90% website bounce rate - What am I doing wrong?
-
(Also not getting any comments on any of my articles)
Hi, everyone! I'm very new to the community here, but I'm honestly at my wits end.
I've run an affiliate marketing site for about 8 months now, and I've consistently had issues with bounce rate. I've tried to look into it myself, but I can't seem to determine what the issue is.
A couple things, though - One, a lot of my traffic currently goes to two articles which don't actually have any intent to convert. I didn't even write those articles for the sake of conversion, they were just for fun and I thought they'd be useful to people who stumbled across them. So that could be one reason my bounce rate is so high, but I'm not sure.Anyway, I've asked a LOT of people in the past (I was part of an affiliate marketing community at one point - I asked the founders, friends, strangers, and other successful affiliate marketers about this) if there's anything wrong with my content, etc. The answer has always been no, that it's good.
I'm sorry. My thoughts are a bit scatterbrained here. I just don't know what to do here. If all my content for 8 months has just utterly sucked, I'd feel pretty demotivated, but at least I could know what to improve going forward. That's what I need help with from you guys.
Here's my website, though I'm not sure if links are allowed: http://cheapgamesguru.com/
My latest articles aren't really getting any traffic at all yet, so I'm not really concerned with them. Specifically, ignore my Future of the HTC Vive, Crusader Kings 2, and World of Warcraft articles. Those are part of my "fun blogs" where I just write about games and such with no real intent to convert. If they start getting traffic, then I'll go and add some more internal links or CTAs.
However, a couple articles that I AM having issues with are here: http://cheapgamesguru.com/top-5-best-mid-tower-cases ; http://cheapgamesguru.com/top-5-computer-case-fans-the-best-case-fans-for-your-rig ; http://cheapgamesguru.com/what-is-the-best-micro-atx-case-for-gaming-top-5-best-micro-atx-cases (The links on the Micro ATX article are currently broken - This could very well be one of the reasons! However, this trend of high bounce rates started quite some time ago, so it's still an issue)
Could it be as simple as a performance problem? I haven't checked my pagespeed recently, not since I switched to a new (Faster) host. I know users are far more likely to leave if the site doesn't load within 3 seconds.
Another possible reason is referral spam, of course. I've tried my very best to eliminate it as much as possible, used filtering tools, etc. but I can't seem to completely eradicate it.
Thanks in advance! Ask me for any details you might need.
-
I have to agree that the first thing to consider (well, after fixing those broken links) is how your content ties into your conversion funnel. What compels me to stay on your site once I've found the answer I'm looking for? For example, if I'm just looking for recommendations for fans and I land on your post about them, once I've read, why wouldn't I click right back to Google?
Out of curiosity, what constitutes a conversion for you? If a visitor doesn't bounce away, what would you prefer them to do?
-
What exactly is your question?
You experience high bounce rate on the articles aimed at converting visitors to buying affiliate products? And other (non-converting) pages do get way more visitors?
Because those are two different things: number of visitors (people arriving) and high bounce rates (% of people leaving again after visiting).
So…
- is not getting traffic to your converting your problem?
- or are visitors going to the wrong pages?
- or is just plainly not conversing your main problem?
Because when you're able to pull in audience with some pages, then the problem will be mainly content related (in my opinion). That content does resonate. Other content doesn't. Maybe it is due to the nature of your content (e.g. game reviews may be more popular than hardware reviews?) or the way you present your content (your tendency in writing different kinds of articles).
Or perhaps there is more competition for the targeted subject? Or there is far less traffic for the targeted subject.
Do you have an idea of the total volumes for the targeted audiences and what your SERP results are on the targeted keywords?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
GA traffic locations must be wrong? Most hits from a state we don't do business in!
I launched a website earlier this year. Very limited traffic, 200-300 a month. It is an info site for a specialized business. However, when I review my GA traffic reports, 20% of our traffic comes from one city in Virginia. (although the company does business in many states, it does not in Virginia) or anything close. The bounce rate is 97%! Could it be a web scraper or some kind of redirect?
