High failure rate on the site: reasons and solutions to the problem

High failure rate — This is a problem that SEO specialists and resource owners regularly face. Why is this happening? Are there standards based on which you can determine how critical the bounce rate will be on your site? For what reasons does this problem appear? Are there ways to reduce the bounce rate on your website? How to ensure the most stable, functional work on the Internet without restrictions, including in the field of promoting Internet resources? Now we will try to consider all these nuances in more detail and find answers to these questions.

Bounce rate: what is it?

Before moving on to a more detailed acquaintance with the main issue of our review, get acquainted with the very concept of failure in the field of SEO website promotion. So, by this term the search engine Google means sessions, in within which users viewed only one page of your resource. And it doesn’t matter whether they were on your site for a few seconds or half an hour: if no movement was detected on other pages, the system will define this as a failure. Accordingly, the failure rate — This is the percentage of users who left your resource after viewing only one page.

Unambiguous standards that allow us to establish whether this parameter will be high or not do not exist today. This is a rather relative concept, which largely depends on what goals you set for yourself in promoting your resource. But in any case, the word "tall" here it is associated with something bad. But we hasten to assure you that a too low failure rate will not be particularly positive. But still, SEO specialists and all those who work with websites have established their own “standards”. Thus, the optimal failure rate is considered to be from 26 to 40%. Anything below 25 and above 46 is classified as bad indicators: low and high, respectively.

Research conducted by a dependent service has shown that the average failure rate for sites that are currently online is from 41 to 55%. That is, most resources still have a high failure rate.

To make it easier for you to navigate the assessment of this parameter, we present the average indicator that is customarily used today:

• up to 25%: most likely, there is a problem on the site, something is not working;
• 26-40%: the optimal indicator to strive for;
• 41-55%: average numbers that require additional control;
• 56-70%: above average, but depending on the specifics of your resource it may be quite an appropriate indicator;
• over 70%: too high, which may indicate a problem or breakdown.

But let us note once again that these indicators do not relate to standards. They are not registered anywhere, not standardized.

Where can you see the bounce rate?

One of the most simple and easy-to-use tools, using which you can see the bounce rate for your website — This is Google Analytics. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that in version 4 of the service, Google has removed this criterion. Therefore, we recommend paying attention to Universal Analytics. Here, if you go to the “Audience Overview” tab, you can find the overall bounce rate for a specific online resource. If you are interested in the indicators of individual pages and channels, then you should use Google Analytics, in particular the “Actions” tab.

The fact that in version 4 of the service there really is no bounce rate — This is true. But this does not mean that Google Analytics has abandoned this tool. The fact is that it was simply replaced with a more functional and improved metric, called the “engagement rate.” or “share of interaction”. So, to find the bounce rate through Google Analytics, you need to go to the reporting section, and then click on the “Lifecycle” button. From the drop-down list, select a traffic source, and then attract traffic. Here you will find the indicators you need.

So, unlike the bounce rate, the engagement rate already takes into account sessions during which the user performed one or another target action or spent more than 10 seconds on the page. All this will be counted in the indicators even if the person did not go beyond one page. That is, 2 types of sessions are already taken into account here, which were previously simply discarded from consideration. That is, if you check through Google Analytics 4, you will see that the bounce rates for your site have decreased significantly. But please note that the engagement rate — this is the opposite parameter to the bounce rate. That is, in total these 2 criteria give 100%. Knowing the engagement rate, you can subtract it from 100, thereby getting your bounce rate.

That is, in the latest version of Google Analytics, developers now focus your attention not on negative indicators, but on positive ones, showing how many people interact with your resource. Based on this, you can get a more accurate and relevant metric. Now engagement will be indicated by one of 3 parameters:

• users stay on the site for more than 10 seconds;
• a person visits 2 or more resource pages;
• completion of conversion.

But, nevertheless, despite the higher accuracy of the research that the service offers its clients Google Analytics 4, the problem of an inflated bounce rate still remains relevant for many sites. Now let's determine why this happens.

