Properly positioning your company on the web is a critical step to acquiring new customers or engaging new users. Whether you have a free movie website, a church website, or a small business web site, it is a fact that most people cannot help but judge a company or service they find on the web within just a few seconds of landing on a page. Having an updated website shows the potential customers that you are in business, whether in person or on the web. It also shows that you are invested into providing your visitors with most up-to-date information, quickly. Ultimately, it results in building an effective business web site.
"I came, I puked, I left" is a very famous quote by Avinash Kaushik, when discussing the bounce rate. But what does it mean precisely? At what point is a bounce being recorded? Is it purely when a visitor hits the back button or is there more to it? And what does the bounce rate of a web page imply? In this post, we will discuss what it is, what it means, and what can be done to improve it.
Before we discuss building an effective business web site, let's discuss the bounce rate.
The bounce rate is a simple metric that measures the percentage of visitors that land on your web site, and do nothing on the page they landed on. This means that they did not engage further by clicking on a menu item, a 'read more' link, or any other internal links on the page. A user is considered bounced when there has not been any engagement with the landing page and the visit ends with a single-page visit. A bounce rate metric can be used to indicate the quality of a website and the target of the audience. Google Analytics is one of the most popular web analytic services to track and report website traffic.
According to Google, the bounce rate is calculated as follows:
Bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.
In other words, it records all sessions where a visitor only visited one page and divides it by all sessions.
According to Avinash Kaushik, author of "Web Analytics: An Hour a Day", a bounce rate of under 20% is hard to get. Anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying.
Before we dig any further, it is important to note that Google claims it does not use Google Analytics data as a ranking factor. In essence, it would not be reliable for Google to do so, since an incorrect implementation of Google Analytics will provide inaccurate data - therefore affecting search results.
According to multiple Googlers, Google doesn’t use Google Analytics’ data in their search algorithm. But, of course, when people come from a search engine to a site, they don’t bounce back to the search results, since that kind of bouncing probably is a ranking factor. It is very likely to be measured in a different way than the bounce rate we see in Google Analytics.
From a holistic SEO perspective, every aspect of a web site needs to be optimized. Looking at the bounce rate can help optimize the website - which contributes to search engine optimization.
Determining whether the height of the bounce rate is a good or bad thing generally depends on the purpose of the web page. If the purpose is for informational purposes only, then a high bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, we all prefer for people to stick around and read more articles, subscribe, or perform a click-to-action. But when a visitor only visited the page to read a post or find an address for instance, then it isn't surprising they close the page or hit the back button after reading it. Therefore, it is also important to measure the bounce rate for organic traffic sources and new visitors.
If the purpose of the page is to engage visitors with your site, then a high bounce rate is a bad thing. Let's assume your page has one goal: get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. If that page has a high bounce rate, then the page needs to be optimized. This can be done by adding a clear call-to-action or subscribe button. If that does not work, then perhaps the web site design or the the web site performance is not acceptable. All of these can lower the bounce rate significantly.
But there can be other reasons for a high bounce rate, of course. If you lured visitors to your website under false pretenses, it is no surprise they when these visitors do not engage with the page. Quality traffic is much more important than volume for high conversion.
By looking at the bounce rate from a conversion perspective, the bounce rate can be used as a metric to measure success. For instance, the design has recently been changed in the hopes it will convert better.
Monitoring the bounce rate will indicate whether the changes were right or wrong. An increase in the bounce rate indicates the changes were not correct for the audience.
This very blog you are reading has actually significantly improved the bounce rate from a re-design by an average of over 35%. The bounce rate for some pages was reduced by as much as 94%.
Another way of looking at the bounce rate, is from a traffic sources perspective. Which traffic sources lead to a high or a low bounce rate? Your newsletter for instance? Or a referral website that sends a lot of traffic?
The only way to lower the bounce rate is improving the engagement on the page(s). A web site refresh or new content is a sure way to attract visitors.
If certain traffic sources have high bounce rates, it is important to know the expectations of the visitors coming to the site. If the source is from an advertisement on another site, and most people coming via that source bounce, then your ad is misleading and not satisfying the visitors. The page is simply not living up to their expectations. Review the ad campaign and ensure that it matches the page and page content.
If your page lives up to the expectations of your visitors, and the page still has a high bounce rate, then you have to look at the page itself. How’s the usability of the page? Is there a call-to-action above the fold on the page? Do you have internal links that point to related pages or posts? Do you have a menu that’s easy to use? Does the page invite people to look further on your site? These are all things you need to consider when optimizing your page.
At QWERTY Concepts, we build websites that build businesses. Schedule a free website assessment and or request a quote for your business web site, today.
Internet has become a major need in today’s times - which also raises the concern of safety - requiring web content filtering for businesses. The impact of internet can be seen in every field, mainly in companies and offices. It is a powerful tool which allows us to perform our tasks with great convenience and ease. It facilitates the recording, managing, updating and sharing of information in offices. It is unimaginable for a company to carry out the daily tasks without the help of internet.
