Google and the other search engines have been leaving hints around the net that bounce rates affect your site’s ranking. It’s fairly logical to think that a site that regularly bounces users is of less quality than one that retains users.

The bounce rate is something that already concerns webmasters, SEO pros and site owners. Website traffic is of little worth when users don’t actually browse the site, and good search engine optimisation is about more than traffic. Monitoring how and when your users leave the site can give you hints on how to improve.

Exit rates are a form of metric that often get confused with bounce rates. It can be difficult to tell the two apart. In some calculations, exit rates include bounce rates. The two figures are also often very close to each other, with perhaps a two percent gap.

Bounce rates are fairly straightforward to calculate, and most website analysis tools provide the rate in a percentage automatically. To figure out the bounce rate for a page, take the number of visits that view one page and divide by the total number of visits. Fairly obviously, the bounce rate is important because it indicates that users are not absorbing all of the information that’s directed at them on the site.

An exit rate is the number of site users leaving your site from that page. For example, if a user finds
There are some pages for which a high exit rate is natural. After all, your users have to leave your site some time. Company information pages and ‘contact us’ pages are naturally good exit pages, and indicate that your user has found everything they need within your site. They also indicate that the user was sufficiently interested in your business to find out more before they left.

Bounce rates and exit rates are not necessarily all good or all bad. For example, consider if you have concentrated your search engine optimisation attention to draw traffic for a competition your business is running. Having a high bounce rate from the competition page is not unexpected. Part of the reason for a competition is that involves some interaction between site users and the business, even if they don’t explore further. Having users explore the full site would be a bonus.

Similarly, high exit rates are good or bad signs depending on which page they’re for. A high exit rate for a home page is not good, as the home page is usually there to draw users in. A high exit rate for a site map is an indication that the site’s structure is too complex and hard to understand. A high exit rate from the contact page, however, indicates that your user’s business has concluded satisfactorily. Your site’s exit points should be crafted carefully, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult about this area of navigation design.

Monitoring your bounce rates and exit rates is a vital part of your website functioning. Talk to your SEO consultant about using site statistics to better craft your users’ experience.

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