Bounce rate is one of those metrics that you will see talked about a lot in conjunction to search engine optimization and web page design.
But many people largely ignore this metric until their campaign is already starting to pick up steam.
How important is bounce rate really?
If you want a successful automotive SEO campaign, it is vitally important.
While you might think that the main goal of your SEO is to get people to click on your link, if those people do not actually stay on your page, they might as well not even click on your link.
Here’s what you need to know about bounce rate and automotive SEO:
Does Bounce Rate Matter?
Every search engine uses an algorithm that endeavors to provide their searchers with the most relevant information.
There are naturally going to be some people that click on your link and then immediately click away.
It’s just the way of the internet.
But when you have a statistically high bounce rate, what this tells the search engines is that what your link promises when it is shown in the search results is not what it delivers when someone actually clicks on that link.
It tells that search engine that something is wrong with your website.
What might be wrong with your website?
There are a variety of things that cause a high bounce rate, only one of which is that the webpage is not actually relevant to the interests of the people who have clicked on it.
Your SEO essentially will not be working if someone clicks on your link and then is bounced, usually back to the search engine to click on another website.
What Constitutes a Bounce?
In order to really understand bounce rate you are going to need to understand the concept of a bounce.
In short, Google does not tell SEO marketers what they count as a bounce.
All of our understandings of what a bounce is come from assumptions made by observing the algorithm and observing searcher behavior.
Why doesn’t Google tell us what they think a bounce is?
Largely because once someone has that information, they could develop a website that would be un-bounce-able.
For example, they could build a website that is impossible to click out of until the bounce period has passed.
That said, in general, a bounce is considered any user who clicks on your link and then, within a certain amount of time, clicks the “back” button on their browser, to be taken back to the previous page, usually the search engine.
Why does Google care about this?
Because if a large percentage of your clicks are immediately bouncing back to the search results, what you have to offer must not be very good and you do not deserve to be where you are listed in the search results.
While we do not know what exactly constitutes a bounce, it is safe to say that your goal should be to keep searches on your website as long as possible.
But what exactly does that have to do with your automotive SEO?
Bounce rate is one of the facts that search engines look at when they decide where in a set of search results you should rank.
High bounce rate?
Low ranking.
Low bounce rate?
High ranking?
Reducing your bounce rate can significantly improve your http://im814.com/automotive SEO campaign.
Plus, a better automotive SEO campaign will automatically mean a lower bounce rate.
How to Lower Your Bounce Rate
Using these methods will not just lower your bounce rate, they will also improve your search engine optimization:
- Target better keywords
If you are not targeting the best keywords, you are probably seeing a higher than average bounce rate.
Optimizing your website for a keyword that is only obliquely related to your dealership is probably going to result in you have a much higher bounce rate than if you chose keywords that are more closely related to your industry and specifically to your business.
There is such a thing as high quality and low quality traffic. Using the wrong keywords is going to send you low quality traffic, which is never good.
- Use landing pages
When trying to figure out how to direct more people to your website, you might have come across the idea of using landing pages.
Landing pages are a good way to create and provide content to searchers that will directly answer the question that they are asking their chosen search engine.
For example, if they are looking for the cheapest sedan on the market, you could create a landing page that targets that keyword, providing them with a direct link to the cheapest sedan on your lot.
- Make sure your content is relevant and engaging
If your site visitors click on your link, thinking they are going to find content centered on a certain type of vehicle that they have searched for and are instead presented with a website that forces an entirely different type of vehicle in their face, they are going to click away.
Content should be highly relevant to the search query or you are going to see and increasing bounce rate and decreasing rank.
- Streamline your design
An old, cluttered, or just plain webpage design is going to seriously affect your ability to lower your bounce rate.
The visuals of your website are its first impression, and if that first impression is bad, most people are just going to click away.
