William McCord, my 20 year old son, has joined the firm for the summer in a Computer Science internship.
William is a rising Junior in Computer Science with an interest in programming, GIS, and cyber security at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
With a passion for computer programming, he is already helping to implement and tweak complex scripts for AdWords account management as well as fine-tuning his HTML and CSS skills for website design.
This summer, he will be focusing on WordPress management, site design customization, website security, mobile-friendly e-newsletters, and AdWords script programming.
He is a incredibly fast learner, innovative, and a hard worker. We are excited to welcome him into our office.
High Bounce Rate – Continued from Monday April 3, 2017.
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.
Dealing with a high bounce rate on your website? Here are my recommendations for what to do to try to solve the problem.
First, don’t get spun up. Not every page needs to have a low bounce rate of 40% to 65%. I have found that blog posts and informational articles, which may be driving traffic to your website, may also have a high bounce rate.
If this is the case, I recommend the following actions:
Put the page to work for you. Feature your newsletter subscription link, video links, and even AdSense advertising ads on those high traffic, yet high bounce rate pages. Understand that they are doorways into your site and work to market your own site on these pages with banners, icons, and interactivity like video embeds.
Second, if you have content and service pages that are really meaningful to your business and they have a bounce rate in the high 70%’s, I would tag them for a content review.
If this is the case, I recommend the following actions:
Review your meta tags, you may be getting traffic that is not targeted to your page content. Review your meta title and meta description tags. Do they make sense based on the content of the page? Should they be updated to be more reflective of what the reader will find when they click in?
Review your page content with a careful eye for detail. Are you supplying content that is engaging or just supplying information. Do you have a call to action on the page, do you have links to your contact form, are you using an app like Drift to get the person online chatting with you, are you addressing a pain point and supplying solutions with related information on other pages drawing the reader in farther to your content?
Are you driving untargeted Google AdWords traffic to your page and paying for a click where what you are offering on your page does not match keywords that are being triggered? As AdWords experts find out more about our programs to solve this issue.
Bounce rate is determined to be high if it is over 75%, however there can be acceptable reasons for a high bounce rate, but a high bounce rate does require careful review.
What is the Bounce Rate?
What’s your page bounce rate? Is it too high?
The bounce rate is recorded for you in Google Analytics by page in the Behavior section > Site Content section, and as a site average on the overview page.
Several years ago the average and target bounce rate for a good website was 46.9%. Now with more users on mobile devices, the bounce rate has skyrocketed.
Google states that this drastic change to bounce rate is due in part to the fact that mobile users may start a search on your site and move to a desktop to finish up a review or purchase. Page views have also decreased in this same time period from over 3 or so pages viewed per session to now about 1.5 pages per session – all driven by mobile activity.
Identifying a High Bounce Rate
To address a website’s high bounce rate, knowledge is power. First, it is important to understand what causes a high bounce rate.
You’ll get a high bounce rate if the page content does not engage the reader. This is a good flag to review your page and consider additions, video, additional links to other information.
You’ll get a high bounce rate if the content is not what the reader was looking for. This is a good flag to review your content, your meta tags, and your paid advertising.
You’ll get a high bounce rate if you supplied the content the reader wanted and they had no need to go further. It is not uncommon to see how bounce rates on articles and blog posts.
What Should You Do Next?
You’ll want to look at the pages that have a high bounce rate score and identify if changes should be done to the content. Check out my Wednesday post this week for the continuation of this article.
Placing organically is all about building quality content on a regular schedule. My clients understand the value of content, but some do not understand the value of building out content on a schedule.
The sites that we’ve had the very best success with in moving up in organic placement have been those that embrace the following scheduled strategies.
Blogging a minimum of twice a week
We post on either Monday and Wednesday at 3:00 am or Tuesday and Thursday at 3:00 am. By having something written and posted the same day and time, you can build a following and search engine spiders when they visit will always find something new and come back more frequently.
Newsletters one a week or once a month
We recommend for most clients a once a month newsletter and usually for it to go out on the same day each month. If a client will decide on topics early, we have enough time to order, finesse, and schedule a newsletter proof, and finished version all sent out without rushing for a deadline.
Website content one new page once a month
Although for many clients we are creating and building out pages more frequently than once a month, it makes sense for you to think about having your website be a work in progress, not a once built it is done project. Many of our clients have invested in having us create a site architecture and content plan. Then we simply choose together what we will build out that month based on a review of what is happening in Google Analytics in regards to traffic and pages per session.
Now the hard part, helping the client to stay on schedule…
I am persistent in regards to follow-up once we know a client really wants to be on schedule but may just be busy. I personally keep a task panel open of all responses I need from clients so I know does this client still need to approve content for 1/3/17, does this other client need to approve a January newsletter topic?
As I get too close to a deadline to assure I have time to create content or newsletter, I will send an email with a priority notice in the subject line like – “need a response on newsletter topic by Friday 12/23”. I have also found that some clients will respond best to a text and others to a phone call.
Many of our clients will say they really appreciate our helping them to stay on schedule. They are just busy and forget we have a deadline to make things happen for them. But the benefits of regular content creation are huge, more search activity, greater visibility, and a better website visitor experience.
Find out how we can help you too to be on schedule with content, blogging, newsletters, and social media today.
