Bounce rate is an important metric to focus on when you are studying your sites statistics. Technically, the bounce rate refers to the number of single page visits to your sites landing page. A 90% bounce rate would mean that 90% of your visitors are leaving your site without visiting any other page on your site.

The importance of bounce rate is that is measures relevancy. A high rate means that your site is not relevant to your visitor. In other words, your visitor didn’t find what they were looking for and moved on. This could occur for a number of different reasons including:

  • The ad text for your site doesn’t match your landing page well
  • You are targeting a keyword that is too broad.
  • Your landing page isn’t designed to funnel visitors to another page.
  • You have a poorly designed or organized landing page that doesn’t clearly tell the visitor what to do next.

The most effective strategy for lowering your bounce rate is to narrow your keywords and tailoring your landing page for each keyword. Also, test different variations of the same webpage to determine what the most effective page is for your particular campaign. A lower bounce rate likely means that you are doing a more effective job of engaging your visitors and guiding them to a particular action.