12 reasons for high bounce rates

Let's highlight the 12 most common reasons:

1. Your content is too high quality and informative. In this case, literally a few seconds will be enough for a person to find the necessary information and leave the resource. At its core, this is exactly what an SEO specialist should strive for: to provide the user with material that will fully meet the needs of the consumer audience. This is why you need to be clear about whether your low bounce rate is something to worry about. That is, you need to check how long the average person was on the page and compare it with the average session duration in Google Analytics. Next, you can conduct a user experience analysis to determine whether a high bounce rate will be a critical name for your resource. But along with this, we must also take into account search engine algorithms. The fact is that Google considers a page relevant to a search query if the user spent at least a couple of minutes on it. That is, in order to get the golden mean in such an indicator as the duration of the session for the user and for the search engine, it is necessary to encourage the visitor to stay on your resource for a longer period of time. What should interest him? Perhaps, exciting blog articles, additional information about the features of cooperation, the possibility of receiving a discount or promotional code, for which they will need to fill out an application form, etc. But we would like to remind you that if, as a result of even a very short stay on the site, you receive user conversion, then version 4 of Google Analytics will not count this bounce rate, but will record it as engagement.
2. Your pages are loading too slowly. Website speed — this is one of the key parameters that the Google search engine takes into account in its work, in particular when ranking sites. This is precisely why problems with failure rates are very often observed. And here everything is clear, because the search engine is focused on promoting resources that can provide convenience for the user. Slow loading of the resource – this is what forces users to go to other portals and look for the necessary information on third-party services. From experience, if your site takes longer than a few seconds to load, Google will perceive it as low-quality. Therefore, you need to take a number of measures that will eliminate this problem and ensure high loading speed of your resource. Today there are enough services that will allow you to perform this work automatically and receive a number of recommendations on how to fix the problem and ensure higher loading speed of your resource. So, in particular, you may be recommended to compress some images, reduce the number of third-party scripts, use data caching in the browser, etc.
3. The contribution of a number of pages to the bounce rate is uneven. In this case, we are talking about the fact that different pages on your site make a disproportionate contribution to the overall bounce rate. So, if your site visitors quickly leave the landing pages, but after completing the conversion, and the bounce rate on blog pages or other sections with more voluminous material is low, then you have done everything as correctly and correctly as possible. But you must make sure that everything on your site is exactly like this at the moment. That is, you need to conduct a series of studies and find out if your audience is leaving without converting. This can be done through the same Google Analytics. Here we go to the “Behavior” tab, then select the “Site Content” option, and in it... "Landing pages". We filter the received data by failure rate. But if you wish, you can delete the page that distorts the accuracy of the results. Here you need to determine exactly what volume of visits can be considered significant for your page: 10, 100, 1000 sessions. After that, click on the “More” button. and filter out indicators that will be higher than the numbers you specified. Now let’s go again to Google Analytics 4, namely to the “Attracting Traffic” section. ("life cycle" - "traffic source" - "traffic attraction") and here we add new filters by clicking on the "Add filter" button. Here we initially click on the “Default Channel Group” button. then go to the “Session Channel”, followed by — "Session source" and enter the “Organic search” parameters we need, then click on the “Apply” button. Now all you have to do is return to your report and click on the blue plus sign in the sign to open a new menu. Next, click on the “Page/Screen” tab, and then select “Landing Page”. Now you will see all the statistics on how different pages of your resource contribute to the bounce statistics.
4. Your page is empty or some technical problem has occurred. If, as a result of your research through Google Analytics, you see that the bounce rate for your page is very, very high, there is a possibility that some kind of technical failure occurred or your page simply turned out to be empty. This is why users will spend very little time on it. Check it out in person. You may see a "404" error. or you will notice incorrect loading of resources. It would be a good idea to check how it loads in certain browsers. Perhaps the problem has a direct bearing on the search engine itself. You also need to make sure that the page loads correctly on both desktop and mobile devices. If you use the Search Console service, you can go to the “Indexing” section to look at this page through the eyes of a Google search engine. If there is still a problem, you need to fix it yourself or turn to specialists for help. If you do not take timely action to eliminate the identified problem, the search engine will simply delete this page from the search results forever.
5. Your tags, in particular title, description, do not correspond to the material presented on the page. The fact is that it is by these tags that visitors determine what kind of material is on your site. That is, if it turns out that they come in, but see a complete discrepancy with their own requests, they will simply leave the page. The system itself may perceive such actions not as an error, but as a method of deception. To prevent this from happening, carefully review all your pages and adjust their title and description. If, on the contrary, your meta tags are set as correctly as possible, then make changes to the text content of the site, making it relevant to search queries. This is the only way you can attract visitors and keep their attention on the site, and, accordingly, reduce the bounce rate. Additionally, it is recommended to check what kind of meta description the Google search engine automatically creates for your page in accordance with the most popular queries. It may turn out that he independently adjusted your parameters, thereby worsening them. That is, you will need to make adjustments.
