Website Review Evaluation: Does Bounce Rate Affect SEO?

Website Review Evaluation of Your Bounce Rate

The metrics for gauging the status of your SEO paradigm are much more varied today than they ever were in the past. Whether you?re using free analytics from Google ? or any of the even more robust paid platforms ? your dashboard can be overwhelmingly comprehensive. With that said; there are definitely some metrics that matter more than others for an actionable SEO policy, and the so-called bounce rate is one of them.

What, Exactly, is Bounce Rate?

In short, bounce rate indicates your website?s user experience. It is the amount of time a visitor spends on your landing page before exiting back to the search results, ostensibly to look for a better answer to their question. Clearly, if your bounce rate is high, your site might be well-optimized, but you?re not delivering the content your audience desires. People are leaving too quickly.

It could also mean your internal linking scheme isn?t optimal; a high bounce rate means your visitors aren?t sticking around to visit other pages. The good thing about this metric is that, in a website review evaluation, it can point the way to making effective changes and driving up your site interaction metrics.

The Google Braintrust

An effective way to curate content is to understand how the minds behind Google work. With literally billions of Web pages out there, they have access to correlations that escape the average user ? such as what keywords tend to go together on the overwhelming majority of relevant pages. Over the years, however, people have learned to put together websites that have these keyword-correlation features, but lack the useful content that drives advertiser investment in Google Search. So, how does Google combat this?

By using bounce rate as a crucial aspect of its search engine algorithm. No matter how well a webmaster might try to game the search engines by using certain tricks, she cannot fool human readers; she cannot get them to remain on her site for an extended period if she isn?t providing the information they came for. The website might be on the first page of Google, but a quick website review evaluation will show you that it doesn?t deliver on the promised content ? and this shows up in the form of a poor (very high) bounce rate. Additionally, you?re not likely to visit any other pages of said website.

The Future of a Website with a High Bounce Rate

As you might expect, Google will take that poor bounce rate into consideration before too long, and there?s no way the page will remain on the first page for long. Although bounce rate is well-understood, the exact metrics Google uses to support it are secret ? otherwise, people would be finding ways to lower their bounce rate through artificial, and unscrupulous, means. Nonetheless, the basics are all that are important, and you can lower your bounce rate by simply delivering on the promised useful content. A website review evaluation will help you identify the areas where you can lower your bounce rate, which will inevitably lead to greater engagement and higher conversions.

What better way to get started than taking a FREE Inbound Marketing Assessment to help you understand how effective your content is. Inbound marketing is simply the way to go in today?s marketing climate; it leads to higher conversions per lead and costs less than other methods. Get started today to make your website competitive.