What does ‘bounce rate’ mean?
Have you ever visited a website and immediately said to yourself: “Noooope!” – and then clicked the back button almost immediately? That’s what they refer to in the biz as ‘bouncing’. And for every visitor that leaves before exploring any other page on your website, your ‘bounce rate’ goes up.
Of course, the higher the bounce rate, the more evident it becomes that there is something going wrong with your website – whether it be due to a painfully slow page load speed, or a lack of understanding behind the ‘search intent’ for your focus keywords, thus resulting in expectations not being met.
Whatever the case, a high bounce rate is a no go.
Does bounce rate mean different things in SEO and email marketing?
It does! Bounce rate doesn’t only refer to SEO. In fact, bounce rate has two different meanings:
- In SEO: bounce rate refers to the percentage of website users who abandon your website immediately before clicking on any other page.
- In email marketing: bounce rate refers to the percentage of email addresses in your list of subscribers that didn’t receive your email as it was returned (or ‘bounced back’) by the recipient mail server. There are two types of bounce rate in email marketing:
- Hard bounce: hard bounce refers to an email that was sent back without ever having been accepted by the recipient mail server (e.g., wrong email, domain doesn’t exist, the receiving email server has blocked it entirely).
- Soft bounce: soft bounce on the other hand refers to an email that has been returned to the sender undelivered after having already been accepted by the recipient mail server (e.g., mailbox is full, email server down, email is too large).
How to improve bounce rate?
As you can see, bounce rate in SEO and email marketing are two very different things and as such, they call for very different solutions. Here’s a closer look…
How to reduce bounce rate in SEO?
The best way to start reducing the bounce rate of your website is to first try and understand why your users are leaving. Is it a user experience issue? Are you failing to meet expectations? Determine why you are struggling to keep your users on your website and set to improve it. The lower your bounce rate the easier it will become to raise your domain authority and bolster your online marketing efforts as a whole.
Here’s a few quick tips:
- Design a better UX.
- Improve your page load speed.
- Make your website mobile responsive.
- Include a clear CTA.
- Make sure your content is accessible and inclusive (including your visual content).
- Understand ‘search intent’ behind your focus keywords – make sure you’re attracting the right traffic (e.g., for local SEO in Melbourne, produce content that will be suited to Melbourne residents. Meet expectations!).
- Implement stunning visual elements to engage your users.
- Consider adding video (if applicable).
- Add intuitive internal linking.
These are just a handful of the things you can try. Give split-testing (A/B testing) a go and trial a few different variations. See what works and what doesn’t and you’ll be able to reduce your bounce rate in no time!
How to reduce bounce rate in email marketing?
Now, let’s look at reducing your email bounce rate:
- Go through your email list with a fine-toothed comb (especially if you purchased your email list).
- Don’t send any spam (or emails that look like spam). It’s all in the subject line!
- Send emails from an official email address (not a free service such as Gmail, etc.).
- Verify your domain.
- Personalise your emails as best you can.
Final thoughts
As you can see, there’s a clear distinction between ‘bounce rate’ in SEO and email marketing – with different solutions.
If you are struggling to achieve optimal results in either digital marketing methods, it may be worth outsourcing your needs to the professionals.
Either way, we hope this article has cleared up the difference between bounce rate in SEO and email marketing and that you now have a deeper understanding of the two.
