I really have to wonder when I hear people complaining about bounce rates.   Google defines a bounce rate as the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.  It has NOTHING to do with a measure of quality.  Some brain-dead people have a single page site and wonder why their bounce rate is high. 

First let’s look at 7 reasons why Entrecard causes high bounce rates:

  1. People visit the same site daily for months.  Your content updates once a week.  Am I supposed to mindlessly click through your archives the other 6 days a week because you worry about a bounce stat?
  2. Your site is crap. I have no interest in reading crap.  I visit it only because you were kind enough to drop on my site, and I am returning the favor.
  3. Your site is wonderful, but like me, your entire article is there on your front page for me to read.  In fact your last 5 articles are there.  So I have no business clicking on links unless I plan to comment, read an older post, or click an ad.
  4. Your site is a single page site that stretches a mile long down the page.
  5. It’s midnight and I have 300 cards to drop.  I’ve already commented on my favorite blogs, and just want to finish dropping the rest of my cards.
  6. I might be one of those people that drop from my inbox.  I have no idea what site I’m visiting and have no attachment to it, be it friend or foe.
  7. I might be one of those people that drop off a list of bookmarks.  I load 50 tabs, then go ALT+TAB to a game, come back 15 minutes later and then drop my cards.  That delay  can register as a bounce because the analytic counter timed out.

Turnip, My bounce rate is high and I’m about to cry?

Dont worry.  Contrary to popular belief, bounce rates don’t hurt you.  In fact, when I see someone read every article on my site, then I worry.  Because that bastard just scraped all my content.  There are only two types of successful blogs out there.  Those that measure their success by dollars, and those that measure their success by readers.  If you want the worship of readers, then any visitor is good.  They all count equally, even if they are not human.  Those of you that write for the sake of writing fall into this category.  If your writing is good, then a few of those visitors will comment and in turn, spread the word of your site.  If you don’t find your visitors commenting and interest in your blog spreading, then maybe your writing put them asleep at the keyboard.  Before Entrecard you had 5 readers.  After Entrecard you now have 200 bouncers a day, but 25 readers/commenters.  Aren’t you better off?

Now, judging by what I see when I drop, most of you fall into the money making category.  If I told you “never post another article and I will pay you $1000 a month for life.”  How many of you would say “Sorry Turnip, I was put on earth to blog.”  Very few.  So let’s cut the crap.  Most of us write a few articles on something that interests us, slap a few ads on the blog, and hope we make a few dollars.  Those that do make money on the net probably aren’t making it from their blog ads. They set up websites of an entirely different nature.  Because Entrecarders have blogs, we’re not even going to discuss these types of sites in relation to bounce rates.

So do bounce rates affect your ability to earn?  Not really.  In some cases Google may lower your ad prices if you have a large number of visitors and nobody ever clicks.  It’s just one of the factors of “smart pricing”.  But for all your other ads, you want as many visitors viewing them as possible.   I find a clickthrough rate of about 1 in 1500 ad views to be pretty common for a 125×125 ad.  Especially if your niche isn’t specific. 

The same crybabies about bounce rate are the same ones whoring the marketing section with their  “Monday Stumble, Tuesday Stumble, Wednesday Stumble” posts.  Don’t you think Stumblers will hit the same back button when they see your crap doesn’t interest them?  A stumble can bring you 1000 visitors; Entrecard brings you only 100-300 uniques.  Yet who do they blame?

By the way, I disable all javascript from reaching Google using the Noscript Plugin for Firefox.  So, like the wind, you probably never even know when I visit your site.  Be happy people visit your site at all and not whether they “bounce” or not.  If you write well, eventually you will convert them to readers.  

Now everyone close your eyes while I slip in this spam link for SEO purposes.  For the History of Lasik Surgery I always go to the Best directory for LASIK Surgery in Northern New Jersey.  We can talk about this experiment another time.

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