What Is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of unengaged sessions on your website or app. Which means the percentage of sessions that didn’t:
- Last for at least 10 seconds
- Trigger a conversion event
- Include at least two pageviews or screenviews
If someone lands on a blog post and exits after two seconds without scrolling, clicking, or converting, that’s a bounce.
What Bounce Rate Tells You About Visitor Behavior
Bounce rate generally tells you whether your content meets users’ expectations and holds their attention.
Generally speaking, a high bounce rate tells you people arrived on your page but didn’t find enough reason to engage or explore.
And a low bounce rate suggests users find your content valuable and engaging.
What Is the Difference Between Bounce Rate and Exit Rate?
Exit rate is the percentage of sessions that end on a particular page or screen. And is equal to the number of exits divided by the number of sessions.
Let’s say a visitor lands on an article on your blog.
Then, they click on an internal link and land on another article. And after reading that second article, they close their browser.
That’s not a bounce.
But, because the visitor left your site on the second article, it will increase that page’s exit rate.
Bounce rate is the percentage of unengaged sessions that start and end on the same page without any meaningful interaction.
For example, a visitor lands on an article on your blog. And then they close their browser five seconds later.
That’s a bounce. And it’ll increase that page’s bounce rate.
How Do You Calculate Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of unengaged sessions by the total number of sessions and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.
Bounce rate = (Unengaged sessions / Total sessions) × 100
For example, if your site has 1,000 sessions and 320 of them are unengaged, your bounce rate is 32% ((320 / 1,000) × 100).
Bounce rate is also the inverse of engagement rate.
So, if your site has a 30% bounce rate, then your engagement rate is 70%.
Where Can You Find Bounce Rate in GA4?
By default, most GA4 reports don’t display bounce rate. But you can add it manually.
Sign in to your GA4 property, then go to “Reports” > “Engagement” > “Pages and screens.”
In the top right corner of the report, click the pencil icon to customize the report. (You need proper permissions to be able to do this.)
In the sidebar that appears, select “Metrics.”
Next, click “Add metric.”
Select “Bounce rate” from the list.
Click and drag the six dots beside “Bounce rate” to move it up to be one of the first columns.
Then, click “Apply.”
Lastly, save the report.
Bounce rate will now appear as a column in the table.
What Is a Good Bounce Rate?
A good bounce rate is around 40% or lower. And a bounce rate of 60% or higher may be an indication you need to make your page more helpful and engaging for users.
According to Databox information from September 2024, the median bounce rate across all industries is 44.04%. Here’s a look at some of the bounce rates Databox uncovered for a number of industries:
|
Industry |
Median Bounce Rate |
|
Apparel and footwear |
35.76% |
|
Automotive |
40.1% |
|
Ecommerce and marketplaces |
38.61% |
|
Education |
46.28% |
|
Food |
38.93% |
|
Healthcare |
40.94% |
|
Information technology and services |
48.38% |
|
Real estate |
42.14% |
|
SaaS |
48.27% |
To sum up, your question shouldn’t be: What is a good bounce rate?
You should instead ask yourself:
- How does my website bounce rate compare to industry benchmarks?
- How do my webpage bounce rates compare to each other?
- How do my campaign bounce rates compare to each other?
- How have my bounce rates changed over time?
Dmytro Sokhach, Co-Founder & CEO at Editorial.Link, points out that a higher bounce rate isn’t always a bad thing:
Some pages exist to satisfy intent quickly. When they succeed, users leave fast. Not because they’re disengaged, but because they got exactly what they came for.
A good example is someone interested in viewing a particular statistic.
Does Bounce Rate Affect SEO?
Google has never confirmed that bounce rate is a ranking factor on its own, but there’s evidence to suggest it is.
Testimony from Google’s antitrust trial and leaked internal documents indicate that user interaction signals related to clicks and engagement may influence rankings.
Plus, bounce rate is a valuable diagnostic metric.
Tracking it can help you spot pages that don’t provide a good user experience, match search intent (what searchers are trying to achieve), or contain quality content.
How to Reduce Bounce Rate: 6 Effective Tactics
Implement these tactics to lower your website’s bounce rate:
1. Improve Your Core Web Vitals
The Core Web Vitals (CWV) are a set of user experience metrics that measure how fast, stable, and responsive your pages are for visitors. And maintaining strong scores increases the chances of visitors remaining on your site and engaging with your content.
Google’s three Core Web Vitals metrics are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how quickly the largest content element on the webpage loads. Aim for no longer than 2.5 seconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how much the layout shifts around while loading. Aim for no more than 0.1.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures responsiveness to user actions. Aim for no more than 200 milliseconds.
You can check and improve your Core Web Vitals using Semrush’s Site Audit tool.
Follow this configuration guide to set up your audit.
Once that’s done, go to the “Overview” report.
Under “Thematic Reports,” locate Core Web Vitals and click “View details.”
The report will give you a breakdown of 10 pages’ Core Web Vitals statuses over time. So you can track changes. (You can change which pages are included using the “Edit list” button near the bottom of the page.)
Scroll to the “Metrics” section to view your LCP and CLS scores. As well as your Total Blocking Time, which is a good approximation for INP.
Click on any issue to learn more about it and how to resolve the problem. You’ll also see which specific pages are affected so you know what to work on.
2. Optimize the Mobile Experience
Your website needs to work well on small screens to maintain low bounce rates from mobile visitors.
