Well, it depends!

What’s a Bounce?

Basically, if someone visits one page of your website, and only one page, it’s classed as a bounce.

Typically, it will mean that someone has found your site via a search engine, looked at the first page they landed on, and then hit the back button.

You may find this thought horrifying – but there are valid reasons why Bounces may occur:

1. They are not in your physical area. If you’re an accountant, and someone from France manages to find your site, there is a pretty good chance they’ll never become a client anyway. Let them bounce.
2. You don’t actually solve their problem. Some keywords are not really good ones to chase – many are too generic. If you run mine safety training courses, you may think that “training” would be a good keyword. Except for all the people that search for dog training, sales training, weight training… Even though the keyword may be relevant in a generic sense – you may not be what your visitor is looking for.
3. Random keywords and search terms. To illustrate: back in 2004 I posted a short piece after Anna Meares won her Gold Medal in Athens (link). Shortly after, I noticed a lot if incoming traffic from people who had “googled” for her name. Were those people looking for our services at the time? Nope. They bounced. But that’s okay, we were getting traffic from a keyword totally unrelated to what we do.

So, you’ll see that you will always have some bounces. The number without context doesn’t mean much. Not all bounces are bad though – in these examples your website is helping to qualify your leads. If you can’t help them, you don’t want to be spending time answering emails and phone calls.

Killer Bounces

What hurts is a bounce from someone who lives in an area that you service (or can service) – and who has searched for a keyword that accurately matches your business.

How do you find this out? What can you do about it?

We’ll look at these issues next month!

(Haha – I feel like Eddie McGuire leaving people hanging during the ad break on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire!)

And if you can’t wait until next month for the answer – contact me to arrange an analysis of your website’s performance.

Why?

1. That particular page is likely to be themed towards that location, so someone searching for your business in a specific location will be more likely to find it via search engines
2. Finding your contact details is one of the main things visitors to your website will be trying to do. If you have this information neatly organised (and not hidden behind gimmicky forms), you give them a better experience, regardless of how they managed to get to your website in the first place
3. Even better – embed a location map on each page as well, so they can print it off and use it as a reference!

Really simple advice – but often overlooked.

As the saying goes, “If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. And one of the most important things to keep an eye on with your website is how well you rank in search engines (especially Google) for your targeted keywords.

We offer our clients regular reports on this, and so if you’re already receiving these reports, here’s what to make of them:

1. Make sure that the keywords we are reporting on are relevant. Think to yourself, “If I was a potential customer, would I type this in to the search box in Google?”
2. Assuming we’re reporting on relevant keywords, check the numbers under each search engine. 10 or less means you’re on the first page of results. 11 to 20 means page 2, 21-30 is page 3 and so on. Really, you’re looking for a first page, or top 10 result. Page 2 may be okay in some circumstances, but page 1 is where you need to be.
3. Moving up and down a few places is completely normal. Google regularly tweak their algorithm, your website may have changed, competitors websites may have changed. Don’t stress about minor movements in either direction between reports.
4. If you don’t have a top 10 result for a relevant keyword – take action! It may mean revising some pages in your site, or seeking out some more inbound links. Contact us if you’re not sure what to do next.

Remember – this report doesn’t say how many people are actually visiting your website. It’s about maximising your site’s potential to get those people who are search for the things you offer.

Rumors have been circulating recently that Google is considering including the speed of your website as one of the factors it uses in ranking your pages in its search results.

That’s all speculation at this point, but overnight Google announced a new tool that lets you measure your website’s speed, based on data provided by people using the advanced features in their toolbar.

Perhaps they are gearing up for such a change, perhaps not – but importantly as explained on their blog:

Studies have repeatedly shown that speeding up your site leads to increased user retention and activity, higher revenue and lower costs.

It’s worth considering this the next time you’re thinking about large images and special effects that take longer to load. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. “Would I really want to wait for this?”

(Image credit: Photo Monkey)

The [Wall Street] Journal said Kumo is designed to cut down on the length of typical web searches by grouping the results into categories.

A search for a particular model of car, for example, would be separated into categories like parts, used car listings, online discussion forums and videos showing the vehicle, it said.

Sounds like an interesting idea – but I think it will take something substantial to wrestle away the grip that Google has on the search landscape.

Time will tell… Will anyone care?

For some time we’ve offered Search Engine Ranking reports to our customers for a fee, but I’m pleased to announce that they are now free!

Every three months, our web clients can receive a report via email listing where they rank in the major Australian search engines for their selected keywords. As the old saying goes, “If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it!”

This service is part of our overall philosophy: your online success is our success, and we’ll do our best to help you achieve that.

Contact us if you’d like to know more.

From time to time Google changes the formula they use, and the Sydney Morning Herald reports they have just done it again.

So don’t be too surprised to see your ranking change from time to time, in fact you can safely expect it to happen!

Contact us if any such changes concern you.