We’ve talked about how the overall quality of a site is important for reducing a site’s bounce rate. Today’s article goes over 20 factors, including the quality/design of a site, that can affect bounce rate. Many of the suggestions are straightforward and easy to implement – like making sure that external links open in new windows so that users aren’t redirected from your site.
Bounce rate is one of the factors that search engines use in determining a site’s relevance or usefulness. There is evidence that when a site has a high bounce rate, Google takes this as a signal that the site is not useful for that particular keyword or search term – and docks the site accordingly. It makes sense: if a user comes to a site and immediately leaves, chances are that he or she did not find what they were looking for on your site. As such, web developers should be doing everything they can to reduce the bounce rate on their sites.