Search Behavior | | bakergraphix_yahoo.com0 -
Bounce rates and TOS: Most trustworthy global benchmarks
Hi all, I'm trying to write a blog post about the human attention span and the likelihood of people bouncing on websites. After doing some research I'm surprised about how many 'outdated' numbers are circulating: many articles refer to studies from '12 or '14. Like this:
Search Behavior | | RaoulWB
https://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong/ Do you guys have specific sources you find most trustworthy/timely when it comes to topics like global Time On Site averages and Bounce Rates? Would be much appreciated, thank you,
Raoul0 -
Blog Post SEO - Bounce Rate & Layout
Mozzers, I wrote the following blog post about Microsoft’s current offer to receive $100 free in bing ads. http://www.cildermansolutions.com/blog/free-bing-ads-coupon-for-2017-get-100-in-free-advertising-credits I noticed that the bounce rate on the post is higher than i was expecting; I am wondering if this is because I put the eligibility rules for collecting the ads coupon in the 2nd paragraph...and people are just seeing that right away and bouncing. I obviously don’t want to lie or trick readers, but i am wondering if the community has any idea/suggestions. Thanks, Matt
Search Behavior | | matt.nails0 -
What is wrong with my campaign?
I have two campaigns one named BL and another named EBL. The one named EBL is working perfectly, and the way it should, I assume. However, BL is acting very strange, it shows 16,219 pages crawled which BL website has only 1,700 products so it's not possible for the campaign to have 16,219 pages seen by the robot. Here is what happened. We have had several issues with our server. First we received a report of the server that more than 3,000 503 errors have been noticed by Google. So we moved the website to another server, after a while for some reason our website had duplicate products. So instead of the link being /Mens-leather-vest it was /Mens-leather-vest-1020 which is a redirect of the original product. So we removed all products and redid all title tags, meta etc. However, now that when Moz crawls the website it still sees those errors, and duplicates that don't exist anymore. We finished fixing everything last week, and this Monday was a new crawl cycle for moz, and I thought that it will not show the old errors but it is still showing those old errors. Any idea what might be causing it or how I can fix this? Website - www.bikerleather.com Magento 1.7
Search Behavior | | Biker0 -
When auditing a website, when do you decide to delete pages?
Given that the Panda algorithm includes engagement and user experience, when would you consider deleting a page that has poor engagement and conversion metrics? For example, consider a page that ranks well organically and receives (relatively) decent traffic from search. However, this page has poor engagement metrics compared to other pages on the site, does not convert visitors as well as other pages on the site, and doesn't have any external links. Would you consider deleting this page? Which metrics do you use when auditing a site and considering a web page from removal (bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, linking root domains, visits, revenue per visit, etc.)? Are some metrics weighed more than others? What kind of thresholds do you use? Finally, is there a situation when you would choose NOT to delete pages, even considering the above?
Search Behavior | | SAMarketing0 -
What is a Achievable SEO Growth Rate?
Hi Mozzers, I have a question for you today. What is the achievable SEO growth rate (non branded SEO) for a typical job portal style site if you are also taking into consideration there is a blog with a lot of useful content being produced on a daily basis? How has your SEO growth rate been? Is it normal to think that the non branded traffic can grow by 1000 visitors or more a day each month? if I hit 1000 visitors per day this month, then 2000 visitors per day next month, 3500 visitors per day the month after that and so on? I know it's difficult to give numbers like this. Assuming it's a 1000 visitor growth, that mean it's a 50% or more SEO growth each month. it will be interesting to know how your growth rate has been. Thank you.
Search Behavior | | jombay0 -
Why would my Bounce Rate drop from 40% to 2% over 3 days without making any major changes to my site www.hiltonhead.com?
Our Wordpress site has had an historical bounce rate of 40% for the last 3 years but last Thursday it dropped to 17%, Friday to 7% and now is running at 2%. The pageviews per visit have also increased from 3 to almost 6. Thanks
Search Behavior | | CorkyGifford0 -
Website coming up in omitted results for search term?
Hi, My website is coming up in omitted results for search term. Now I have heard before if this is the case then its mainly due to a duplicate content penalty. But the content I used is unique and produced by a copywriter so its good. Its a new site and was in the results for about 2 weeks, I changed the non www to www in webmaster tools 1 day ago and now its sitting in omitted results. In webmaster tools I had to add the domain twice one non www and one www. Both accounts I hooked up a sitemap. Is it just because the site is new and its just working out where to rank me? Just so you know the non www was indexed for the 2 weeks changed it in webmaster tools so I wanted the www one indexed and now gone into omitted results. Cheers
Search Behavior | | activitysuper0