What is the bounce rate for a website?
If you are one who goes through your website, you would have noticed the Column Bounce Rate. Bounce Rate is the percentage of your visitors leaving your site after a single page visit. And most likely these visitors would have come from a search engine, looking for a specific piece of information. And if they are leaving either they could be disappointed in the content or they found the answer. Typically a Bounce Rate of less than 50% is good. And for new sites with very few visitors bounce rate could be upto 75%.
How to minimize your bounce rate?
If you are using Google Analytics, you would be able to see the site’s entire bounce rate and individual pages Bounce Rate. If a individual page is getting higher percentage of visitors and also having higher bounce rate then you need to fix those pages in particular, before going for a entire site overhaul.
Typically a higher bounce rate would indicate the following :
1. Content is poor.
2. Misleading title/SEO optimization.
3. Poor Navigations like Similar posts/Recent Posts etc.
If the content is poor then you might need to get more in depth content for the page without removing existing article completely. If you believe your content is not related to the title, then you might want to add relevant information as it help you in earning the trust of your visitors. Google eventually will reduce your rank in the search index if the bounce rate is higher, as a high bounce rate shows less relevant information.
And if the link structure or Related Posts/Recent Posts organisation is not correct then you might as well go for a complete site overhaul to place these links in highly visible areas of your site.
Also adding a page navigation, Collapsible archives in your site could help. Adding other page links just below or near your content/main entrance of your sites will help in leaving your visitors.
