How important is your bounce rate?

1. 74

   E. A. Wrightposted 14 years ago

   I'm playing with google analytics, and as I understand it, having a high bounce rate on a particular page is bad, because readers are just looking at that single page and not at others you wrote. (I also have the impression that the way to fix it is to have many pages of valuable, related content, which hubpages seems to encourage by offering groups.)
   
   But sometimes, wouldn't a reader be best served by having all their questions answered on one page, and the fact they don't visit other pages by the same author wouldn't be an accurate measure of how valuable the page was to the reader?
   
   If a page is popular, if readers spend a relatively long stretch of time on it, and if I have not yet written any related content, should I just forget about bounce rates?

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2. 74

   Anti-Valentineposted 14 years ago

   Sometimes when I visit a page, I copy to note and save it to read later. Other people may do this, favourite it or bookmark the thing without spending much time on it.
   
   My overall bounce rate isn't that good either. But what can you do?
   
   You're right about the whole quality vs. quantity thing.
   
   "But sometimes, wouldn't a reader be best served by having all their questions answered on one page, and the fact they don't visit other pages by the same author"

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3. 65

   darksideposted 14 years ago

   All you can do is write the best that you can on your chosen topic.
   
   There's a balance between writing enough and writing too much. A very lengthy hub article is just as likely (maybe even more so) to make a person switch off and go away than to stick around and read it all.
   
   I could publish an article on every muscle group in the human body and all the exercises needed to develop those muscles, in fact I have, but in 15 parts. I do have a Capstone hub that ties it all up. But that Capstone hub is general. It is an overview. There is useful information there, but if a person is only wanting to find out more about one specific focused part of the subject, they can just click through.
   
   I think it depends on how much detail you want to get into. On the other hand if I had a specific niche that had about 700 words in the article I certainly wouldn't try splitting it into two hubs.
   
   While I'm not specifically relating to the bounce rate question, it's something that should be considered: how much information should I give to the reader in this article. Too little, too much and you could quickly lose their interest and bore them.
   
   Just do what you feel is right.
   
   And being off-topic, I wonder how important is our flounce rate?

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4. 72

   sunforgedposted 14 years ago

   Whats your purpose in Publishing?
   
   A high bounce rate is great if your hoping for adclicks/afflinks etc.
   
   If your hoping that someone is just there to read and then read more articles you wrote, then low bounce rate=good
   
   But if you have distinctly different topics and your reader arrives on "how to change the batteries in your remote" , if you answered their question than their would be no need to "bounce" to another of your articles, so once again you would have a very high bounce rate.

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