6. Low-quality links from other sites lead to your site. In practice, there are often cases when the owner of a resource or an SEO specialist makes a lot of efforts to minimize bounce rates based on organic search. What do we get as a result? The indicator is still very high and the reason for this is abstract traffic. That is, a site that links to your resource may not send the visitors that you need, or the problem may be that the anchor text is written incorrectly, as well as the context of the link itself, which misleads the potential audience. The reason for this may be incompetent copying or mistakes made by an SEO specialist. That is, it is necessary to check external links, the correctness of their placement, and compliance with the content presented on your site. If such errors are identified, you need to contact the administration of the site on which they are posted and ask them to make the appropriate changes or remove the link altogether. That is, choose the option that is optimal for you at a given time. Alas, as practice shows, the site on which your external links are located does not always respond to such requests. The fact is that a similar phenomenon is often observed in highly competitive niches. That is, incorrect links to which the search engine reacts so negatively may be placed specifically to discredit your resource. But still, it's worth a try. If you're not happy with the results, use Google's one-way link disabling tool. Unfortunately, this action will not reduce the bounce rate, but the search engine will no longer pay special attention to the external link that discredits you, at least in the process of determining the quality of the site and its relevance to key queries.
7. Your website content: low quality or poorly optimized. Think about how much the material that is currently presented on your website can satisfy the needs of the target audience. How interesting and informative is it, does it meet their needs, is it convenient to study for the audience you are targeting. Good content — This is useful, properly structured material that fully answers the question that the user asks in the search engine. That is, first of all, you need to find out what the main reason for the problems with the content is: that it is written unprofessionally or that it is simply not targeted at your target audience. In any case, you need to make appropriate adjustments so that both people and the search engine are satisfied with your material.
8. You are working with a one-page website or an affiliate landing page. This is the situation most often faced by affiliate marketers, because their main task is to attract people to the advertiser’s website. That is, a high rejection rate will indicate that you, as a specialist, are doing an excellent job. Similar phenomena — The norm is also for one-page sites. That is, if you have only one landing page, be it a business card website or an e-book, then the failure rate here will automatically be high, because users will simply have nowhere to go. And in this case, it is very important to make sure that the search engine is convinced that your resource fully satisfies the users’ intentions. If desired, for a one-page site, you can configure the analytics settings so that the system identifies different blocks of the page as separate pages, calculating bounce rates based on them. But still, it is better to evaluate such resources by their engagement rate. In addition, you can set the click on an affiliate link as a conversion action. As a result, what could be considered a refusal will be counted as an engagement.
9. The design of your page is bad and annoying. This primarily applies to placing a large number of advertisements on the site, pop-up windows with various surveys, offers to subscribe to the newsletter, etc. Yes, such CTA tools can increase sales, but they can still simply scare off the target audience. If a person is uncomfortable reading the material presented on your page, he will simply close it and go look for another solution. So much for the high bounce rate. And another problem here — lack of a well-thought-out navigation system and filters. Perhaps users would like to study your material in more detail, but it is difficult for them to navigate the site itself and quickly find what they are looking for. That is, in this case, your task is to make the page visually attractive and easy to navigate. Not only a specialist, but also an ordinary user should navigate it intuitively. If necessary, use third-party help from a web designer or UX designer.
10. Insufficient depth of content on your site. The functionality of the Google search engine includes providing users with so-called quick answers. Here the system is guided by the task panel and the highlighted description. But you can still present your potential clients with sufficiently in-depth material that will go one step ahead of the specific search elements. To maximize the interest of your visitors, think through the linking of pages to the smallest detail. Give them the opportunity to freely navigate your resource, finding new interesting material for themselves. If you are still focused on a quick response, then you need to use the “TL;DR” tool. and create a summary of the page at the top.
11. Your website page is not displayed correctly on mobile devices. Every day the number of people who search for necessary information online through smartphones and tablets is increasing. Along with this, the Google search engine began to use mobile indexing back in 2017. But despite this, not all sites have optimized their pages. It is often observed that on mobile devices resources take longer to be surrounded and content is displayed incorrectly. And this is another very common reason for refusal. That is, you need to check how your resource works on various mobile devices, how easy it is to navigate between the main pages from a phone or tablet, and use the search to select the necessary information. It is also worth paying attention to the design of a particular page when loading it via a smartphone. Similar work can be done through services such as Google Search Console and Lighthouse.
12. Not very correct key queries leading to your page. Initially, your task is to attract the attention of the audience to your resource, interest them, and earn trust. That is why the requests for which you promote your page must be as correct and accurate as possible. They must take into account the goods or services that you offer to your audience. Try to exclude the presence of any personalization in them, which for the most part can cause banal denial and a decrease in the level of trust among people.

