How does Bounce Rate affect SEO ranking

Thomas Andreas

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My bounce rate is high - it is between 70-75%. Well I think it is high as I don't have anybody else to compare with.

And I understand that it doesn't have to be a bad thing as hopefully the customers find what they are looking for and then claims an offer. However, I feel that due to my high bounce rate I am not ranking well for my keywords. I am thinking that if I can drop the bounce to 50% (hopefully that is realistic) I will start ranking better for my keywords.
hmm, could this be true?
Also, any suggestions as to how to decrease my bounce?
 

the_dave

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Bounce rate is a tough one because sometimes a high bounce rate isn't a bad user experience. If your site is slow or users are clicking back to the serps because your page doesn't answer the query then it's certainly a bad thing. If the user is getting exactly what they want from the page and being referred on or not return to serps then it's likely because the page has done it's job.

Speeding a site up can decrease the bounce rate, although I've never seen to much movement here (likely because sites weren't slow in the first place) but to be honest without seeing your site, it's highest trafficed pages and running analysis on if they meet a users expectations it's hard to know. Maybe install something like hotjar and see how your users interact with your page to judge if they're getting what they want or not.
 
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Generally speaking high bounce rate indicates that your content is inaccurate or inferior quality - measured by Average-Joe-Analytics-User.

But if you redfine your purpose and where the users are going there are many other factors that play in the role of high bounce rate. How about if you have an informative page which takes less than 30s to read? Or that someone goes into your free spins landing page and then clicking onwards to your operator?

I started redifing my bounce rate and changed the trigger of "what is bounce rate" and I can recommend you to do the same, and then start tracking: https://www.optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-determining-reporting-real-bounce-rate/
 

Zuga

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User engagement / time spent is key. There is direct correlation between the bounce rate and these metrics. Granted some pages by default are bound to have higher bounce rate ( e.g. bonus lists, where players are quick to click on one of your banners/links, but google is pretty smart to make distinction between true bounce rate and bounce rate where you have outgoing traffic, ie something useful and clickable on that page ).
 
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