Today is devoted to a rant about Bounce Rate and how it is not important to keep it to the minimum.
Following posts here and there, and on Mirjam’s and Bryan’s blogs, about Bounce Rate and how it was important to keep it to the minimum, I just had to speak out.
Commentators were comparing their bounce rates and speculating about what was wrong with their blogs. Basically, everyone were striving to bring it down below 40%, but the truth is that there are blogs that aren’t built for these bounce rates and never going to get there.
Moreover, It makes me mad that authority sources are making very hard claims about it. This is a quote from Wikipedia:
Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik has stated, “It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”
It is important to understand that he is referring to static sites, not blogs. Static sites present you with one main page with links to the relevant pages on this site. If no one clicks through, there is something wrong with the site or with the traffic (not targeted properly), obviously.
Blogs are a different story.
When you’re new to blogging you harvest lots of information from various sources and change your blog without even stopping to think why is that so, or at least seeking a second opinion from another authority source. I’ve been there, I know.
I was reading ProBlogger, DoshDosh, John Chow, etc., and implementing just every little tweak that supposedly would have helped me improve my blog. I felt that those guys have made it and know what they are talking about, and they usually did.
When first discovering Google Analytics, I also discovered Bounce Rate and was amazed that it was on ~80%. Reading that it was supposed to be below 50%, my face was becoming longer by the minute. Wow, I thought I was doing something really wrong, and went to make myself a really hot cup of tea to cope with the horrible news. Only during the following days I managed to see the true meaning of bounce rate.
I realized that my blog was showing full stories on its main page and that most of the readers at the time weren’t bothering to click through. I set out an experiment with a post with a ‘more’ tag, and oh joy, my Bounce Rate went down on that day.
But this didn’t make me change my main page settings, I’m still using full stories and I believe this is the most convenient way for my readers. I personally hate to click through to read the rest of the story, unless it is really intriguing.
Simply now I know that my blog has an average global Bounce Rate of 75% and consider it a natural state. There is no way to compare your Bounce Rate to another blog unless it’s exactly the same blog. I am beginning to suspect that the global Bounce Rate is rather useless.
What I think is useful is the comparison of Bounce Rates of specific traffic sources. I often use Bounce Rate is to compare referrers and to analyze its traffic behavior. When comparing StumbleUpon, Entrecard and SiteHoppin traffic, for example, that arrives not to the main page, but to a specific post, I know that the lower the Bounce Rate it would mean lower hit-n-runs and that readers take interest investigating around a bit.
As your blog matures though, you have to try making your blog more sticky, making your visitors visit more content on your blog. Several advice pop into my mind:
Do not take it too bad when you find that your blog has a high Bounce Rate. Instead, try to think what properties of your blog create it and you will often realize that it not a problem that needs your attention, but rather the natural state: your content does not suck, and you don’t have to rethink your future as a blogger.
- Alex
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Thanks for the link, however I must disagree. A good blog can easily generate a bounce rate between 40-50%. Your bounce rate of 75% is ALARMINGLY high.
Bryan Clark’s last blog post..Why You Want to Stumble
That came across way more snooty than I meant it to. What I meant to say is that a good bounce rate isn’t actually that hard to achieve. Static sites don’t really have an advantage over blogs, as most of them don’t have nearly the amount of content on them. The only way to achieve a great bounce rate is to learn to write outstanding headlines, and openings. Your opening needs to be a clincher that gets people to read on, and whether you agree or not a tag definitely helps. Most people don’t mind clicking through, and it actually pleases some readers because they don’t have to scroll through an entire article that they don’t want to read. They can just move on to something that’s more interesting to them.
Internal linking, good use of images, and short concise articles + combined with ability to write good headlines, and a good clincher = Awesome Bounce Rate!
I know that there isn’t a single blogger out there that wants to admit that they write bad headlines, but waaaaaaay over 90% of the blogs I visit have terrible and boring headlines.
I recommend a book called “Words That Sell”. It’s increased a lot of my statistics, and it’s made me more money!
Bryan Clark’s last blog post..Why You Want to Stumble
Bryan,
75% BR might be disturbing only when I think how many people are continuing to read my older posts, since 75% means that not so many do so.
But, considering my blog’s authority and age, this is going to build up with time. I’ve already seen the power of making it easy for the reader to access my older posts by including the “featured articles” in my header, and installing the cool archives plugin.
Therefore it doesn’t raise alarm when I look at the 75%, but only reminds me that currently it is the way things are, and gives me an alternative to drastically change everything or ease things more naturally towards lower BR.
Thanks for the recommendation. Will check it out sometime.
Hey Alex!
I already did a follow up on my initial post that you mentioned, coming to the same conclusion you are stating in your post here
I think it is just another static to keep in mind, but especially when having a new blog, and using a way to generate traffic which is known to cause high bounce rate since most people that enter are there because of getting more drops, bounce rate is normal to be higher.
Whether it is ok to have that high of a bounce rate, well not really, but it is just another thing to keep in mind, without fretting about it too much.
Of course there are many things to do in order to lower it and the ways you mention do work, like you however I don´t want to force my bouncerate down at the cost of my visitor (making them go to the full article with a read more tag) but instead want to focus on better content, making the blog stickier through other ways.
Another great post!
Mirjam’s last blog post..I Bounce You Bounce – the Follow Up
Thanks Mirjam!
I’ve seen your follow-up now. I’m glad you’ve seen the light..
Alex: You are absolutely right that blogs are a particular exception to the standard bounce rate rules becuase people will just read your latest (or most relevant) post and then bail (like me here
.
But the nice things now is Google Analytics provides industry benchmarking, which means that you can use GA to compare your bounce rate to other comparable sites. This means you can come up with and use the most relevant benchmark for yourself.
-Avinash.
PS: Here is my own, old, post on bounce rate with lots of examples from different web analytics tools about how to use this valuable metric:
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate.html
Hi Avinash,
Great to see you here.
I know. Google Benchmarking is a great tool, and I was just mentioning it in my previous post.
Unfortunately, you can’t be sure whether the sites you are compared to are also blogs and that they are of the same layout. Moreover, I am pretty sure they aren’t. Google says it divides sites into three categories for benchmarking: small, medium and large. That way you are comparing yourself to similarly sized sites, but not similarly designed. But, otherwise it is great to see where do you stand in comparison on other parameters as well.
I notice a great fluctuation in the bouce rate between sites and from the different traffic sources. I surf bounce around alot, sometimes i’ll go back to a site 3 or 4 times before actuially getting down to reading what I went there for.
I just wanted to add something to the “high bounce rate being alarming”. A high bounce rate isn´t necesarily bad, depending on what you are after.
If you are generating organic traffic to come to your blog and they arrive, read the first page and then leave to either your affiliate link or ppc … it really isn´t all that bad
Hell, it is better than having them leave through the backbutton!
Mirjam’s last blog post..My own Belief System Made it Impossible to Become Rich
@Make Money Blogging- So YOU are the reason I get this high bounce rates lately!!
@Mirjam- Visitors that click on ppc or aff. links are not counted as bounced, so unfortunately, your theory is incorrect. Unless I don’t get something…