Tag: SEO Tips

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Tackling a High Bounce Rate- Part One

Tackling a High Bounce Rate

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?

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 art

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SEO – Is It Worth the Trouble?

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is one of the few Google Partners in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area.

Is SEO or search engine optimization worth the time and trouble today? With Google seemingly to be changing all the rules and more competitors moving into your own marketing landscape, it may seem like a losing proposition, but… there are smart things you can do that DO payoff for placement.

What are the smart things that any small to medium sized business can do to improve organic search placement?

  1. Make sure you have unique content and work hard to make your website experience different from others in your vertical (business classification).
  2. Make sure you are blogging regularly – at least once a week. If you are not a good writer, invest in finding a firm that you can trust that will create great linkable and sharable content.
  3. Make sure you have unique Meta Title and Meta Description tags for all pages in your website.
  4. Claim and authenticate your website in the Google and Bing Search Consoles. You’ll get information that will help you do a better job and understand what Google and Bing think about your site so you can improve.
  5. Implement Google Analytics. You cannot improve your own website if you do not know how visitors are using it. Got a low bounce rate? Pat yourself on the back and find out what people seem to like about the page with in-page analytics. Don’t have many visitors? Get the truth and then drive traffic there with Google AdWords.
  6. Get a full SEO evaluation and roadmap on where you are and how to get to the next level personalized based on your own statistical information.

You can still succeed and garner search engine placement with optimization, but be smart and savvy about the tactics that are used. Don’t buy into link building, link farms, and guest blogging on off-topic sites. Think mainstream, great content, and excellent user experience.