate?
I have just started following your blog via your Fairy Blog Mother facebook posts and would like to thank you for making all these important factors easy to understand rather than using mind boggling language that is often found on SEO/website blogs. I will be popping back regularly.
Kind regards, Lisa
Lisa recently posted..Residency in Spain: Renewal Update September 2012
Thanks for dropping by, Lisa.
Hope to see you again.
Alan I just stumbled upon your page trying to gain more knowledge as far as understanding google analytic. I have some questions for you, my website we are selling a product with a specific niche Nike shoes and watches and I do intend to start blogging to become a source in the shoe community. Is there other ways or method you can provide me with to gain more exposure as far as internet marketing at the least amount capital. Looking forward to hearing back from you and seriously you write very well, I need to really take notes!
Hi Allen
It is good to see that you are looking forward in expanding your business there.
I haven’t seen your site yet but what I can suggest over here is to start building an email list that you can talk to your audience personally. At the same time, do start a blog as well for your site and write helpful articles to your target audience.
It is difficult to give a detailed guide here apart from following my blog frequently but the key thing here is, try producing articles that is helpful and from there, your readers will start to find you as the right source to refer when it comes to Nike shoes and watches.
Good luck there, Allen
Hi Alan,
Bounce rate on a site is something every blogger wants to decrease and the traffic to increase.I have a bounce rate in somewhat between 50-65% in last month.And i think its a sufficient % to have.
Aditya recently posted..Mobile Recharge Software India
Yeps, that should be, Aditya
My bounce rate is OK, but one need to see that bounce is not always bad.
Yes, bounce rate can also be like a person or reader came for want he need then left.
Though it is good and we need to work on to improve this.
~@khajamoin1
Khaja moin recently posted..52 Dofollow Blogs List to Comment
True Khaja.
Thanks for your comment.
Hey Alan, This is a great guide on bounce rate, for every blogger before knowing how to reduce bounce rate, It is must to know what actually a bounce rate is.
My blog’s bounce rate is below 60% and I think It is normal.
Thanks anyway
Yeps, I do agree that is a normal bounce rate. Thanks for dropping by
Following your advice here i have been able to drastically reduce my site’s bounce rate…..thanks for the info. You’ve just won a regular visitor.
Nwosu Desmond recently posted..Buy recharge cards online in Nigeria with ATM cards – Chithub.com
Welcome to Blogging Fever, Nwosu.
I’m planning another few more posts on bounce rate tips. Stay tuned.
Very nicely explained in layman terms. Thanks for sharing. Keep the posts coming!
Thanks for your comment, Dipa.
My site’s bounce rate varies between 60-85% depending upon the article which is trending !
Nadeem Khan recently posted..SEO For Startups: As Recommended By Google
I think you are right about high bounce rate and articles about how to solve a problem. I have a tutorial site with how to fix or do something. The bounce rate is fairly high. I think people are only looking for one thing, how to fix their problem. Once they have that information they leave. I have tried decreasing the bounce rate on this one, but it rarely comes down much.
Ray recently posted..Nobody Said Making Money Online Was Easy
Yeps Ray.
I have one of my blogs behaving the same thing. For your case, I would take the consideration of Time Spent on the site as well. If the bounce rate is high but time spent is high as well, then I don’t see that as a problem.
What I try to tackle here is the people who comes in less than 1 second and leave. 🙂
It is very important that one is knowledgeable about traffic of their own website. Bounce rate is one good determinant on how your blog is faring over others. It allows you to know which topics to write more about and which topics interest your target market.
Emilia recently posted..Cash for Gold Scams Online
Yeps, Emilia. Thanks for commenting there.
Thanks for the very informative post Alan about bounce rate. I hope you can give us some tips on how to decrease bounce rate. I am looking forward and appreciate more information about this from you.
I will appreciate that you take a step further by reading my comment policy first before dropping a comment. Thanks
Alan Tay recently posted..Five Ways to Better Define Your Audience