One question that most of the SEO marketers and bloggers think over is why their post did not rank on Google’s first page?
Along with this, they keep checking why searchers online quickly shifted from their page to other webpages.
Even after adding backlinks, increasing content, increasing social shares, there are still a few things lacking, which is why web searchers move from your destination to the other ones.
If this is happening with your post also, you must check, it might be because of problems with the website itself.
User engagement, content, and user experience create a huge impact on SEO rankings.
One way to gain success online is through user engagement. And one major measure to boost user engagement on your website is the bounce rate.
So, if your website experiences a high bounce rate, then read this post to know the possible reasons. Knowing this can help you rectify such issues easily so that your website bounce rate is improved.
Before we list down the reasons, first let us tell you what bounce rate means.
What is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is defined as the total percentage of visitors that leave your site after viewing just one post or page.
In more technical terms, the bounce rate is defined as the total percentage of visits on a single page of a website. It is considered as the total number of visits where a person leaves the site from the landing page without further browsing.
The bounce rate is a highly vital metric for on-site SEO of any website and can drastically affect its search engine rankings. It is possible to monitor the bounce rate using the Google Analytics tool.
How Bounce Rate Impacts SEO?
The good thing is that the bounce rate does not directly impact a website’s SEO. But the sad thing is that the bounce rate creates an indirect impact on a website’s SEO.
While it is not possible to evaluate the correct search intent considering bounce rate only, but it gives a pretty good idea about why there are fewer clicks on your website even when you are gaining organic traffic.
A high bounce rate indicates a high dwell time of users.
Moreover, a high bounce rate indicates a weakness in your SEO factors.
But these issues are treatable and hence you can reduce the bounce rate for your website only by considering the reason behind the same. Therefore, it is essential to fix the bounce rate of your webpage to maintain your site’s SERP rankings.
Using Google Analytics to Estimate the Bounce Rate:
Google gives a straightforward formula for calculating the bounce rate, which is a total number of bounces for a post or web page divided by the total number of visits on that particular page.
Using this formula, it is possible to estimate a website’s bounce rate by taking into consideration the total page bounces and visits.
Based on numerous studies conducted by expert researchers, an ideal bounce rate is believed as:
- 70% or more – Bad or broken.
- 55-70% – Higher than standard or normal.
- 40-55% – Average.
- 25-40% – Excellent.
- 25% or Less – Something is broken.
To make sure your site stands in a better place, it is ideal to ensure your website does not reach a bounce rate higher than 25%.
But the good thing is that you can actually keep it even lower than 25%.
This works by checking the possible reasons for a high bounce rate.
Reasons for High Bounce Rate:
1. Your Website Displays Annoying Pop-Ups:
This is a highly common mistake made by numerous bloggers. They are usually focused on gathering subscribers and hence display popups across the website.
But this something must be stopped at once!
It is great to collect emails. However, there are numerous other ways to do it successfully without troubling your readers. You can ask users their emails by offering them something valuable, which will happen only when your readers read the complete article.
If you welcome them with unnecessary welcome popups, you are simply annoying them and giving them a reason to leave your website at once.
Solution – Make sure your website is free from annoying popups.
Allow your readers to go through your content first and then you can display the subscription box. One great way is to incorporate numerous subscription boxes in your blog’s sidebar or in between the post.
Moreover, provide your user’s free offers like printable kinds of stuff, designs, eBooks, tutorials, and others to ask their email address.
2. Your Post or Website Takes Too Much Time to Load:
If your website is hosted on a slow server, it can make it slow down in multiple ways.
A site with slow loading time can affect user engagement, traffic, and the bounce rate. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, the maximum number of visitors will leave your site instantly.
Even those visitors who are patient enough would avoid clicking on the internal pages of your website to read the articles.
It is a matter of concern to avoid hosting your website on a cheap or shared web host server as it will continue loading your website in more time.
Solution – Make sure you host your website only on a reliable and trusted platform. Moreover, you can practice the latest speed optimization techniques to improve the loading speed of your blog.
3. Clicking Bait on the Titles:
An important thing you must remember always is you get only what you see.
If you click on an article after reading an appealing or interesting title, it is expected that the content must be equally better.
For marketers who are intelligent enough to write attention-grabbing headlines, they must use similar techniques throughout the article body.
Make sure you don’t clickbait the articles when there is no article related to the same. This is only going to frustrate the readers and they will immediately leave your blog.
This technique is mainly practiced by fake websites that may result in huge short traffic, but the results are worst. Developing trust with readers requires thousands of attempts but losing needs only one.
