Why a High Website Bounce Rate is Not Necessarily Bad

Website Bounce Rates

This article does not apply to on-line stores where a high website bounce rate truly is bad.

Google’s mission as we have mentioned in other pages on this website is to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” What I am going to take from this is the word ‘useful.’

A High Website Bounce Rate Can be Good?

So what does this have to do with why a high does a high website bounce rate not be a bad sign in SEO?

Simply because if you have a really great landing page, the provides all the information that a person is seeking so they don’t have to go to another page of the website, they leave from the landing page, well you have actually more than fulfilled the both Google’s goal and the website’s goal of providing the ‘useful’ information that they are seeking.  This is a good thing, all the information that they were seeking they found on just the one page.  Ideal really.

One of the most quoted ‘facts’ about SEO is that a high website bounce rate is bad for the ranking of your website. Well, if someone lands on your website and then immediately within seconds exists, it certainly is. However look at the example below.  Sorry the image is really small but it comes from Google Analytics – please just increase the view on your page to see the table.

This is a blog that I wrote for client who runs a successful computer repair business and does a lot of Apple Mac repair work.

As you can see from the information above the blog has a shockingly high bounce rate of 97%. Bad SEO you would say, however when you look closer you can see that the average time spent on the page is a whopping 6.17 minutes. Now that is a really lengthy period of time.

Okay, so when the people read this blog  of 2,798 words they did not then go to any other page to look at any of the services. However this blog has helped the client in the following ways:-

Increased Length Spent on Website

It has provided the useful information that they sought, spending on average 6.17 minutes to read the article.  As you would (or may not) know Google also takes into account how long the duration of visit is when ranking a website. Thus we have with this blog in a small way helped increase the length of time spent on the website.

Generated New Customers

A high website bounce rate for this client is typical of the industry. Unlike an on-line store where a customer visits several pages in order to make a purchase (product page, cart and checkout), for this business (and many other service business) the overwhelming majority of this client’s customers contact him by phone. Thus it is quite possible that some of these website visitors turned into customers.

Created Brand Awareness

This blog has brought people to my client’s website who may not have come otherwise. If they do not need his services immediately, hopefully after having read the information should they ever require his services they will remember reading his blog and return to his website. Remember the blog was on how long do Macs last, one would assume that a good portion of these people were searching for this information because their Apple Macs are getting long in the tooth and considering purchasing a new one. Having read the article they may decide to keep it for a longer period and have it repaired if required – or it may already need to be repaired and as noted above phone the computer repair business.

Generated Traffic To The Website

This blog in January 2018 was the 4th most important landing page on this website. Now that is impressive for a service based website (not a blog website). Thus by itself the blog is generating 8% additional traffic to what the website receives in a month.  Many of us in SEO believe that traffic volume is yet another measurement that Google uses in ranking websites, thus this blog has helped the overall website ranking (if this is in fact a measurement) used, even though it has a high website bounce rate.

Conclusion

A high website bounce rate is definitely not always a bad thing. As demonstrated above it can actually be good. As for all SEO one needs to look at a number of different measures, not just rely on one. And even when you look at a number of different measures, remember that none of this data is 100% accurate and if something doesn’t look right, delve in deeper, never just accept the data. Personally I think this is what makes a good SEO Consultant being able to see when something is not right and to have an inquiring mind and look further into reasons why that information reported may not actually be correct.