Stop panicking about your bounce rate!
Another day, another SEO myth causing unnecessary stress. This time it’s bounce rates, thanks to a Google ‘leak’ that showed they can measure how quickly people leave your site. Cue widespread panic and wild speculation about rankings plummeting because of high bounce rates.
Let’s clear something up straight away: Just because Google can measure something doesn’t mean they use it as a ranking factor.
Obsessing over bounce rate is like judging a library by how long people stay there – someone who finds their book quickly and leaves is actually a success story. They got exactly what they needed with minimum fuss. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be aiming for?
When is a Bounce Actually a Success?
Think about someone searching for “what time does Tesco close?” They land on your page, see it’s 9pm, and leave immediately. That’s a bounce. It’s also exactly what they wanted – quick, accurate information. Would you rather they hung around reading your fascinating history of supermarket opening hours?
The same goes for recipe pages, contact information, or quick fact checks. If someone gets the information they need and leaves, that’s not a failure – it’s efficient user experience.
Different Pages, Different Expectations
Your bounce rate means different things depending on what type of page someone’s visiting. A 70% bounce rate might be terrible for your main ecommerce page but perfectly normal for short blog posts.
Product pages? Yes, high bounce rates might indicate a problem. People should be adding to cart, checking other products, or at least reading the details.
Blog posts? Many readers will consume the content and leave. That’s normal. They might come back next time they need information, or even bookmark your site for later.
Contact pages? Once someone’s got your phone number or email address, they’re probably going to bounce. That’s literally the point of the page.
The Real Story Behind Google’s Measurements
At the end of the day, what does Google actually care about? Whether users get what they need from your site. They’re looking at much more sophisticated metrics than simple bounce rates:
Meaningful User Interactions
Did someone click through to other pages? Great. Did they find their answer in your featured snippet and never need to click? Also great. Did they spend 30 seconds reading your opening paragraph and leave because it wasn’t relevant? That’s valuable information too.
Industry and Query Context
Google understands that different types of searches warrant different user behaviours. They’re not comparing your recipe blog’s bounce rate to an ecommerce site’s checkout page. That would be silly.
What You Should Actually Care About
Instead of obsessing over raw bounce rate numbers, focus on:
User Intent Matching
Are people finding what they came for? If someone searches “chicken curry recipe” and bounces from your 2,000-word article on the history of curry because they can’t find the actual recipe, that’s a problem worth fixing.
Page Purpose
Each page on your site has a job to do. Judge its success on how well it does that job, not on some arbitrary engagement metric. Your ‘opening hours’ page doesn’t need to keep people riveted for hours.
Stop Treating Every Bounce Like It’s a Disaster
Sometimes a quick exit is exactly what should happen. Focus on serving your users’ needs efficiently, and let Google worry about how they measure success.
Remember: If someone walks into a library, finds exactly the book they want, and leaves straight away, that’s not a failure – it’s excellent service. The same principle applies to your website.
At the end of the day, high bounce rates automatically hurt your SEO – it’s more nuanced than that and needs to be looked at on a page-by-page basis.
Want to improve your site? Focus on giving users what they need, when they need it. Sometimes that means they’ll stick around for ages. Sometimes it means they’ll bounce right off. Both can be perfectly fine.
There are so many SEO Myths out there that I wrote a book about them – SEO Myths Debunked.
