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:
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- Your site is a single page site that stretches a mile long down the page.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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38 users commented in " Idiots and Entrecard Bounce Rates "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback **********Wow! Very tough posts. I really like the title, and of course the rest of this post. It will surely knock the lights out of those who repeatedly complain about their bounce rates because of entrecard. I, for one, do not monitor my bounce rates.
Ya know, I always wondered about that. Good points. I was going to say something else–and it was gonna be really, really good too–but it’s 1am and my brain just fell asleep. Gnight!
Thanks for the praise: I found this comment from phirate, entrecard coder, and thought it would be fitting to post an excerpt:
This is what happens when you always rely on the same sources of traffic you will find that you hardly make any money from Ads because,
Entrecarders will not look beyond your widget, clicking ads remains a mystery to them. Stumblers will hardly wait around for your page to load. They bounce of so fast, NASA recently commissioned some scientists to calculate their escape velocity (could come in handy when we need to leave Mars.
Alfred, If what you say is true, and I’ve been studying something related to what you just said, then that brings up a simple concept. “Readers don’t click ads, they simply read and comment”.
I’ll have more to say about this in the future, you can bet on that. But first there is some experiment conducting to be done.
LoL, very honest and straight to the point.
Entrecarders are bloggers, so they don’t normally click on ads
Turnip, humor and snappy in the same post. You are so right. I know how I am dropping cards and assume the rest are also. I am so very thankful people actually visit my site. As far as bounce rate, true, if you only have one page then WTF?
You know when you have no bounce rate? When your post is a slam dunk. Get it? Ah, yes, it is late.
The level of entry into blogging is too easy. People are in blogging for the wrong reasons. Bounce rates, schmounce rates. Just write something interesting. Oddly, the people who complain about bounce rates are probably the ones that won’t succeed. To paraphrase Fiddy Cent, “Convert Everyone or Die Tryin’.
Thanks alot for the valuable insight on the whole bounce vs. quality visitor conflict. BTW, I’m number 7 of the bullets posted there in the article.
Great article man!!! That’s all I can say.
Turnip, this is really great post, i really hope that those big complainers will able to read this and at least educate themselves.
Entrecards and Bloggers are in the same boat,dancing in the same tune, the only difference is the lyric (of the post).
There is nothing to fret about with bounce rate Great Post.
Just a word: thanks for writing this up, off I go to drop people back.
Preach it, Turnip. I’m with you 100% on this issue.
Great post turnip. I don’t pay atttention to bounce rates. I figure if people like my site, they will come back for whatever the reason. And if they don’t, they won’t be bouncing back again. lol
I was thinking about this same issue the other day. I too don’t understand why people complain about their bounce rate when their site probably did not get that much traffic before entrecard.
Thanks for clarifying how Google defines a bounce rate.
Glad most of you enjoyed my rant. The reason people complain is because they rely on Google analytics. Google Analytics gives you 6 stats that mean little when you don’t click on it’s specialty tabs. You see visits, pageviews, pages per view. Then they give you Bounce Rate, Time on site, and new visitors. A certain A-lister cried about Bounce Rate, and the parrots have been sqwawking ever since.
Wow, I like your idea about bounce rates. And you gave me a new perspective about bounce rates which I really thought was very bad for my blog.
Guess I wasn’t one complaining…since I have no clue about bounce rates. Since I’m not really SELLING anything on my blog, I guess it’s not a big issue for me. I just like for people to come read, maybe check some photos out (budding photographer here) and get a little break from their lives….
Linda, Then you fall into the “quality writer” category. Even those whose goal is to post a few family photos online fit into this category. You may not care about 1000’s of visitors, but the praise of the few who say “nice picture” is enough for you.
I don’t worry about bounce rates much. They might matter on some websites, but on a blog people visit everyday and which isn’t explicitly built up as a community? Not really all that much.
Sometimes people really just like one page. Well, good; you wrote a useful page that other people like. If you can do that once, that’s already way more karma than any dozens of blogs put together.
I like seeing repeat visitors; just like I like seeing first-time visitors who then deep-dive.
Different kinds of websites with different goals have different patterns for health or sickness—Google hits, bounce rates, visits from social media, whatever. About the only constant between them is: if no one visits, your site is definitely ill.
People have to think about their site before they follow “common knowledge” as to what is or isn’t good for their site.
Interesting.. I’ve been hearing that bounce rates are bad bad. it’s good to see a post that says they just don’t matter.
Hi,
Entrecard members should expect bounce rate since there are droppers who do not like your topic not because your content is not good, but simply they’re not interested in it.
Therefore, we must try to convert these droppers to regular visitors and friends.
Right now, I am giving a free ad to my very serious droppers and I think it is effective.
Thanks.
Irony: http://bloggin-ads.com/stop-whining-about-bounce-rates
Sure. I guest posted it. But still.
I could care less about bounce rate. I write out of passion for my niche. Granted, I do like the fact that I make a lil cash for doing it. But even if I made half what I do now, I would still be doing it. I started with nothing.
EC can effect your bounce rate, it’s true. But if you write quality or give a dropper reason to stay…you will improve over the standard. It’s been 15 days since I wrote anything new. But I still have a decent amount of traffic, 70% bounce rate, and a very nice CTR. I give people other things to do, see and read.
