How to calculate, audit and improve the bounce rate of SEO success

Without a way to measure user attention or engagement, it is impossible to determine how effectively a website or landing page addresses the searcher’s intent.

I often use bounce rate as a key performance indicator (KPI) to measure user engagement.

However, considering how users use the Internet today, is the traditional understanding of bounce rate accurate and effective?

Do not, Bounce rate is not a Google ranking factor.

In this article, you will learn what bounce rate is, how to calculate bounce rate, what is a good bounce rate, and how to properly review it.

This is also a great opportunity to easily use Google Analytics to ask better questions.

What is the bounce rate?

In Google Analytics, bounce rate represents the number of sessions that triggered a single request to the Analytics server divided by the total number of sessions.

This indicator can be applied to the entire website or specific pages.

In order to understand what bounce rate is, we need to define two terms.

First of all, what is a conversation?

A session is a collection of user interactions (clicks) that occurred within a selected time range.

Treat the session as a visit. You may have this customer in your store before, but this is the number of times they came in during the selected time frame.

It’s important to note that the session will reset after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Second, what is sending a request to the analysis server?

Towards Google Analytics The server (click) may be viewing the second page (page_view) or triggering an event.

Learn more about events in one minute-keep reading.

How to calculate the bounce rate?

The bounce rate is calculated by dividing a single page session (without subsequent clicks) by the total number of sessions.

For example, if 8,000 SEJ readers landed on this page (total number of sessions), and 5,300 of them left without triggering a second click on Google Analytics, the bounce rate for this page would be 66.25%.

Example of actual bounce rate

Now that we understand the terms involved and how to calculate the bounce rate, let’s go back to how users go online today.

For example, I am Home office. Usually, I open a web page with the intention of reading the content.

But then the postman knocked on the door and the dog started barking, and I let them out.

Then I remember to change clothes.

Now our girls see me outside the office and want me to read them a story…

After half an hour, I pulled up the web page again. I am a participating user, but my bounce rate is 50%.

Or, on the other hand, I open the article link from Twitter, spend 5 minutes reading the content, watching the 2 minutes video, and then leave, because this is what I need. I am an active user with a 100% bounce rate.

Give another example, and then we will continue.

Suppose I land on a page with the Google Analytics tracking code, the page redirects to another page, but I leave immediately. I am not an active user, but my bounce rate is 0%.

At this point, the wheels should be spinning; the bounce rate may not mean what you originally thought it meant.

Unless you set up events in GA to measure meaningful user behavior, this is not a good measure of participating users.

How Google Analytics events affect bounce rate

Ready to learn more terms? This section will discuss what an event is and how it affects the bounce rate.

The event is the user’s interaction with content other than the page load (page_view). These can be link clicks, form submission, downloads, video playback, scroll depth, etc.

It is important to remember the impact of events on bounce rate.

Google Analytics includes a complete section to explain its implementation considerations Event help page.

“If you implement event measurement for your website, you may notice changes in the bounce rate metrics for pages with event measurement.

This is because event measurement, like page measurement, is classified as an interactive request. “

Let’s put it in context. You have an embedded video on your page and added event tracking to see how many times the video is played by website visitors and the percentage of each person watching the video.

Once you start using event tracking to record what visitors do on your website (video playback), your bounce rate on that page will decrease.

Now you can better measure the quality of visits to this page.

How to audit bounce rate

A common mistake marketers make is to hope that the bounce rate within the site is low. The main problem with this goal is that it completely ignores the necessary details.

Good user engagement depends on the implementation of Google Analytics, site structure, and even device type and content type.

When viewed in the right way, the bounce rate is still very interesting and useful. The following steps will help you review the bounce rate:

1. Genetic Algorithm Implementation

Check whether the Google Analytics tag has been installed once on your website. If you enter the tracking code twice, you may pass two page views, and you are likely to experience bounce rate issues.

To check your implementation, use Google’s Tab Assistant Chrome Extension. Tag Assistant is an old product, but it is still available for download.

Here’s how to use the extension to test your settings:

1. Install Tag Helper.
2. Open your website.
3. Click the extension icon in the browser bar.
4. Click Enable and refresh your web page.

Screenshot of Google Tag Manager, November 2021.

A properly installed Google Analytics tag will only have a happy and green GA or GTM tag on all pages you want to track.

2. Events reflect business goals

Align event tracking with your business goals.

For affiliate sites, you may want to track outbound clicks. For informational blogs, you may want to track page scrolling, internal link clicks, or file downloads. The prospective customer website will want to capture form submissions.

Consider obvious macro conversions and smaller micro conversions to accurately reflect the user journey on your website.

Once you are sure that the Google Analytics tags are installed correctly and the event tags reflect your business goals, you can proceed to step three.

Event tags are most commonly used Google Tag Manager. Check whether all events are considered in the Google Analytics Behavior Report.

Here is how to check whether the incident reflects business goals:

1. Open Google Analytics.
2. Open Behavior> Event Overview Report.
3. Confirm that all website operations important to your business are recorded in GA.

3. View bounce rate by marketing channel

It’s time to use Google Analytics to understand what factors might affect your bounce rate.

Open Google Analytics. Navigate to Acquisition> All Traffic Report by Default Channel Grouping.

Screenshot from Google Analytics, November 2021

From this report, you can check the bounce rate of the website by marketing channel, and be able to judge whether this is a real problem or organic growth.

For example, social media traffic includes a wide range of users, who may only care about the content on a specific landing page. Users don’t need to explore the site more deeply.

4. Explore high bounce rates

The final step in the bounce rate audit is to find pages that cause an abnormally high bounce rate.

To do this, click on the channel grouping of interest; for example, “Organic Search”.

Select the primary dimension as the “landing page.”

Click the heading “Bounce Rate” to sort the table.

Screenshot from Google Analytics, November 2021

In this report, you can view the organic session bounce rate by landing page.

Look for patterns in content types.

Is the page with a high bounce rate a blog? This may still not be an alarm issue. A good landing page that fully covers the target topic will provide visitors with every detail they are looking for.

The average bounce rate of blogs is 70% to 90%.

However, if the page is used for lead generation or e-commerce, you want the bounce rate to be between 30% and 40%.

How to fix high bounce rate

If you do detect a truly high bounce rate, this will become a user experience issue. In this case, you may need to rewrite introductory paragraphs, improve internal links, or increase page speed.

Rewriting the introductory paragraph may attract more readers from the start, allowing them to truly understand why they need to read your article instead of the competitor’s.

Improve internal links You can encourage website visitors to explore related topics in more depth, allowing them to participate in your website content longer and get higher page views.

Improve page speed Will ensure that you will not lose potential customers due to bad luck loading wheels.

Bounce rate in GA4

If you add Google Analytics to your website after October 2020, you might search in GA4 and wonder where the bounce rate went?

You will not find the bounce rate in the Google Analytics 4 report. Instead, you will use “participatory conversation.”

GA4 interactive sessions can be applied to situations where traditional bounce rates cannot help marketers better understand whether users are interacting with the site.

I encourage you More familiar with GA4 And “participatory meetings.” The new indicator solves many problems.

In essence, we resist change. When you get used to the new GA4 interface and indicators, there will inevitably be an adaptation period.

Final thoughts

It’s important to remember that the bounce rate you see in reports may be affected by label implementation, event tracking, marketing channels, and content types.

To better understand user engagement, please set up Google Analytics in a way that reflects your business goals.

More resources:

Featured image 1: Submitted by the author
Featured image 2: Shutterstock/TarikVision