To make it easy for the employees to communicate and share information among them, companies allow free access of internet. However, it is important to know if this facility is actually being used for the benefit of the company.
Internet is also a great source of information, which is very crucial for employees to keep themselves updated about the latest advancements. The increasing use of internet has given rise to some problems as well. The biggest problem is related to the security of the systems. There are many sites on the internet, which are full of virus and malware. It becomes imperative to find a reliable solution, to keep your business database secure from these viruses.
Filtering the web content, which is being viewed or downloaded by the employees, is the most effective solution in such a case. Web content filtering for businesses can help to prevent your employees from accessing all those websites which are inappropriate or can pose a security risk to the systems of your company. By using a web content filtering for businesses system you can ensure that your employees are accessing only those websites which are work related.
As there are such a large number of employees in big companies, it becomes impossible to keep a check on every individual. Sometimes employees keep wasting their time on social networking or entertainment sites. It lowers their productivity and performance, which in turn affects the overall growth of your company. This can be avoided with the help of a reliable web content filtering for businesses solution. Using Web Content Filtering for businesses is important from security point of view as well.
The database of a company contains critical information about the employees, clients and stocks of the company. This data is very sensitive and can be misused by competitors. Employees can sometimes access websites which are not secure. Such websites can damage the network security system of the company, making it unsafe. The security of your database is something which should never be compromised. To avoid this type of situation it is important to invest in a good filtering system.
Accessing sites which contain inappropriate or illegal content can prove damaging for the reputation of your company as well. Having a good filtering system in place can ensure that your data is safe. There is software available in the market that allows you to filter websites which you do not want your employees to access. Other than that you can also find a good company which can provide such security solutions for your business. It will not only keep the data of the company secure but can also reduce the risk of any virus attack on systems.
Today, the web has undoubtedly become one of the largest financial markets and without organic search engine optimization your web page can be impossible to find. What good is it if it cannot be found? Practically, almost everything is being anchored over the internet. There are millions of websites operating on the web are still rising at an alarming rate. With the ever-increasing emergence of scores of websites running online, the need of Search Engine Optimization or SEO is highly defined. Basically, it is a process involving copious strategies to improve the visibility factor of any website. The optimization strategies consider how the search spiders function and what keywords people usually use. The prime objective of organic search engine optimization is to make websites visible in the search engines through natural (or organic) means.
Talking about Organic Search Engine Optimization, well it uses natural techniques or strategies to achieve higher search engine rankings. It is an extremely complex practice that can exactly dictate the success or failure of any online business. Organic Search Engine Optimization (or Organic SEO) also known as natural SEO is used to describe unpaid or algorithm-driven results for any search engine. However, as the search engines often revise their algorithms, this type of search engine optimization is certainly not very easy. When these algorithms are modified, various factors that enable your business website to come in front of your potential customers are also drastically changed. Thus, to deal with all these changes, search engine tactics should be employed by the professionals.
Nowadays, all search sites have become quite advanced and can very easily find out if any website is really trying to use or manipulate the search indexes of their site. Thus, it is good enough to use only organic SEO strategies which appeal completely natural. Various approaches used in organic SEO to that of artificial Search Engine Optimization are totally different. Organic SEO make use of informative and useful content whereas artificial SEO involves technical loopholes. Besides, natural SEO offers attracting links which are completely different to the linking schemes used in artificial search engine optimization. Natural search engine optimization tactics also create valuable resource as opposed to the algorithm chasing of artificial SEO.
Considering all these advantages, one can very clearly make out why organic search engine optimization is more preferable as compared to artificial SEO. Though, the process might be a little complicated, still there is no doubt to the fact that it can produce favorable results which can be extremely profitable for any business website. Fortunately, there is no dearth in the number of companies offering affordable SEO Services. There are scores of companies which are operating over the internet offering professional services of organic search engine optimization services. However, before going ahead and finalizing the deal with any company make sure to perform a background check about the company. Your investigation should include a probe about the authenticity of the company, their reputation in the market, their experience, past record, quality of services along with their rates. You can even chose to make contact with their past customers for a lucid idea about their work and professionalism.
If you are embarking on the mission to harness the powers of World Wide Web for promoting your business online, then you need to consider two important things pertaining to SEO and design. The first thing is to build up your company or business’s website and the second thing is to promote this website on the internet and the World Wide Web.
The website should be attractive and eye-catching and should have meaningful content or user friendly services so that the attention of the visitors is completely engaged. Once such a website is ready, you will need to have traffic of potential customers coming to your site which will actually buy your products or hire your services.
The first part of the project can be achieved by hiring one of the well established, experienced and professional website design services while for the second part of the mission, you will need to recruit some good search engine optimization (SEO) services.
This is something very similar to the real life situation. If your website is like your company office or business storefront then search engine optimization services are like placing the ad of your company or business in the yellow pages. The more strategically you are placed in the business listings, the more likely you are to get customers.
