Bounce Rates

Most people that have worked with me, will know that if I am allowed to I will rant for hours about KPI’s, the problem is that they are usually taken as well, KPI’s if % conversion goes down its bad even if sales go up… Not my view! PPC may have a higher conversion rate, but I would also like organic traffic.

Anyhow, bounce rates, firstly if you have an ecommerce website its pretty much impossible to sell if they only visit one page, (unless you want them to call some companies do, people convert better and can upsell better). Secondly even on pages which are likely to have a high bounce rate, it can be brought down by good calls to action or followup navigation.

BUT – don’t band it on a site level “above 50% is bad”, take a couple of example sites, if you have a popular article, blog post, or even a video then a one page visit maybe what most of your traffic is going to do! – So without the article you wouldn’t get this traffic, with the article you do – but your bounce rate drops. If your site is predominantly articles (BBC, DirectGov, Politics.co.uk ) and most of your traffic doesn’t start on your homepage, your bounce rate will be pretty high, and this isn't a bad thing, if you have a quality site typically after visiting once they maybe more likely to return.

To quote the Google Analytics Help page -

"...Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimise bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy...."

Good things that can “increase” bounce rates

• RSS Feed (for return visitors)
• Email marketing (for return visitors)
• Well written ‘single page’ content
• Blog posts
• Ajax (that’s not tracked)
• Media including video (again not tracked)
• External Links (again not tracked)

This seems like I am defending bounce rates, I am not – if they are on a page such as a homepage, a navigation page or a PPC landing page or any page which is really just the start of a journey– typically you are doing something that needs fixing, but bounce rates should be segmented by both source and page type - (not something easily done in GA, unless it is a part of the URL).

Steps to take to fix bad landing pages: (in Google analytics)

1. Go to ‘top landing pages’
2. Click on advanced filter
3. Filter on bounce rate greater than, well start at 80%,

Not all pages can really be improved, always start with ‘low hanging fruit’ and don’t stress if a page has a high bounce rate if the average visitor is going to come, read the information and go … it may just be the nature of the traffic that page attracts...

Did you know out of the tin Omniture doesn't (or didn't) have Bounce Rates? probably a good thing.

SEO = SnakeOil Salesmen ...

• Firstly I had no idea what snake oil actually is (quick glance on Wikipedia changed that), anyhow it seems that people in the SEO industry are frequently accused of being snakeoil sales people.
• Secondly the SEO industry IS filled dodgy salesmen over promising over charging and under delivering.

Whilst the majority of SEO is actually relatively simple - a good seo'er has to understand the psychology of the search team at Google, the users of Google and how to target the market you need. So what does an SEO guy do that makes him actually worth money? He makes sure your market can find your site, this is done by making sure that what ever they are likely to type into a search engine you are likely appear , not definitely, but likely...

Typically an expert in SEO won't be talking about rankings but will understand that good positions in search engines will drive traffic, and he will understand the long tail, it may be better to rank for "compare insurance" than "insurance", maybe not in terms of traffic but in terms of converting traffic.

It maybe common sense (SEO) but brands including Samsonite, McDonalds and NSPCC have failed in some of the basics and someone like me could help them drive a fantastic amount more traffic easily by following some of the basic SEO... I believe that nearly 85% of sites have substantial room for improvement, so I guess this means they need to employ a snake oil salesman?

Personal post ... my daughter laughing -

Its been pretty cool being a dad at times, though completely exhausting - tonight we gave her a bath, and she wanted to pretty much swim underwater perpetually...

Anyhow some moments make it worth it ...

XML Sitemaps - good idea - badly implemented...

Firstly - I think that sitemaps are a good idea, badly executed. It seems that most sitemaps are developed with little thought for the actual usage of them.

Why I think they are a bad idea from Google?
Well, they need to be in an XML format which means that a huge number of less experienced website owners can't easily produce them except by using one of the many tools that scans the website and produces a snapshot of the pages. If this snapshot is perfect, its pretty much the same as Google sees your site, if its not then it could potentially be worse - typically people upload these without reviewing them at all ... duplicated warts and all ... Basically there is little point...

