What is your Bounce Rate?

[UncoderMom]

11.15% New Visits
20.56% Overall
9.83% Forum index
5.79% .com page
# Direct Traffic 11,616.00 (75.65%)
#
Search Engines 2,447.00 (15.94%)
#
Referring Sites 1,289.00 (8.39%)
#
Other 3 (0.02%)

13,025 pages were viewed a total of 115,712 times

Stats from april 21st to march 21at. My sites traffic is down too.

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Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

No. it is not. I have been over this with many sites.

Most sites that receive traffic mostly from search engine referrals (the long tail traffic) will see very high bounce rates.

This is because most users who search for content using a search engine will click on the site from, say Google, and then they will "go back" if they do not find what they need and select another site (from the search engine). This is the nature of "long tail" traffic.

Almost all sites with high volumes of traffic from search engines referrals have high bounce rates.

So, when you say (incorrectly) "all high bounce rates are bad" what you are saying is "all long-tail search engine referral traffic is bad" because you cannot high search engine traffic without having a high bounce rate.

This is a fact. I wish it was not a fact, but it is.

Forums with 95% of their traffic, which are millions of page views a month, will have high bounce rates. Sites with mostly direct traffic and referral traffic other that search engines, will have a lower bounce rate.

Folks who make blanket statements that "high bounce rate is bad" normally come from sites that have low page views and little traffic from search engine referrals. The proof is in the numbers of high volume sites with mega long-tail search referrals.

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It depends on the nature and volume of your traffic.

See my earlier posts.

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Then you, more than likely, have site with relatively low page views per month from direct or non-search engine referral traffic

The trick is to KEEP THEM FROM HITTING THE BACK BUTTON. LOL

Keeping your data relevant and your content rich will reduce your bounce rate. Organic, referred or direct.