As a leading Austin SEO Company, one of the most common FAQs deals with bounce rate in Google Analytics. There are concerns about a bounce rate being too high or too low or what even is a bounce rate? 

Our SEO experts are here to say, there are only certain instances when a business, client or marketer should be stressed about a bounce rate. This blog will help you go from stressed to feeling better about your analytics. 

What is a bounce rate? 

Google Analytics states that, “a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site then exits without triggering any other requests.” 

A bounce rate is the amount of searchers who are entering a single-page and leave this single-page. This is calculated by the entrance page and whether the searcher has entered the second page. 

When a searcher clicks on a specific page but does not continue to browse or search through the website, then the bounce rate on this single-page will be a high percentage. There are several reasons for this happening, the landing page is showing up in the search that does not correlate with the keyword or phrase that is being picked up by Google. 

Image from Crazy Egg

When and why should someone be concerned? 

Pay-Per-Click landing page 

When a PPC advertisement is correctly set up, there will be a corresponding landing page for this ad. This takes searchers to the exact page for more information. If there is a high-bounce rate on a landing page regarding PPC, there is something wrong. This is when you should  be concerned. 

This could signify that the keyword that is being used is not correct. Searchers are clicking on the ad and immediately clicking the back button. 

Homepage 

The homepage of a website is the base of the website. If searchers are clicking on the homepage without navigating throughout the website this is an issue for two reasons. 

The first reason is that a homepage with a high bounce rate means that it is not the right website page for that keyword. The page itself could not rank for the right industry or keywords. As time goes on, this website will lose this ranking if the information is not correct in Google. The service pages might need to be ranking for this specific keyword over the homepage based on content. 

The second reason is that no one is clicking through your website. Is it the wrong ranking or content or is the site hard to navigate? Can a searcher easily find the next step on your website? If not, then this can cause a high bounce rate. 

Alright, so there are only two reasons our business should be concerned. Are we having issues with the following? Who knows, time to call the experts at a local Austin SEO company so you can start feeling less stressed and more like this dude!