Bounce Rates - How would you deal with this scenario?
-
Greetings!
I actually don't have a definitive answer to this so wish to throw it out to the community for thoughts and feedback.
I have a client who we shall call "Site 1", but they also have a job board, we shall call "Site 2".
A product of their own success, they have a high bounce rate with visitors landing on Site 1, seeing a job they want to apply for and bouncing straight off to Site 2.
The problem is that this is resulting in Google seeing some of these pages as having bounce rates of 80% to 100%, based on this formula:
Bounce rate = total number of visits viewing only one page / total number of visits
Now, I hate anything black hat or grey hat so wish to know how you would deal with this...
- If the results from Site 2 were displayed in a new framed page on Site 1, would this still be classed as a bounce?
- If when they click on a job on Site 1, they were taken to an intermediate page on Site 1 saying "Thank you, you are being redirected to your chosen job" for 5 seconds before being taken to Site 2, would this be classed as a bounce?
- Perhaps the job they wish to apply for 'pulled' from Site 2 and actually displayed in a new page on Site 1 would be a better way to go?
I think that option 1 might work, sure that number 3 would but not so sure about number 2, but look forward to your comments and thoughts.
Regards,
Andy
-
Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered? I'm interested to find out what you did here, and the effects it had.
Thanks!
-
I did wonder the same myself but with so many sources talking about bounce rates, I thought it prudent to err on the side of caution.
Doing nothing is not really an option as I never leave things to chance (and this has worked in my favour more times than I care to remember in the past).
I am leaning towards my 3rd option of pulling part of the registration process back into "Site 1" so a click on a job, will keep you within the primary site for a second page.
-
I don't think you would trick Google with these kind of hacks. Google Analytics bounce will not be used by Google if they use bounce rate for ranking. If this was the case you could just add an event on the page load and the bounce rate would go to 0%.
I would suggest to do nothing or to think about a different way to present the 2 sites.
-
Thanks MaryAnne,
Sorry, I omitted to add that this is being done for the purposes of the Google Panda update as there are mutterings that a high bounce rate could also be taken into account. No-one really knows if this is true or not, but if it is, what percentage of this will be taken into account - call it a damage limitation exercise.
It can be a pretty fast bounce sometimes if there are only a few jobs for them to look at on Site 1.
Regards,
Andy
-
Is it a fast bounce or do they spend some time on the page first? Sounds like perfectly normal behavior the way things are - do you have reason to believe that the bounce rate is actually harming them? Or is sending traffic to site #2 affecting your conversions in some way? If not, I'd be inclined to leave as-is.
Should be easy enough to test any of your scenarios...
#1 shouldn't be a bounce if part of the contents of the page are pulled from the other site, but the target url itself is on site 1.
#2 I'm inclined to think this would work, but would the 5" wait annoy your visitors?
#3 Definitely would work.
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
-
Will adjusted bounce rate affect avg time on page?
I recently read Rob Beirne's piece on how and why to set up an adjusted bounce rate in Google Analytics (https://moz.com/blog/adjusted-bounce-rate). I am getting myself ready to talk to our site team about why we should set up an adjusted bounce rate and am anticipating some questions I'd like to be able to answer: 1. Will an adjusted bounce rate improve the accuracy of our avg time on page metrics? 2. Are we able to keep the unadjusted bounce rate in GA as well, so we can compare the two metrics if we ever need to? Does anyone know the answers to these questions? Any help would be much appreciated!
Reporting & Analytics | | seoisfun0 -
Need your Opinion on Bounce Rate Analysis
I'm currently doing a bounce rate analysis for our resource pages. These are information article pages - mix of plain texts and those containing either images, infographics, videos or even podcasts. By the way, I did search for bounce rate topics here, but I felt like i still need to post this. Unless I've overlooked a similar post, my apologies. It's a first for me to do an in-depth BR analysis, so I need to clarify few things. What is a good or bad range bounce rate? Is there even a range comparison? Like when can you say a bounce rate is high for an information type page? I've read some stuff online but they're confusing. What other Analytics factors should I consider looking at together with bounce rate? For pages (which purposely educate visitors) with high bounce rate, can you guys suggest tips to improve it? I would appreciate and value any advise. Thanks a lot!
Reporting & Analytics | | ktrich1 -
Bounce rate and Chrome
My client had a large spike in their bounce rate at the end of June, 2017. After spending far too long looking around Google Analytics I discovered that the bounce rate increased 5x when version 59.0.3071.104 of Google Chrome appeared on the scene. Version 59.0.3071.102 and older had a bounce rate of about 13%. Version 59.0.3071.104 increased to 65%. Each subsequent version is about the same.FireFox, Safari and the rest are showing no significant changes.Any idea what is happening here?Many thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | climber170 -
In Google Analytic Experiment I want to Judge Performance of Page Along with Pageviews, Bounces, Transaction etc
Hi All, For my ecommerce site for mobile site category page I have redesign the page in 2 different ways so one original page and 2 new designs. Now I want to do A/B testing with google experiment. I want to measure performance of page via pageviews, bounce rate, exit rate, conversion rate, add to basket etc. Now in objective for this experiment I can select anyone thing either Pageviews, or bounces or transaction or goal. So my query is 1) I cannot select all objective together? 2) or for same page I have to create too many experiments by selecting each objective? 3) exit rate or add to basket objective is not in experiment list so? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dsouzac0 -
High Bounce Rate on traffic generating area of our site
Hi, Our eCommerce site currently includes a blog section known as Igloo which we have filled with unique and helpful content that is useful to a fair few people, not just customers of ours. It currently attracts a large number of visitors (more than the actual eCommerce side of the site in actual fact) organically who aren't currently customers of ours. Very few of these turn in to paying clients so it's not really a money spinner but it has worked quite well from a linkbait perspective / traffic generation perspective and undoubtedly a few of these people do end up making a purchase on the actual shopping end of our site. We're look at ways to encourage these people finding help on this free resource to take a look at our homepage and hopefully make an order but in the meantime I am worried that there may be a few downsides to us creating this content: Google may see us more as a help site than a shopping site. Since selling products is where we make our money this could ultimately be a bad thing. Our bounce rate is REALLY high (I'm talking around 94%) on the help site versus around 20% on the eCommerce site. I guess people land on the article they want, read it and then disappear. Would this bounce rate skew our entire site stats and ultimately result in decreased performance in the SERPS. I would appreciate your opinions and, in the event you do feel it may be hurting us overall perhaps some suggestions on how to mitigate the effects? Many thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | ChrisHolgate0 -
*Dramatic* reduction in bounce rate, why?
Hi all I cannot pin this down to one of -new theme using Thesis 2 and Social Triggers, or -implementing Moz Does the Moz crawler linger on page? I'd love to know why this is happening 7iSnNfC
Reporting & Analytics | | TimMarsh0 -
Embed elements on my page help decrease my bounce rate?
I've embed elements on my page (vídeos, presentations) and i was wondering if when someone uses them it counts for the bounce rate. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | lnjaine0