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Should You be Worried About the Bounce Rate of Your Website?

Bounce rate is a Google Analytics metric that shows the percentage of visitors of a website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. Digital marketers show the bounce rate as one of the important metrics of a website performance. But should you be really worried about the bounce rate of your website?

Read why it is Time to move from Universal Google Analytics to Google Analytics 4.

Is bounce rate a ranking factor?

Authoritative voices and reputable companies in the search engine optimization industry have often given statements that gave people the assumption that bounce rate is a ranking factor. It is another matter that they were not able to give conclusive evidence to prove their point.

However, Google’s John Mueller has categorically stated that for SEO purposes, you must not be worried about the bounce rate of your website as it is not a ranking factor for Google.

At the same time, this is not anything new as Google had consistently taken the position that bounce rate is not a ranking factor. Search evangelists of Google have been giving this overwhelmingly clear message since 2010.

Why is the bounce rate not a ranking factor?

Now that it is clear that Google doesn’t use bounce rate as a ranking factor, we must know why it is so.

Search engines want their users to find the correct and accurate information. Websites that give accurate information are ranked and shown on the search results, based on users’ query. Any website that shows useful information to the users is considered a quality site. Here lies the reason why bounce rate isn’t a ranking factor.

Users may find useful information on the landing page

One of the main reasons why bounce rate isn’t considered a ranking factor is because it is not a good measure to judge if a web page is effective or not.

Most people assume the high bounce rate as a negative ranking factor because it may appear that visitors not visiting a second page on the website could be because it didn’t give the answers the visitors were looking for.

The assumption is the web page isn’t effective enough and hence the visitor left the website without visiting another page.

However, this assumption could be wrong. Imagine a situation where the visitor was able to find all the information, she was looking for from the first landing page. She needn’t go to another page as she is satisfied with the information she found. But technically, that is also considered a bounce as the visitor left the website without visiting another page.

Here, the visitor got the right information and hence it makes sense to consider the website an effective one for the user’s query. There is no point in giving the website a thumbs down only because the user left the website without visiting another page.

Learn more about How to create search engine friendly content.

Not all websites use Google Analytics

As mentioned earlier, bounce rate is a Google Analytics metric and not all websites use Google Analytics. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for search engines to use bounce rate as a ranking factor for all websites.

Search engines won’t be able to compare between two websites – one with Google Analytics and one without – and then rank them. So, search engines can’t use bounce rate as a ranking factor.

Is it important to improve your bounce rate?

Though bounce rate is not a ranking factor, it is a good practice to improve your bounce rate. Any website with a low bounce rate would mean that the content of the website is engaging and useful to the end user.

Higher bounce rate could also mean that your website is slow and hence people don’t stay for a longer period of time on your website. Pagespeed of a website is a ranking factor and hence you must try and improve the speed of the website.

High bounce rate may also mean poor user experience, which is a negative ranking factor.

Therefore, even though bounce rate is not a ranking factor, if your website has high bounce rate, make sure that your website content is engaging, your pagespeed is high and the user experience is good.

You may like to read How small businesses can reduce website bounce rate?

If you are worried about your high website bounce rate, then contact me.