What Is Bounce Rate? And Is Yours Good or Bad?

SEO / 02 Sep 2022

Bounce rate sounds kind of fun. The bouncier, the better, right? Well, no, at least not most of the time. In the world of websites, a high bounce rate is usually a sign that visitors to your site aren’t engaging with your content.

SEO copywriting services can help with this, and whether you work with an SEO agency or a copywriting agency, they should be keeping a close eye on your bounce rate. 

But why exactly is this number so important? Where can you find out what your bounce rate is? And how does it stack up against industry norms? 

Let’s explore. 

What is bounce rate?

To understand bounce rate, you first need to know what a bounce is. 

A bounce happens when a person arrives at your website, landing on a specific webpage, but then leaves before they visit another page on your site. This is also called a single-page session. 

Now here comes the maths bit. 

Your website bounce rate is the total number of single-page sessions divided by the total number of sessions. 

Times that by 100 and you get the percentage of all visits to your website where the visitor viewed only one page. 

So, if 1000 people visit your website and 200 of them only visit one page, then you have a bounce rate of 20%. 

Why is bounce rate important?

Broadly speaking, when visitors land on your site and don’t click through to other pages on there, something about your site or content isn’t hitting the mark. 

Perhaps your site is difficult to navigate, or the content is unclear, unhelpful or any of those other words with that gloomy prefix attached. Professional copywriting services can help ensure your content doesn’t fall into this trap so you can keep your engagement levels up.

As engagement drives conversions – those actions you want your visitors to take, such as asking for a quote, signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase – bounces can be a big problem for your bottom line. 

Now, this doesn’t mean every bounce is bad. 

If someone googles your opening hours or address, visits only the page with that information and then leaves, that is considered a bounce. But it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if later that day they then walk into your shop. The same is often true for blogs too.

So, bounce rates have nuance. 

Website bounce rate vs page bounce rates

Your website bounce rate gives you an overall idea of how well you’re engaging visitors across your site. But if you dig deeper into your individual page bounce rates, you can get a clearer idea of where you need to focus your efforts. 

As we’ve already mentioned, if your latest blog is bouncing most people away, you probably don’t need to worry. However, if your service pages are doing the same, that’s a cause for concern. 

It may be time to whip out some SEO content writing to make sure your content provides relevant, valuable and easily accessible information. 

A word from Google

Before we dig deeper into bounce rates, it’s important to be clear about one thing – bounce rates are not used by Google for ranking purposes. That is, Google’s all-seeing algorithms don’t determine whether your pages should appear higher or lower in search results based on their bounce rates.

However, calling on a stellar copywriting agency to create compelling content with the goal of bringing your bounce rates down is still a good idea. Why? Because compelling content creates engagement and — let’s say it again — engagement drives conversions. 

So, where can you find this treasure trove of bounce rate data? 

Finding your bounce rates with Google Analytics

There are lots of website analytics tools out there, some free, some paid, but unsurprisingly the one leading the way is Google Analytics. 

Setting up your website with the free version of Google Analytics gives you a tonne of insightful data so you can better understand and ultimately connect with your customers. 

When you sign in to your Google Analytics account, you’ll get an instant hit of data on your Audience Overview tab. This will include your website bounce rate. 

You can also drill down into bounce rates for every single page on your website, even narrowing it down by date range to see what happened when, for example, you tested out that new call-to-action on your service pages. 

Give it a go, you’ll be hooked. 

But before you get too excited or too dismayed, it helps to know what kinds of bounce rates you should be aiming for. 

Good and bad bounce rates

As we’ve already mentioned, bounce rates vary for different types of pages. They also vary for websites in different industries. This means when you’re thinking about your bounce rates, you need to keep things in context. 

For example, if you run an ecommerce site and your homepage has a bad (high) bounce rate, you probably don’t need to worry if your product pages still have great (low) bounce rates. 

So, is your bounce rate bad or good? Well, it’s all relative.

Now for a more helpful answer. 

There are some industry benchmarks that can give you a rough idea of how your website bounce rate measures up against competitors. 

Here are some average industry bounce rates from 2021:

• Energy 38%
• Travel 42%
• Clothing 44%
• Consumer electronics 44%
• Financial services 47%
• Telecommunications 56%
• B2B 75%

Now let’s drill down to bounce rates for different types of websites and webpages: 

• Service sites 10–30%
• Ecommerce sites 20–40%
• Landing pages 70–90%
• Blogs 70–98%

These numbers give you a rough idea of the playing field you’re in. By working with an SEO agency, you can get your bounce rates to meet or beat industry norms. 

If you’re looking at your bounce rates today and they’re already under 10%, don’t jump for joy just yet. Bounce rates this low are, more often than not, due to technical errors with your analytics. So get your SEO service to look into that for you. 

Let’s get to work

Now you know where you stand, it’s time to get your bounce rates as low as they can go. 

This will usually mean looking at the structure and user-friendliness of your website as well as the quality of your content. Investing in copywriting services, including SEO content writing, is a great start. 

If you’re looking for a copywriting agency that is a pro at both content and SEO, get in touch with our team today.