The same rules apply when it comes to internet. People looking for a particular product or service use different search engines to find the same. As soon as they input their query in the search field, the search engine gives a list of links that match with their request. These links may be in thousands or millions and run into many pages but the research shows that more than 60% of users select one of the links on the very first page. Thus you need your website to rank higher and appear on the very first page of customer’s search.
One way of achieving this purpose is to use Google AdWords and AdSense features which work on the pay per click system. Although these systems can get you immediate traffic but here you end up paying for the each user that visits your site. SEO or Search engine optimization is another option which you must choose if you are working with a long term perspective.
SEO is a powerful web marketing tool which can help your website achieve higher ranking on the search engines in response to a search request. The way the search engines perform their function of website ranking is different from each other but they are more or less based on the same principles with the dissimilarity being in the preference given to different criteria. The various processes involved in evaluating websites by the search engines are mainly text driven and based on the use of effective keywords and proper backlinks. With organic search engine optimization, the SEO manager ensures that your website has powerful text placed in an intelligent manner which can effectively manipulate different search engine processes to increase your website ranking.
An SEO friendly website design will determine the difference between success and failure of your online business. If you wish you take you business online you need to have a user and SEO friendly website design and not just any website design. It needs to incorporate a lot of details to be the best competition in the industry. Your web design has to be appealing so that it can gain the trust of the consumers who visit your website and should force them to buy your services. Web designs make a lot of difference and it can actually make or break your business. In case your online business web page is not able to hold the attention of your visitors, then there is no way that you can convert them to potential customers. With so much of advancement, website designing has changed tremendously over and over - and so many new things have been updated to give you the desired result but the important part is to choose the right website design services.
The most significant factor while choosing a web design service is to make sure that they adhere to World Wide Web Consortium which is also important to be an SEO friendly website. Your designer can make use of scripting languages like XML, HTML, XHTML, DOM, CSS etc. Your business website should be attractive and have magnificent graphic design that should hold the customers and communicate your services in an efficient way. A professional web designer will make sure that it has entire component that can boost your online business. Besides being good looking the website must be user friendly and easy to navigate. The graphics of the website shouldn’t be overdone else it can prove to be distracting for your audiences and will also take time to load. Today no one has time to spend hours to sit online and wait for your business page to load, if it takes time they will move to your competitor’s page. A business website has only few seconds to make that first impression and your website design services should be able to deliver that best first look.
When you complete the first step of making your online business website it is also important to give that website an effective online presence and these days web designing companies does that as well. They help you promote your business by improving the ranking of the website by making use of Organic Search Engine Optimization. With this you not only get top ranking but also enjoy higher traffic on your web page. Organic SEO can be done onsite and offsite. Onsite is done by making use of the right key words and phrases that make it easy for the search engines to identify where offsite optimization is done with the help of placing your business link on other relevant sites. A good content also plays the major role in improving the ranking of your business website. The more it is visible on the search engines more people will get to know about it. An online business website should always be made with the help of a professional who knows in and out of this industry and can offer you with the best possible solution.
If you feel that your online business is not able to grab the attention of potential customers and is not able to deliver leads as expected then it surely needs to be reviewed by a website design professional. This can be done by someone who is proficient in Website Design Services and can also give solutions for several internet marketing techniques. Having an appropriate web design is really important as it is the professional representation of your business and services on the World Wide Web. Internet is full of competition and your provider should be the one who can offer viable services to keep you ahead of the rest.
There are various IT consulting and service providers who offer solutions for all your business needs ranging from designing, developing, maintaining the website and even SEO. Today, every business owner has to put in lots of efforts to sustain their business on the internet - otherwise there are huge chances of your customers choosing your competitors over you. You need to choose the best out of the numerous website design services that are available in the market. More than the overall appearance of the website there is lot more that makes it popular among the visitors. The graphics, flash, banners, fonts, colors, and logo are all aspects to be considered while building a site so that it can catch the eye of potential customers.
Besides looking for a professional who knows almost everything about web designing and IT solution, the service has to be made available at genuine cost. The important of web hosting and search engine optimization is extensively outlined when you speak of an online business. It is a process of attracting surfers to you website by increasing its visibility and increasing the ranking of the site on the search engines. Today, the latest technique in the industry is to make your website popular through Organic Search Engine Optimization. This is a concept that is used in algorithm-driven engines. This means that it makes use of natural plans to bring your business website on the top most searches.
Organic optimization involves specific practices which help to clearly achieve success in any online business venture. As most search engines constantly change algorithms, organic SEO becomes difficult at all. When search engines change their algorithms, the factors affecting website ranking also change which affect display results for all web sites. So, if any business needs to catch up with such modifications, intelligent SEO techniques and plans must be employed. Website Design Services attract numerous links to your website in natural ways that indirectly improve the ranking. They not only make websites from scratch but also deliver the services that are necessary for the growth for your website as well as your business.
