This can be a somewhat confusing because a bounce rate is a little bit different depending on the analytics platform that you use. But what we really care about is what Google thinks, right? So your bounce rate is a measure of how quickly people leave once they get to your website.
Search engines will use this as a measure to determine whether people have found what they’re looking for. If they have a problem and they’re looking for a solution, has your website given them that solution or do they return back to the search results page and look at the next result? That’s really important because if they find the solution on your site, that means they’re spending more time, which means that you have a lower bounce rate.
The bounce rate is a percentage of how many people leave right away versus how many people stay because they found what they’re looking for.
Think about that for a moment. What would it mean to search engines if visitors leave your site right away and go on to the next search result? It means that they didn’t find what they’re looking for. So the search engine needs to adjust the results to provide the search listings that people actually want. And that’s what causes your website to move backwards in the search results.
So then what is a good bounce rate? There’s two different ways to look at a bounce rate when you’re optimizing your website. First is, do people take a second action when they get to your site? For example, if I were to click on a search result and go to a website, maybe I’ll see a homepage or a special landing page that answers my question and solves my problem, well, do I take a second step?
What does that mean? That means did I sign up for an email? Or did I join your emailing list to maintain communication with you? Did I click a link to call your phone number? Since a lot of traffic is mobile, people will click on a phone link to make a phone call to talk to someone, or did I fill out a form? Did I click on a link for more information or to go deeper into your website? Those are the signals that tell the search engines that people are consuming your content and they’re going deeper and that they found what they’re looking for.
Now there’s another way that they can tell. And that’s what I briefly touched on a moment ago. How quickly do people leave? So if I were to go to your site, click a link and sign up or send an email, or call you, I might spend time on your website without leaving the original page, but because I spent time there, that accomplishes a goal and that sends a good signal to the search engines.
However, if I were to go to your website and I left in less than 10 seconds, then that tells the search engines that I didn’t find what I was looking for and I had to get out of there right away. So you want to think about that a little bit. What that actually means about my satisfaction as a visitor, right? So on good websites, we’ve had bounce rates between 12 and 18%, and that means that 82% or more people have actually found what they’re looking for when they get to our website. And that’s usually the number that we see for sites that are ranking at the top of Google. So that’s actually kind of a secret metric that people do not want you to know about their websites. And so I’m sharing that with you to kind of give you a target and a goal to know what do the search engines look for?
Most people’s websites, the bounce rates range between 30 and 40%, which is actually really bad. If you go over 30%, 40% is actually awful. You really want to try to get your website below 30%. That’s kind of more average. But just remember that it’s a measure of how well you’re actually connecting with the people who are finding your website.
When you’re optimizing for people, instead of just focusing on the search results, naturally they’re going to be staying longer because you’re going to be caring more about the quality of what you’re delivering. They’re going to find what they’re looking for, and the byproduct of that is that your site is going to be moving up in the search results.