Matt Enser, Website and SEO Specialist at KWSM, shares a simple approach for improving bounce rate based on a framework he calls the three Cs:
- Confirmation: Making it clear to visitors that you offer what they want
- Credibility: Demonstrating that you’re experienced and and qualified to provide what you offer
- Clear instructions: Providing a clear next step on what action to take
And it works especially well for mobile.
Matt says:
Our goal is to ensure the three Cs—which are confirmation, credibility, and clear instructions—are visible above the fold. If you’re missing one of them, people are less likely to act due to being unsure that you’re the right company for them or being unsure how to act.
You can quickly check how your page looks on mobile using Google Chrome.
Just open the page, right-click anywhere, and select “Inspect.”
A panel will appear on the side or bottom. Click the mobile device icon in the top bar of that panel.
If you want to see how your page looks on different device models, use the “Responsive”drop-down in the top left corner of the preview window.
To exit the preview, just close the panel using the “X” in the top right corner.
You can also use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to spot mobile SEO issues.
Once you’ve set up your project, go to the “Issues” tab. Then, click the three dots (⋯) and select “Mobile SEO” from the drop-down menu.
You’ll see a list of mobile-specific issues you can fix to improve how your site performs on mobile devices.
3. Strengthen Internal Linking
Thoughtfully adding more internal links (links from one page on your site to other pages on your site) better guides visitors to related pages, keeping them engaged and reducing their likelihood of bouncing.
For example, in a blog post about influencer marketing benchmarks, you could link to another article explaining how to run an influencer marketing campaign. Or you could link to a relevant case study from a product feature page.
Internal links can also help search engines understand your site’s structure and pass ranking authority between pages.
To improve your internal linking:
- Add links to relevant pages naturally within your content
- Use descriptive anchor text (the clickable text in the link) that clearly tells users what to expect
- Link from high-traffic pages to those that don’t have much visibility
You can use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to spot internal linking issues.
Once you’ve set up your project, go to the “Overview” tab and click “View details” under “Internal Linking.”
The report will highlight a number of issues, but pay particular attention to “Broken internal links.” Because users are more likely to get frustrated and leave if they click a non-working link that doesn’t take them to another useful resource on your site.
Click “# issues” next to this error if you see it.
Site Audit will then show you a list of pages that contain broken internal links. Addressing these could improve your bounce rate.
4. Boost Your Content’s Readability
Visitors are more likely to stay on your website and engage with your content if you make it easy for them to skim and find information.
Let’s compare two versions of the same content:
The second version is clearly easier to read.
Here are a few quick tips to improve content readability:
- Write in plain language. Avoid industry terms your readers might not understand.
- Break things up with headings and subheadings. Create clear, hierarchical sections that allow people to skim and find what they need quickly.
- Keep paragraphs short. Two to three sentences is usually enough. Big blocks of text are difficult to read.
- Use lists where it helps. If you’re sharing steps, features, or ideas, use bullet points to make the content easier to follow.
- Add white space. Leave space between lines and sections to make the page feel more digestible.
- Carefully choose fonts and colors. Use readable fonts and text colors that contrast with the background.
Use Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant to improve your content’s readability. It offers real-time suggestions on SEO, tone of voice, originality, and readability.
You can also install it as an extension in Google Docs, WordPress, and Microsoft Word.
5. Add Visual Breaks
Images and videos can make your content easier to scan and more engaging to read.
How often should you add visual breaks?
Brandy Hastings, SEO Strategist at SmartSites, shares her approach:
We review scroll heatmaps and place visual breaks right before drop-off points. I use them to re-engage users who are skimming. The general rule is one visual break per two scrolls, but I let behavioral data lead the layout.
Visuals can also complement the content itself.
For example, if you’re writing a blog post about building a landing page, a step-by-step walk-through with screenshots that show exactly what you’re discussing can guide the reader better than text alone.
Consider using images and videos for the following use cases:
- Step-by-step tutorials: Show each stage of a process. So readers can follow along
- Data visualization: Turn stats or research findings into charts or infographics
- Before-and-after comparisons: Highlight improvements or transformations in a way that words can’t fully capture
- Complex concepts: Use diagrams or explainer videos to break down technical topics
When adding visuals, make sure they load quickly. And use descriptive alt text to help with both accessibility and SEO.
6. Give Users What They Want
Framing your content to address what searchers are looking for (i.e., aligning with search intent) increases the odds that users will find your content valuable enough to explore.
If the page doesn’t satisfy that intent, visitors will likely bounce back to the search engine results page (SERP).
A quick way to find a keyword’s intent is to use Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool, which will label the intent as one or more of the following:
- Informational: The user wants to learn about a topic
- Navigational: The user wants to find a specific page or website
- Commercial: The user is comparing options before deciding what to buy
- Transactional: The user is ready to make a purchase or sign up
Next, manually analyze the SERPs to see what kind of content is ranking.
Are the top results list-style blog posts, buyer’s guides, or product category pages?
Your page format should match the dominant content type for that keyword.
You also need to make sure your page’s title tag (HTML that tells search engines the page title) and meta description (HTML that summarizes the page for search engines) set the right expectations. These are often the first things searchers see before they click—assuming they show in search results.
And once visitors land on your page, the H1 (main page heading) and the content itself need to deliver on what the title and description from the search results page promised.
Go Beyond Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is an important metric that tells you how engaging and relevant your pages are for your visitors.
But many other factors affect your site’s performance. Like crawlability, backlinks, keyword use, etc.
The Semrush SEO Toolkit makes it easy to work toward stronger SEO across all these areas. Try it today.