A bounce is a single-page session when a visitor leaves a page he has visited without doing any further interaction with the website. Bounce rate is defined by Google as the ratio of single-page sessions with all sessions. So, if there are two sessions, one a single-page session and the second is a two-page session, you can say that it has a bounce rate of 50%. All single-page sessions have a duration of zero seconds as there are no further hits after the initial one.
Reasons behind increasing bounce rate
Fundamentally there are three reasons for an incremental bounce rate. They are poor ad targeting, disruptive UX, low-quality backlinks, and referral spam. It is not too difficult to find out whether your website is providing a terrible UX. It will help you notice things that are annoying, frustrating, and finally unsatisfying to the user.
1. Slow page loading time: Many people would have closed the tab of their browser if it took a long time for loading a page. Keep in mind that people are always impatient therefore you need the page loading to be quick. One of the studies indicates that 40% of people will leave a page if takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Another research conducted by Google shows that slow pages are responsible for increasing bounce rates. It also spoils the initial impression of your website and the visitor is unlikely to come back to this site. You can use online tools for locating slow page load issues and they will also provide prompts for fixing the issues.
2. Annoying advertisements: After point no 1, the second most frustrating experience for a user is when he is bombarded with a ton of intrusive interstitials and pop-ups that are user-unfriendly. If you over-use the ads it will make the UX even worse. Google will notice it and will make your website ranking drop. Therefore, it is a good idea to not add these annoying pop-ups on your landing pages. At least consider the pros and cons of using them before placement.
3. Under-optimized or low-quality content: All visitors are looking for a clear and quick answer to their query. You need to satisfy this intent otherwise it means a bounce. For having great content you need to understand the customer’s problem, provide him a solution in simple words, and be concise as no one likes a litany. The content you have on the page must be simple to read with good structure and formatting. Avoid committing grammar mistakes and use the right language. You can hire a copywriter for this purpose.
4. Poor design and navigation: Maintain things intuitive and easily understandable even for novices. You should always provide a navigation menu to the users near the top with breadcrumbs. This allows them to quickly dig through your website conveniently. Try not to overload the pages of your website with things and distracting the user from the point. Know that blank spaces are your best friends. Design the pages in a manner that allows the users to understand what you are offering at a single glance.
5. Website is unfriendly with mobile devices: If you are making your mobile users pinch, scroll, and zoom around for filling out different forms you are not doing it right. Google has already moved everything to a new algorithm called the mobile-first index. Therefore, optimizing mobile UX is critical these days. You can run a mobile optimization report from an online tool to find out the things you can do for improving the landing page performance for mobile users.
Before you give in to despair as you are looking at the increasing bounce rate you must wrest the things under control. You need to manually implement all other available signals related to engagement for purging the GA data and then set a threshold for your website’s bounce rate. After it is done, inspect the website carefully for the UX quality and spammy backlinks. Also, review the ad campaigns to make sure that you are targeting a proper audience. Maintain calm while performing the SEO activities. If you are working from Clearwater & Pinellas County, FL area you can get in touch with high-quality SEO pros such as ISEOU Company for this work.