Friday, August 19, 2011

Tag Relevancy And Bounce Rate


I have been talking about better relevancy through picking keywords that shoppers use to find you. Today I would like to talk a little bit about "Bounce Rate" and how to lower it for you. Bounce Rate is a term that means simply if the searcher found what they were looking for by following your link or not. If they did find what they were looking for you had relevant terms that accurately described your product. If they didn't find what they were looking for and they left quickly, then your tags, title and description probably didn't accurately describe your product.

The lower the bounce rate there better off you are. Now there are factors that are unavoidable. Sometimes people are looking at a whole lot of things and your product just isn't what they are looking for. Sometimes a "bot" opens a page for indexing and leaves quickly enough and it gets counted as a bounce. There are some other factors that make it nearly impossible to have less than 10% bounce rate.

You want to make your tags, title, description and photos as relevant as possible. Not just to be seen and to increase views but to have a lower bounce rate. You can have 5000 views and no sales because you have optimized for a popular search term that doesn't quite match your item. Or you can have 100 views and 5 sales because you market exactly what you have to exactly who would buy it.

I strive for a bounce rate around 35% because I figure that means 65% of the people who find me will be ones looking for what I have to offer. Of course, my bounce rate fluctuates a lot. That is because I am always striving to do a better job at showing what I have in the best way I can. This is not an overnight process either. It can take a few weeks to see any noticeable differences. I check my Google Analytics stats about once a week.

Don't put too much weight on bounce rate, it is just a simple look at how well your SEO relevancy campaign is doing. A better way to judge that would be through sales. Lowering your bounce rate should increase your sales but it is not a guarantee. I will be talking more about Google Analtics next week. If you have any questions on Bounce Rate please leave me a comment and I will try to answer.  

8 comments:

  1. Greeting, Eric: have a sneaking suspicion that I'm not using the right tags, buzzwords, descriptions - call 'em what you want - to tie in with my new relevancy titles. To save me poking around "in the dark", would you be prepared to have a look-see at my current tags, and suggest others from which I am more than prepared to work on and increase. Thanks in advance. Isobel

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  2. I hadn't really been monitoring bounce rate, but I think I will start. Thanks!

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  3. How do you find your bounce rate?

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  4. Bounce rate is part of Google Analytic.

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  5. Thanks!
    Carol from Carol's Jewelry Orchard

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  6. Thanks for explaining what bounce rate is - mine has been in the high forties and fifties. My sales have been very few. I'm trying to change my tags,etc., but really not sure what I'm doing. If you have a chance, would you please have a look and any suggestions would really be appreciated.

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  7. Hi How to you get to Google Analytic to figure out your bounce rate?

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    1. Google Analytics does it automatically. It should show when you look at the stats.

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