Bounce rate is a widely misunderstood concept. A majority of the people believe that high bounce rate is the result of low-quality content or boring home page. If a majority of the users leave a site within a few seconds of landing on a page it results in high bounce rate.
It is true that when visitors leave your site after reading the landing page on your site it results in high bounce rate. However, bounce rate does not say anything about the amount of time a visitor spends on the landing page. Thus, the bounce rate is not a real metrics of measuring the quality of a blog.
Let’s check out what Google says about the bounce rate.
Wikipedia defines bounce rate as the measure of the effectiveness of a website to encourage visitors to visit other pages on the same website. Interestingly one of the articles in Mashable introduces bounce rate as a kiss of death.
While, in an interesting infographic Kissmatrics, has tried to demystify the concept of bounce rate. According to this infographics, the bounce rate varies from industry to industry ranging from 30% to 90%.
The above definitions of Bounce rate reflect four major reasons for high bounce rate.
- First, the link that leads users to the website might not be in line with the content.
- Second, the blog content is of low quality and readers find it not good enough to spend time on the site.
- Third, users may leave your site due to issues related to site design or usability.
- Fourth, the users might not find the need to visit other pages on a website if they find all the information they need on the landing page.
Now the question arises does high bounce rate really reflects the low-quality content. For example, if a user is looking for particular information on the landing page and leaves the site after getting the required information does it amount to low content quality?
Let’s dig a little deeper.
Does bounce rate actually reflects low content quality
Maybe not:
- If you get all the required information on the landing page, you are unlikely to read other pages on the same site. It does not mean the content is of low quality.
- If you are following a blog and regularly read its content, you are most likely to leave the site after reading latest content. It does not reflect the low-quality content. In fact, it shows the quality of the content is high resulting in returning visitors.
- If you are looking for a particular link or video on a page you are most likely to leave the site after clicking on the link resulting in high bounce rate. It does not necessarily indicate that the quality of the content is low.
- If you are reading a long post (2000-3000 words long), you are unlikely to read other pages especially if you are busy with other things. In fact, the bloggers who write long post are most likely to experience high bounce rate as compared to bloggers who write short posts.
- If you have optimized your blog content using the wrong keyword, you are most likely to experience high bounce rate. Since your post is showing up on search results for the wrong keywords, visitors are less likely to stay on your page for the longer duration of time. Does it mean you content is low in quality?
Bounce rate vs. average time on page
So bounce rate could not be necessarily used as a right metrics to judge the quality of blog content. The real metrics that could be used to measure the quality of content is the average time on page.
In the Google analytics, the average time on page metric shows the time readers spend on your site as you can see in the screenshot. In the Google Analytics, click Behavior. In the drop-down menu select Site Content and click on All Pages.
Low audience engagement not only leads to high bounce rate but also says a lot more about the quality of the content. If users are leaving your site within a few seconds of landing on the majority of the pages, it means you need to focus on the quality of content. It means your blog does not have good enough content to engage the audience.
So the real measure of content quality is the average time your audience spends on your blog pages rather than the bounce rate. Bounce rate only shows that readers are leaving your page after reading the landing page on your blog irrespective of the time they spend on the page.
On the other hand, average time on the page shows the amount of time your blog audience is spending on your page.
Therefore, if some of your pages show high bounce rate plus low average time, it means you need to improve the quality of the content on those pages.
However, if you are sure that the quality of your blog content is high you need to dig deeper to find the real cause of high bounce rate. There could be several reasons behind it.
- You have optimized your blog content using the wrong keyword
- Your site might be taking more than usual time to load.
- You post title is sending wrong signals and attracting the untargeted audience. Change the title of your posts with high bounce rate.
- You are using wrong geographical targeting in the Google analytics. In other words, your blog post is showing up in wrong search results at wrong places. Fix the issue by resetting the targeted country in the Google analytics.
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Is bounce rate a right metric to measure the quality of a website? what do you think? Please feel free to share your opinion with us. If you liked this article please share it with others. Keep learning, keep sharing!
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