In one of my most recent 2012 Internet marketing predictions posts, I said that user experience would become the new SEO. At the end of that (geeky) cliffhanger, I said I’d be following up with some aspects to think carefully about in regards to maximizing your visitors’ onsite experience.
One of those objective units of measurement to look closely at is bounce rate. According to Google, bounce rate is defined as the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Therefore, a high bounce rate would imply that either:
- A) the page they initially landed on was not highly targeted to their original search query, which implies your current ranking page may not be the best option to list high on page one for that keyphrase… OR…
- B) the quality of your site, structure of your site or quality of the content on that page is unsatisfactory, which once again would mean you don’t deserve to capture that free organic traffic for the intended search term…
Obviously, I’m only speaking in terms of search engine optimization here, but for those who’re paying for Google Adwords, you can essentially come to the same basic conclusions and therefore plan on getting dinged for higher CPC’s.
Regardless of the underlying culprit, it’s easy to see that bounce rate is one fairly black and white way by which Google can determine who deserves to be ranked at the top and who doesn’t. Even better for Google, bounce rate can be monitored by their robots, so it’s a pretty easy measuring tool for them to implement, track and use to adjust their algorithm accordingly.
I’m sure if you thought about it long and hard, you could come up with a few rare instances that would make for an exception to the rule, but in general, I agree that any website with an extremely high bounce rate probably doesn’t have much to offer it’s visitors.
Conversely, websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google and so on, all have ridiculously low bounce rates and you can see why — they have so much to offer their traffic and all provide an unparalleled experience.
Now, I’m not saying you have to be the next Facebook to survive in 2012, but I am saying that you need to be the Facebook (or insert any other legit mega site) of your sub-niche. In other words, you need to strive to be the best damn resource that’s presented in the best damn way possible, within the topics or services you cover.
You need to constantly ask yourself how you can create such an amazingly worthwhile experience on your website that the average targeted visitors would be insane NOT to click through to at least one more page (if not, dozens more)…
And when you can crack that code and implement it, you’ll earn yourself an impressively low bounce rate. In return, Google will undoubtedly reward you with potentially higher, faster and/or more long-term page one rankings.
I’ll be back tomorrow with some examples of techniques I’ve used to keep my bounce rate in check. Then, in future posts, I’ll continue discussing other factors that effect overall user experience.
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