While a lot of people will find your website useful, there will be those persons that leave the site without taking any action. It’s common for every website to have such a thing, no matter how much you try. Maybe the person just doesn’t like the website layout, they realized you’re not offering what they want and so on.
What does the bounce rate mean?
The website’s bounce rate is basically the amount of people that enter the site and don’t take any action. These actions are things like making a purchase, filling out forms, clicking on links or interacting with the website. Is the bounce rate important for your website? Yes, because you get to see why you’re not converting. Plus, if you have a high bounce rate, you will know that there is a problem with your copy, page layout or maybe the user experience.
Does Google consider website bounce rates as a ranking factor?
Most of the industry says no, but there are some studies like this which show that a high bounce rate shows Google people don’t have the best experience. An important thing to note is that the average time on site for new users is around 2.5 minutes, but this is valid for the first page results. However, Google does see if users interacted with your website or not.
If you have Google Analytics on your website, then they can see your website’s bounce rate. Since Google’s algorithm is obviously kept under lock and key, it’s hard to know how much value, if at all, does this information have. Yet we need to realize that a high bounce rate isn’t good for any website, so keeping these stats low is very important. Whether it will take a while to do that or not, only time can tell.
What we do know is that trying to optimize and lower bounce rates will always have great benefits for any website. So yes, Google might take bounce rates into consideration, but we don’t know if and how much of that is important to them. In the end, it’s crucial to set the right expectations and deliver what customers want. Also, listening to their feedback is extremely important, as it will make it easier to enhance and optimize user experience in the long term. Once you do that, you will have much better results!