Solution – Create engaging and catchy titles, but avoid overboard. Don’t clickbait or create false promises under the title.
Always focus on gaining long-term results and make attempts to ensure your readers turn after reading your post.
4. You Are Using Difficult to Read Fonts:
Your content’s readability matters a lot in context to its bounce rate.
Might be, you are an excellent writer, but if you are using too small fonts, it will become difficult for the readers to know at a glance what all is written. For this reason, they may avoid reading your post and would prefer reading one with clearer and readable fonts.
A lot of blogs or websites use 10-12 pixel font sizes, which are really stressful to the eyes. The optimal size of the font must be between 14-18 pixels.
The font used is also vital, but if it is comfortable to read, that it would not matter much.
Solution – Edit the font settings and increase the font size to at least 14 pixels. You can use theme shop and others with editors make it convenient to edit the WordPress or contact the theme of your developer.
5. There is a 404 Error Page:
If the 404 error page is appearing on your site then this could be either because an incorrect URL is entered or the particular post or page has been deleted.
When any of your users experience a 404 error page, she or he will instantly close the tab. This restricts the users from going through the awesome content on your website.
404 error pages can also occur because of dead links. If there are more error pages on your website, it will reduce the SERP rankings of your website.
Solution – It is essential to monitor the 404 error pages on your website or blog. This can be done easily using the Google Webmaster tool. With the help of this tool, you can regularly monitor if there are any novel dead links. If there are any it is best to immediately resolve them.
There is another way to combat this problem. This is by customizing the 404 error page. Whenever a user lands on that page, then a plain error will not be displayed. Instead, the page will display a search bar, popular posts, contact form, or integrate links to the homepage.
This way, users will have a couple of reasons to stay on your website for a longer time and browse through numerous pages.
6. Your Website Having Under Optimized or Low-Quality Articles:
This is again something related to your post’s readability.
The low quality of your post is not completely about grammatical errors or bad writing. There are more other aspects involved with it.
It is also about explaining things in a more interesting and engaging manner.
You must know how to write articles in an engaging manner. You must be efficient enough to write explanatory and simple sentences. It is not only important to use header tags, screenshots, relevant images, but also to create paragraphs of appropriate lengths and display properly optimized content.
Solution – It is extremely important to not only write great articles but also to optimize the articles for your readers. In order to write fantastic articles, you must keep the following aspects into consideration:
- Use efficient heading tags in your post. Along with H1 tag, it is great to use H2 and H3 tags to create a positive impact on your readers.
- It is always best to create shorter paragraphs. If possible, keep the limit of your paragraphs up to 2-3 sentences only.
- Use italics, bold wherever necessary and underline content for vital points.
- To create your content more engaging, it is best to incorporate related screenshots or images numerous times in the entire body of your article.
7. Showcasing Numerous Ads in the Body of the Content:
Google has recently announced and removed the limitation of displaying the maximum number of ads on one content page.
Definitely it is beneficial to the readers, but most bloggers consider it an excellent way to make money.
However, it is not!
Readers are not interested to see ads after every second or third paragraph. Even, displaying more ads does not create any impact on the loading time of your website.
You may earn some additional dollars by positioning Google Ads throughout the content body, but then this is not going to bring benefit in the long-term.
Solution – It is vital to maintain an adequate balance of ads as well as other marketing boxes being showcased on your website. If there is a 1000 words post being displayed, then it is great to position 3-4 ads throughout the content body.
If there are no Google Ads or very fewer ads displayed in your content body, it will also drastically boost the loading time. Therefore, make sure that the ad placement is correct and appropriate in number so that you can generate better revenue with only fewer ads.
8. There are Irrelevant Links on Your Website from Other Sites:
The relevance and quality of links is an integral part of SEO and your post. Rather than creating 100 links from low-quality or non-relevant websites, you must always attempt to obtain one link from a high-quality website in your domain.
Just think that your post is about web hosting and you avail links from some websites related to the fashion. When the visitors of that particular website click on your link and visit the blog, do you intend them to read your article?
They have no interest in your topic and they instantly leave the blog without scrolling more. At times, you may even receive spam traffic from undesirable websites that have a higher bounce rate.
Solution – Always try to build links from sites in your niche only. You might get more visitors otherwise, but if they stay on your website and are really interested in your content or offerings, they will become your loyal customers for the future.
To Sum Up:
First, calculate the bounce rate of your website or blog? Then check for reasons for the same and take appropriate actions to reduce the bounce rate.