Why A High Bounce Rate Can Be A Good Thing – Google Analytics Explained
This morning a read a great blog post on The Official Google Blog and thought I should share my thoughts on Bounce Rate and how it might be good to have a high percentage of people not clicking on any other pages of your website.
What is a Bounce Rate? Google Says:
Bounce rate is insightful because from the perspective of a website visitor, it measures this phenomenon: “I came; I puked; I left.” (OK, technically it also means the number of sessions with just one pageview.) While metrics like visitors show the number of people who came to your site, bounce rate will tell you how many of those people were unimpressed and left your site without taking any action (not even dignifying the site with a single click!).
- Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist
Let’s say you have a single landing page (like the PPC Classroom 2.0 Website) with out any other links on except an affiliate link at the bottom of the page which leads to a completely different website. Thus, this being the only link your web customers can click on. So, whenever someone clicks on that external link – Google will consider that a bounce. This would easily explain why your landing page or website would have a high bounce rate. If this is your situation, then you know you have a high percentage of click though to your affiliate link.
Now, if your website has a plethora of internal links (links that lead to another page within your site) and you are experiencing a high bounce rate – then you need to address that issue. But if the website is just a landing page as mentioned above – you’re all good.
Tagged with: Analytics • google • landing page • PPC classroom 2.0 • search engine optimization • Traffic Secrets
Filed under: Internet Marketing • Marketing Strategies
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I’ve read opinions that a high bounce rate can adversely affect your SERPs. I spent time tweaking some pages that were intended as gateways to affiliate products, and for a couple of weeks my “bounce” rate was about 70% – but analytics showed that nearly all the bounces where actually click-thrus to the merchants site. After a couple of weeks my page suddenly started dropping down the SERPs. Is there any way I can make analytics report an affiliate click-thru as anything other than a bounce?!