BTW, if you want to make money. Focus on your CTR (Click Through Ratio). That’s what advertisers really look for. Maybe the wonderful Turnip could write a little about CTR and how to nurture it?
CTR? Has nothing to do with blogs. Hmm, click on that linkbait article, or click on my bidvertiser ad. I just can’t decide.
I’m researching other types of sites right now, and what I’ve found so far is those that reach your site from search click much more than those who are regular readers. Readers comment, searchers click ads.
Nothing to do with blogs? If you want to make money from your blog you need ads. Advertisers pay more for sites with a higher CTR, blogs too. That’s why PW and BlogAds list the CTR of the blog. Yes they look at pageviews and unique visits, but ad guys know CTR and trust CTR.
I’ve found that mt readers/commenters do click ads/links on their way out. But you are right about searchers being the bigger clickers. But to say CTR doesn’t apply to blogs…IDK.
PW shows uniques and pageviews. Nowhere do they show CTR. Other ad companies do show number of clicks on an ad. Almost always they are faked. You blog is a niche site. You are going to have a higher amount of ad clicks than other bloggers. Even your ads themselves will be more targeted, while my adsense ads have to do with buying fresh turnips.
Ok, point taken. But I’m still gonna hold to my guns and say that people should think more about their CTR.
At first, after reading many complaints about the system, I started to wonder if I was doing the right thing signing up for entrecard. I was worried about bounce rate. But, you know if only 5% of the “bouncers” come back and or like what they see, who am I to complain?
Smile Guy: Entrecard is simply a way for people to view your site. Whether they stay for 6 seconds or 6 minutes, it’s a chance to gain a reader you never would have had otherwise. Take this post for example. 393 people visited my blog yesterday. 54 of them clicked on this article or somehow went directly to this page. That’s 1 out of every 7 people stopping to read my latest post. Of those 54, 22 left comments. 50 different people visited other posts. Yet somehow I’m supposed to cry about the 190 visitors who never left the front page?
you may call it “bounce rate” or whatever.
the fact is that having to “drop 300 cards” (daily) doesn’t leave you any time to check what the blog posts are about when you drop on a site. that’s doesn’t entitle one for “blogger”.
c’mon, it’s just a sick game.
naming people “idiots” doesn’t do you a favor too. everyone has its own perception. and there are always several point of views.
better halt this race, and make worthy content.
I know, i know. many will start shouting.
but that’s how the things are.
Stew: I didn’t make up the term bounce rate and there is NO requirement to drop 300 cards a day. I actually drop 380 cards a day. It takes me 26 minutes to do that. I then have plenty of time read and comment.
great thoughts turnip. You pretty much summed it up best - with your content hasn’t changed. For me - if the last post i’ve seen on a blog was over 1 week ago - i’m not likely to return for a long time.
I would totally be with you on this one but you used really big words and I was busy looking at shiny stuff.
I’ll take the hits. I hate the short length of the visit but it beats no visit at all and every so often you end up with an actual reader.
I LOVE that! I almost said that I don’t understand why it’s chic to complain about EC, but you’re right. A-Listers start the ball rolling and their sheep follow. The biggest cry-baby is the one in the comments of the A-Listers post kissing ass then going back to their blog to try to imitate that day’s post. Gah!
I do actually read a lot of the sites that I drop on even if I’m only slightly interested (saying this because if I can learn something I didn’t know before then I become slightly interested). I read about the “Big guys” and how this person and that person wants to be like them and then LAUGH because they fail miserably. Then the wannabes start with the torches and pitch forks just hoping to get noticed. Does this really work?
At any rate, bounce rates are just not something worth crying about. Honestly, what if all of your traffic came from search engines, the visitors only visited one page, BUT they left via an ad. Would the bounce rates matter then? Hmmph.
[...] to the bounce rates, I’ll just refer you to Turnip’s post. He has got an excellent post about [...]
“If you write well, eventually you will convert them to readers.”
This is the bottom line.
I am not going to want to hang out out of obligation, then what next? I have to click on some ads out of obligation?
Not all Entrecard member sites are good. EC does not discriminate from what I have seen. If it’s not blatant spam or porn, everyone can come in…
I liked the analogy about “Only 20% of the people who looked in my shop window came in.”
If my writing or content is no good? I WANT to know with high bounce! I WANT to know the truth so that I can improve something! Why does no one look at it this way?
I think it’s a very reasonable way to look at it.
And for the record, Turnip - my pal - I think that your honesty does a service. If we can look at things HONESTLY and without pretense, then we can figure out the truths of situations.
If HONESTLY bouncing is why my site does best, then perhaps EC shouldn’t be employed by me. Seriously. I know I have decent traffic on searches and I’m not shabby in SEOing but, again, if I’m trying to get a following through EC and it’s not working, why whine.
Either readjust my perception or readjust my strategy. Anything else is blowing in the wind and wasting time.
Good analysis Samsara. Good blog too you have there. Interesting and scary at the same time; I’m afraid to learn more sometimes.
I appreciate your comment about honesty. I try to give my opinion without sugar coating things. If I’m wrong, I’ll try to correct my mistakes.
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