Using Google Analytics: Bounce Rate

I personally know lots of people using Google Analytics to keep track of their blogs stasts. I myself is a big fan of Google Analytics, there are lots of stuff like Analytics, but lots of those services are horrible compared to Google Analytics. As I said many are using Google Analytics and if you are not using Google Analytics you should start doing that.

If you don’t know how to implement Google Analytics and have tried (it isn’t hard) I’ll make a video on that in some days. Probably before the year change. (Wow man, 2010? this year has passed fast!)

Now, I can’t mention one good reason not to use Analytics, but I can easily mention 10 good reasons to use Analytics.

1. You can keep track of all visits.
2. The best available counter, more precisely than other sites (Yes, also CPanel, thanks @DavidBeKing for mentioning that).
3. You can count average time on site.
4. Google is the creator, so it’s good. No doubt LOL.
5. You can have all your domains collected one place, at one account.
6. Other accounts can view your blog’s stats, if they have permission. Which makes it good if two persons shares a blog.
7. What is the difference since last night? (Change in %.)
8. How many new visitors? (in percent.)
9. It’s possible to compare results: search engine traffic vs. direct traffic vs. referral traffic.
10. See what keywords are used in the Search box – And how many visits from search engine (Google).

That’s the 10 reasons to use Analytics, my own experience tells me that Analytics is the best service on the web, for keeping track of your blog, but actually this blog post, wasn’t written to get you to use Analytics. This post was created to tell you what the bounce rate is.

Bounce rate is a feature in Google Analytics, many people finds it very unclear what this feature actually does. So in a few words I’m going to explain.

So What is it? And How Is It Calculated?

A bounce rate is the percentage of people who only views one page, and then closing the browser or typing in another address in the address bar. Normally there are three reasons for that:

1. The reader, finds your site (referral, search or direct traffic) and they take a quick look at it finds out that it isn’t what he/she is looking for. Therefor he/she is closing the browser. (Negative bounce rate.)
2. Your site doesn’t deliver what’s needed, it isn’t informative. (Negative bounce rate.)
3. He/she read the the latest blog post on the frontpage and then leaved. (Positive bounce rate.)

Of course there’s other reasons why the person is leaving without clicking through your site and only giving the blog one page view.

In the first case, there’s nothing to change, you can’t deal with that. If it isn’t what they are looking for they leave. This is also the most unlikely think that happen.

Second case, you can do something. You can write better blog posts. Maybe a better design, just look what can I improve here? Then you have the answer, maybe let others take a look, then they can tell you what to improve.  Always remember that you’ve to work effectively on your content, your layout placement of your pictures etc.

It may not only be the informativity(can you say that? LOL) of your blog, maybe you generate great content, and it’s being read, but you need links in you blog posts, if you’ve got links in your blog posts, people will be able to navigate within the blog post, that’d make it a lot better. Then they might go to another of your blog posts (this is called internal linking.)

It may be a lot easier to implement links in your blog posts if you’ve a lot of articles, then it would be a lot easier to create links that match. If you link to other posts, they’ll also increase its value (wearing Google’ss glasses)

One rule tells us that you have to make the first impression in eight seconds, so you have eight seconds to get the reader staying on your site. So you’ve to make a good first impression in eight seconds – In eight seconds you can do a lot:

• Read a headline
• Read a brief-description of the blog post
• Evaluate the quality of content, layout, navigating

That’s pretty much what you need to do, to keep your bounce rate down – And that’s the best thing to do, now bounce rate isn’t everything. You should take more time on the “how long time does the user stay on my site” feature, keep that as high as possible.

That’s all from now – Remember to watch me on UStream tonight! DaneBlogger’s Live Show!