Uncovering the TOP 10 Reasons for a High Bounce Rate
Content
Introduction
You’ve probably heard the term “bounce rate” before. But do you really know what it means? A bounce rate is simply how many people leave your website after visiting only one page. It’s an important metric because it indicates how well-designed and attractive your site is to potential customers. If you want people to buy from you or sign up for your newsletter, they need to be able to find what they’re looking for on your site! Quickly and easily at that. When someone clicks onto an article that doesn’t interest them or can’t find what they want within FIVE seconds of arriving, then chances are they’re going straight back out again—and that’s bad news for both of us! So today, here are some of the top reasons why visitors are not staying on your site long enough for you to convert them into leads:
1. Your Website is not Mobile Friendly
This is probably the most common reason for high bounce rates. If your website looks bad on your mobile, then users will abandon it and NEVER come back! Don’t fret, there are definitely steps to ensure that this never happens to you.
First, make sure that all of your pages are optimised for mobile devices (well, at least the majority of them should be). This is very easily done on most Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Webflow, Wix, etc. Second, don’t rely solely responsive web design, but on search engine optimization for your mobile pages as well. Because it won’t help if people can’t find the content they’re looking for in the first place!
2. Your website is TOO slow
Slow loading times are a big turn off for users. If they have to wait too long, they’ll simply leave your site and go to another site that provides them with information faster. This can destroy your bounce rate and it means that you’re losing potential customers who may have been interested in what you were offering! Even being a few milliseconds too slow could play a part.
If you want people to stick around, make sure that your site loads quickly, and don’t forget about mobile users either: if someone visits from their smartphone or tablet and gets stuck staring at a loading icon for five minutes, that’s another visitor lost forever! You can always optimise these by checking out some of the free website page speed tools available such as: Pingdom Speed Test, GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights which are all free and available tools that I like to use.
3. You don’t have enough content (yet)
You may be wondering, “How much content is enough?” The answer to this question depends on your website and audience. For example, if you’re creating a blog about dogs and dog owners, you’ll want to include plenty of articles on topics like training instructions or breed guides.
Regardless of what type of website you have, more pages means that each page has a higher chance of being viewed by potential customers (and their friends too!). More pages also give visitors something else to look at in case they don’t find what they were looking for.
On the other hand, having too much content can also be a disadvantage. Google can penalise websites that have low-quality or duplicate content, so make sure that all of your content is relevant and unique to your website. Additionally, too much content can be overwhelming and confusing for visitors and if your site navigation is not straightforward, making it harder for them to find what they’re looking for. It’s important to strike a balance between having enough content to engage your audience, while avoiding overwhelming them.
The KEY is to focus on quality over quantity. You have to make sure that each page provides valuable information for your visitors, and that it’s well-written and easy to navigate. By focusing on high-quality content, you’ll be able to build a strong following and establish yourself as an ‘authority’ in your niche, which is what Google is looking for as well. This will help you attract and retain more visitors, ultimately leading to increased traffic and sales for your business.
4. You’ve been penalised by Google or other search engines
By hard the hardest problem to fix, if you’ve been penalised by Google or another search engine, your bounce rate will be higher than normal. They don’t like duplicate content or low-quality content. Google also does not like duplicate meta descriptions and titles, which are basically attributes that provide information to Google about your webpage.
If you have one page on your website that has been penalised by Google (or other search engines), it might be bringing all of the other pages in your site down with it! But how can you tell? If your website has already reached high levels of traffic, you can visit the Google Transparency Report to check on your website. If not, Google Search Console will provide you with information by manual actions taken on your webpage, or Google might have even reached out to list out the problems on your site.
5. Your website is too difficult to navigate
If your website is difficult to navigate, then people WILL leave. It’s as simple as that. Make sure you have a clearly organised site with easy-to-follow links and clear call-to-actions (CTAs).
With a clean navigation bar, users can quickly and easily direct themselves to content that they want to see. Clear CTAs are also key as they converts users with the path of least difficulty.
Imagine you were looking at a product that you liked and wanted to buy. But instead of a one-click solution, you had to click through tons of links and wait for different pages to load. You’d definitely click away from that site ASAP and find somewhere else where you could buy the exact same thing with less hassle! If there are too many links, consider using a dropdown menu instead of having them all on one page. This way people can choose what they want without scrolling through content they’re not interested in seeing!
6. Some of your pages are deindexed
Deindexing is the removal of your page from search engine results. It can be caused by a number of things, including:
- a low-quality or duplicate content penalty
- a manual action taken against your site (for example, if you’ve been hacked)
- an automatic action due to content that violates Google’s guidelines.
This Google Help page provides all the possible reasons why your page could be deindexed and what you could do to resolve these errors are listed as well. In a later article, I will also be going through all of these errors in detail and providing you with a step by step guide to fixing them, so stay tuned!
7. You haven’t promoted your website properly yet
The first six reasons we discussed earlier give you some insight into why visitors might not find your website appealing enough to stay, but what if they never even come across it in the first place?
So what can you do? Make sure people know about your site and how it could benefit them by promoting it effectively across all social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook (and don’t forget about blogging!). You can also try other social media platforms that are more relevant to your business, eg: Dribbble, Behance etc. for creative professionals. By following this tip, you will be able to build your social media presence for free and bring in more eyeballs, while at the same time spending zero dollars on ad revenue!
8. Your website’s link structure is not optimal
What is link structure, and why is it important?. Essentially, it’s way to organise your website’s pages into categories, and it can be hierarchical or non-hierarchical.
For example:
- Hierarchical: An “About” page on your site that links to several other pages(e.g: Our History’, ‘Our Team’, ‘Our Mission’). Hierarchical because the About page has more than one child link below it in its hierarchy.
- Non-Hierarchical: If all the above pages were linked directly from the home page.
To ensure that search engines like Google and Bing display your website when people search for related terms like “flower boutique” or “digital marketing agency,” it’s important to have a clear and organised website structure. Good internal linking helps users find the content easily and lets search engines know what each page is about. This will definitely help your site appear more relevant and informative, increasing the chances of it showing up at the top of search results.
9. You don’t have a clear Call-To-Action (CTA)
If you don’t have a clear and easy-to-find call to action on your site, then there’s no way for visitors to take action on the content they’ve just read. This is why it’s so important that you make sure your website has one–and that it’s clear what they should do next.
What am I referring to? Click on the button below to find out what a CTA looks like 😉
On every page of our site, there are two calls-to-action: one at the top and one at the bottom. We also include CTA’s in areas where we can smoothly connect with the website user experience. These guide readers through each step of their journey with us in an intentional way so that we can be sure we’re meeting their needs.
10. There are broken links on your site
Broken links on a website can be frustrating for both users and search engines. Broken links are links on your website that are outdated or dead pages. When users click on a broken link, they’re likely to feel disappointed and they may even leave your site altogether! Now, we definitely don’t want that do we?
However, fixing broken links is the EASIEST fix on this list. All you need to do is identify and replace the broken link. To find broken links, you can use free online tools like deadlinkchecker.com.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it folks! We hope this article has helped you understand why your bounce rate is so high, and what you can do to improve it by yourselves. Remember that there are many factors at play here, and they can change over time (eg:. But by following our tips above, you should be able to improve your bounce rate—and ultimately the success of your website—in no time at all.