Now that you know the main reasons for the increase in bounce rates, you can make improvements to your resource, thereby minimizing the occurrence of this problem. Now we will give 5 recommendations that will allow you to carry out the work as quickly and correctly as possible.

TOP 5 recommendations for an SEO specialist

Now we will suggest the TOP 5 practices that can reduce the bounce rate on the site and, accordingly, increase the engagement rate. These recommendations will be relevant for any SEO specialist, regardless of what turned out to be the reason for the too high indicators in your case:

1. Keep all those elements that you consider important for a particular page above the so-called “fold line”. This will improve the perception of the presented material and convince users that what they are looking for is exactly what they are looking for. This will encourage them to further work with the resource. The main title must fully correspond to what is written in the title. Main windows should be clearly visible. They should not be covered by pop-up advertising.
2. We adjust content in accordance with user expectations. It doesn’t matter what products, services, information you provide to the target audience. It is necessary that the context of the page fully corresponds to its metadata, including the keywords by which it is promoted on the network. Make the text itself as readable as possible. Add it with explanatory pictures. The design itself should be simple and easy to understand. Advertising, if it is planned on the page, must be dosed.
3. Try to minimize the presence of those elements on the page that are not particularly important to you. In particular, we are talking about promotions, surveys and other points that will not be of particular interest to representatives of your target audience. That is, you should highlight the most important CTA element for your page, and move all the rest to the sidebar or completely remove it to the footer. Constantly monitor your resource, checking what else can be optimized and improved to improve the user experience.
4. Optimize site loading speed. We said that the ease of use for users directly depends on this parameter. There are several options to achieve this. So, you can compress all images before uploading them to the resource, remove unnecessary or external scripts, plugins, style sheets. It would also be a good idea to set up caching in your browser.
5. Improve the usability of your resources if you want users to stay on your site for as long as possible. You will do everything to make them feel as comfortable and comfortable as possible. This will be facilitated by thoughtful linking of pages, the presence of a filter and sorting system. If your article is very long, then be sure to provide its content at the top. That is, you need to do everything to make it convenient for the user to work with your content.

To summarize

As you can see, the bounce rate – This is not such an important parameter that can have a negative impact on the promotion of your resource. This is just one of the metrics that needs to be constantly monitored and a number of measures taken to optimize it. Poor performance, be it very low or, conversely, high failure rate — this is just a reason to pay more attention to your resource and check what exactly is not working correctly in it.

In any case, your site should be useful and focused not only on search bots, but also on all those users who will work with it. And to create such a resource and maintain its high quality on an ongoing basis, you cannot do without complex and multi-threaded research. It is necessary to regularly monitor the work of competitors, select relevant key queries, adjust content for them, etc. And special automatic services will help you with this, as well as mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service. Follow the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy to get acquainted with the functions and capabilities of which servers, current tariffs, available geolocations. You can also take advantage of free testing for 2 hours. Before purchasing, we also recommend that you familiarize yourself with the terms of the offer, proxy payment and other nuances of cooperation.

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