High Bounce Rate for Affiliate review site bad?

Hi everyone. I just recently reviewed my analytics stats and noticed that I have a very high bounce rate...about 90%. However I was wondering if this is necessarily a bad thing? The site is getting anywhere between 100 and 200 visitors a day, and from those visitors anywhere from 20-40 clickthrough to Amazon...and sales just vary on a daily basis.

Now I'm not exactly sure if a visitor clicking on an affiliate link on my page increases the bounce rate or not but that is what I was wondering.

If I have a very high bounce rate because people are reading the review and then immediately clicking through to Amazon, that is good. But if bounce rate is just when someone hits my page and then hits the back button on their browser, then I'm not making use of my traffic very well.

Basically what exactly constitutes for your bounce rate? Is it whenever someone leaves your site no matter the means in which they do so?


And I was also wondering if a high bounce rate will hurt my position in the SERPS?


Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer this question,



Jacob Martus