Bounce Rate Help
My bounce rate for Free Fitness Tips | Free, Impartial Fitness Advice is currently around 83%. When I started the website it was around 75% but since my main goal was getting visitors to the site I didn't focus on this metric and it is slowly creeping up. However, I've decided that now it's getting to the level where I need to do something about it. Below is what I have worked out so far:
- My homepage (my top traffic page which represents around 5% of my total traffic) has a bounce rate of 50%.
- The next 9 most visited pages (which represent about 25% of my total traffic) have a bounce rate of between 85% and 90%.
Based on the above points, it seems to be my content pages that are the source of my high bounce rate. The problem is I can't work out why. When trying to look at my site as an objective visitor, I believe there are a number of things that encourage readers to stay on my site. These include:
- "Top Rated Posts" in the sidebar.
- "You Might Also Like..." relevant posts at the bottom of the article.
- Lots of relevant links within the articles to other pages on my website. For example, if I mention "protein" I link to my page on protein.
I understand that there are some factors that may draw visitors away from my website which I have also listed below:
- Email Signup Form.
- Google Adsense Adverts.
- Links to advertisers in the right hand sidebar.
- Affiliate links at the bottom of some articles.
- Trackbacks at the bottom of each post.
However, the amount of people that click the above is nowhere near 80%.
I did a little digging in Google Analytics and found something quite interesting that might explain this. Some of my clicks to internal pages are being classed as "/outgoing/www.freefitnesstips.co.uk/". For example, my top exit source on the page 3 Stomach Toning Abdominal Exercises | Free Fitness Tips is "/outgoing/www.freefitnesstips.co.uk/4-six-pack-ab-myths.html". However, "/4-six-pack-ab-myths.html" is also recognised as a separate exit source. I was wondering if Google is viewing these "/outgoing/www.freefitnesstips.co.uk/" links as a bounce? If so how do I stop them appearing as an outgoing link and get them to start appearing as an internal link?
I understand it's quite a long post so just to summarise:
- My homepage bounce rate is 50% vs the average content page bounce rate of 85%-90%.
- Google Analytics is tagging a lot of clicks on my content pages as "/outgoing/www.freefitnesstips.co.uk/". Does Google count these as bounces when really they are not? If so how do I address this?
- Are there any things you can think of when looking at my site objectively that I could do to improve my bounce rate?
Thanks in advance,
Tom
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