Thinking about redesigning site to reduce bounce rate - have a couple of questions

[sl_pa]

BACKGROUND

Im looking at redesigning the website for a creative consultancy to improve the user experience. The website is mainly an image portfolio along with “press”, “our services”, “about us”, “contact” pages.

I originally designed the website a few years ago and when we did, we wanted to make the image portfolio the most important feature. So we made it a full screen JS image slider with lazy loading of images, so that there are about 40 full screen images on the homepage that rotate. From a users point of view i still feel this is the best system as it very quickly allows them to browse the portfolio, which we looking for a creative consultancy is their UPS (unique selling point).

The site has a very strong backlink profile compared to its competitors in the SERPS it has about 20-25% increase in PA and DA. But our site has been slipping down the rankings in recent years / months. From spot 1-2 to about spot 5-7.

MY HYPOTHESIS

I think that the reason the site may be dropping back in the SERP is that although its a very usable site, all its portfolio information is “too easy to find / view” and results in a user coming to our site, seeing everything they need to see, then bouncing back to the SERP. Our site has a bounce rate of 40-60%. Where as on competitors sites, their “portfolio” is a separate page off the homepage, so a users has to click through to a separate page, and even if they don't like the design content of the portfolio it doesn't get logged as a bounce.

MY QUESTION

1. Does bounce rate affect SERP ranking ?

2. Could the sites SERP performance be improved by redesigning the site to put the portfolio on a separate page so a user would have to click through to it, if that would get the bounce rate down, would the site see a benefit even if people still clicked back to the SERP results eventually after seeing our portfolio, even though it wasn't a true 1 page bounce ?

3. Dose time on site affect SERP ranking ?

4. Is there a way i can see a competitor's bounce rate ?

Would welcome any other thoughts inputs on this matter.

[sarahwalsh]

This a really good question, a lot of companies don't monitor their bounce rate.

but its important, if you reduce your businesses bounce rate then organic SEO can improve.

We reduced our bounce rate for our summerhouse company, by adding much more helpful advice, on the homepage, the bounce rate then decreased.

[paupastorlopez]

Hi sl_pa,

I don't know how Alexa calculates its bounce rate data, but I have found this: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Alexa-define-bounce-rate

Maybe that helps.

In any case, you can't trust much this stats from Alexa, but as you said, it can give a general figure. The perfect tool to see bounce rate is Analytics, but you can't see your competitors stats with this tool...

Greetings!

[sl_pa]

Thanks Paul,

On point 4) i had a quick review and our site is recording an Alexa bounce of 65% where as competitors are 40%. From Google analytics our year to date average bounce is 45%. So presumably our competitors are more around the 25% bounce rate in their Google analytics, but this Alexa number gives us a good general figure.

Do you know how Alexa captures / calculates its bounce rate data ?

[paupastorlopez]

Hi sl_pa,

1 & 3) Yes, bounce rate affects SERP ranking and time on site also affects SERP ranking, in fact, they are 2 of the most important factors in 2018.

Take a look at this Ranking Factors Study from Semrush, it's very interesting: https://www.semrush.com/ranking-factors/

4) You can see your competitors Bounce Rate with Alexa: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/

2) Maybe you should try to imitate the model of the competitors that are performing better on Google, the ones who have top rankings and the ones who have a lower bounce rate.

Hope that helps Good luck!!