“Bounce” occurs when a visitor lands on one page of your website then quickly leaves your site without engagement. Bounce can happen for many reasons, including irrelevant traffic, slow load times, or unclear landing pages. Here are six reasons why your bounce rate may be high and how you can improve it.
Landing Page
Your landing pages are key web pages on your site that your visitors typically see first. These may be your home page or essential product pages. If you’re noticing high bounce on these pages, you may need to look at their design. Successful landing pages have clear messaging, an eye-catching image or other media, and a prominent call to action. A call to action encourages your visitors to dive deeper into your website, such as a “Learn More” or “Sign Up” button. You want landing pages that look good and are easy to navigate.
Ranking for Irrelevant Keywords
A high bounce rate could also be one result of poor SEO practices. Search engine optimization is essential for directing relevant traffic to your site. You can use a tool such as Ubersuggest to discover which keywords your competition is using and which keywords you should be targeting. Keep track of how your website performs using your targeted keywords. You should see an uptake in relevant traffic and conversions over time as you maintain your keyword optimization practices.
Quality Content
SEO is just one aspect of quality content creation. If your site content is of low quality and unengaging, you will continue to see a high bounce rate as users search for other results. Investing in informative and unique content can turn your site into an authority in your industry. Creating diverse content such as blog posts, industry updates, or market insights will show your visitors and Google that your site has the answers.
Slow Loading Pages
If your website holds lots of data and media, you may notice a high bounce rate due to slow processing speed. A web page that loads slower than 2 seconds will most likely lose its visitor. A great way to improve your processing power without sacrificing your data is to migrate to a dedicated server that can provide your site with greater flexibility. Dedicated server hosting such as that offered by Liquid Web work efficiently “monitoring your servers, mitigating risk, and helping you optimize performance.” Improved page performance is a great way to improve your site engagements and decrease bounce rate.
Bad Backlinks
Building backlinks is a vital part of SEO and digital marketing. Getting a backlink to your site from another relevant website can help build your website authority. However, if your backlinks are of poor quality, they may be directing irrelevant traffic to your site, increasing your bounce rate. Getting these links removed or replaced can help improve your bounce rate and the quality of your search engine results.
Mobile Friendly
A key reason your bounce rate may be high is that your site is not mobile-friendly. Webpages can become distorted and messy when converted to mobile displays, which will cause your audience to leave your site quickly. If you’re noticing a high bounce rate for one of your pages but don’t see any issues immediately, try checking its mobile compatibility. Correcting your mobile accessibility can significantly decrease your bounce rate.
These are just some of the reasons your bounce rate may be high. Optimizing your site to make it convenient and informative to the user is key to increasing traffic and decreasing bounce.