For it to work right the page needs to be linked into your CRM and created with time and energy put into getting it right, particularly the 3 optional variables, priority, changefreq and lastmod... these aren't static numbers and should change as the page changes, some pages will be changed regularly, some won't, but this in itself can change (imagine a page on the labour conference, won't change for 10 months, then almost daily for two). The date will need to be changed everytime the page contents changes (NOT the file, the contents, most sites are fed from a database now), and sitemaps shouldn't contain CSS, JS and all the other files except for those you want indexed (including PDF's).

An XML file almost seems like the best option, it fits the description - the problem is the that most of the people who create or manage or websites don't have a clue and so produce websites without any real consideration, a "fire and forget" solution, oddly this seems to include people who are normally quite savvy.

Seriously - the option of just putting up a simple text file of all your pages ... something that is easy for anyone to create and manage - more advanced XML files available to those who can.

Still - I do like the canonical tag, but I have already seen a sites implement it wrong enough that it will cause problems for them (such as including any parameters you put into it - doh!)

Gerry

Suspicious minded ? - ticket drop ? SEO events in Leeds...

we got 'budget approval' for two tickets to an SEO event in Leeds - ThinkVisibility, unfortunately we have a team of 4 people - and to be honest I am feeling that despite the success of previous ones, the list of speakers isn't quite as good as, well previous ones ... A couple of golden speakers but I want all 4 of us to go along - mainly because these things have a habit of being more fun in groups and more educational if we can discuss them afterwards.

The last one I went to however was only a few days after my daughter was born, so I slept through a couple and probably looked a bit, disshevelled (I should check the spelling on that one), anyhow - it was invaluable to talk it through with colleagues afterwards!

Anyhow, one of the things I mentioned in my email was that the tickets hadn't sold as quickly as the previous event, and with the recession etc.. I was trying to blag a discount, not forthcoming I think that we probably won't be going this year, but anyhow - since spotting the speed of ticket sales, it seems the number has magically dropped by about 30% ... now either they have suddenly sold a lot, OR they are trying to stop cheeky b'gers like me trying to blag a discount based on sales ... Me, suspicious?

I did also ask about SEO North and didn't get too much of a response on that one... Having recently moved up to the lovely city of Leeds I haven't got my usual circle of contacts so I think I am going to need to start socialising in these circles again... If your an SEO bloke in the lovely city of Leeds who likes a beer once a month, give us a shout!

Google O/S ? and my personal wish list ...

Firstly, what do they have against MS - it seems that everything they do seems to be aimed at the former monopoly of Microsoft, Google themselves have such a stranglehold on 'online' whilst they claim to "do no evil", or what ever the slogan is (Matt Cutts promises a post on the truth behind it, but as yet hasn't done it) ...

So Google are producing an operating system that will be designed around cloud computing - Great! But there are things that I want to do locally... even with a ligher o/s. I am hoping that apps will still work well enough - this includes:

1. Watch videos either locally, across a network with UPNP support (Media server) or over the internet, but I really do want the option of locally so when I go on the train, I can ...

2. As mentioned above, UPNP type support, for music, photos and video - for what I have in mind for this, it is required.

3. Offline editing - I spend two thirds of my time in front of Excel and Word - this I want at least to have a usable substitute...

I also want "coms" options including video, audio ...

Connectivity with Bluetooth (wifi is a given)

And this if Google brings out the O/S should be an awesome "home" always ready system, that can stay plugged into the TV ready to be switched over to a media centre, communications system that frankly an always on, power hungry system I am just not comfortable with ...

Who knows, android maybe the better system already for this...

Getting the UK out of debt.

Dear Mr Gordon Brown ...

This is how we could be out of debt ...

1. Politicians who seem to show outrage at greedy bankers should NOT claim for anything but the essentials, the UK is not a massive in profit corporation - where claiming a bit more to top up the salary is acceptable... Please ask all politicians to pay it back before they get 'fired' I would like to vote for the honest politician, but I don't think there are too many left!
Well, unsure how much this will save...

2. Google - stop leaching off the UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6122329.ece pay back the 100m tax you deliberately seem to avoid, it wouldn't be much more than a drop in the ocean...
100 million saved...

3. Reduce the number of nuclear weapons (particularly from abroad)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/25/nuclear.weaponstechnology
3bn saved.


4. Stop the ID card schema.
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1114013_id_cards_to_cost_5bn
5 billion saved

so thats 8.1 Billion saved!

On a quick calculation, is that over 10% of the national deficit ?