High Bounce Rate and Drop in Traffic

Hi All,

I have had a steady decline in traffic that I have been trying to combat for a little while now. I went from having a bounce rate of 20% ish to 80-90% and I can't figure out why.

I went from having 1,200 - 1,500 visitors per day to about 150. I have gone over many of my old pages and spiced them up with fresher content while still keeping the bones in tact as my site revolves around DIY content.

I have a new blog post that goes out roughly once a week thinking that would help - but when my traffic numbers were much higher I was posting maybe once a month.

One of my big articles that has gained a steady high bounce rate is this one on repairing key marks on a car: http://highperformancejunkies.com/how-to-guides/scratch-repair---a-diy-guide-to-fixing-car-scratches-and-key-marks/

Today I have a 91.78% bounce rate and I can't figure out why? The page doesn't appear broken, the content is informative, it is skimable, I have images, videos and a full write up. The title indicates exactly what you would expect. I don't get it?

Hoping someone can take a look at this page and the site overall and see if I am missing something.

Thanks in advance

 

There have been several algorithm updates over the last couple of months. Many webmasters are reporting a drop in traffic, sometimes significant. Which in your case explains (I think) the higher bounce rate. Your "quality" traffic has been cut down and the visitors you are getting now may not be actively looking for what you have to offer.

 

I was having a drop before the algorithm change. My thought is that there is something wrong somewhere and I would like to correct that issue

 

Another member from this forum recently pointed out that new chrome is not opening non-https pages. Your website is a non-https website...
Also, if you notice recent search results, all https websites only.
Very rarely do I see a non-https website listed there.

Get a digital security certificate for your website. These days you can get it for free too!
Then redirect website to https version.

Also, google has been updating their algo since before March (last September I think). Main change in this update was that they started hand picking some websites, and started ranking those higher than any other website, doesn't matters what quality of content you have. These hand picked websites will rank in top 2-3 if there is even a slight match.
Sometimes their content sucks, sometimes even the page is not about what you were looking for and barely mentions the topic once, but they rank higher.
You cannot do anything about this.
In general keyword search, this produces somewhat better results (for most of the times). But as soon as you look for something deeper, all you will get is results from those same websites, same page, nothing different.

 

bounce rate of 20%? that sounds too good to believe )) a few years ago one my friend told me that he achieved 10%, but then some time later someone found that he had added Google Analytics Code to the website twice. At the beginning of the page template and somewhere in JS code. when he removed the second Google Analytics Code, his bounce rate was 60% or something like that. I am not sure if this story would be helpful, but just an idea.

 

Andrii Ozemko
Bounce rate is when people open your website, but then do not click to read other pages of your website.
They either read this page and then leave, or they do not even read this page, and leave quickly, to some other website...
How is this something good?

 

You appear to have the same problem I had. My inquiry rate DROPPED 92% between June 2018 and June 2019 even though my content went up and Google searches were HIGH. Once I found and fixed the problem, my inquiry rate returned to June 2018 levels INSTANTLY, like WITHIN ONE HOUR.

I finally narrowed it down to Chrome blocking my site. Since Chrome has 60% of the browser market, that was a BIG hit. Basically people would click on my links in Google search, then BOUNCE because of Chrome, making my bounce rate very high.

The problem turned out to be having an HTTP instead HTTPS site. Once my site was HTTPS, all problems DISAPPEARED overnight.

You MAY need to do only one thing - put FREE LetsEcrypt security on your site. NO need to spend a single cent to do that. And if you have the right host, it is SIMPLE, so simple that many hosts automatically offer it for FREE.

However, if your host is GoDaddy, FREE LetsEncrypt security CAN be applied to your site, BUT GoDaddy will CHARGE YOU $175 PER YEAR and NOT allow you to install it yourself. If you have GoDaddy, you will either need to PAY to get FREE LetsEncrypt OR you will need to move to another host that either offers it or allows you to install it yourself, which is what I did.

 

Correct. Here I can tell one more thing. You can use some JavaScript to log some user action. For example, if you open my website https://smart-seo-tool.com/, you will find button "Download Now". Then if you find this button in the HTML, you will see some JavaScript onclick event handler. This code sends info to Google Analytics. If user open main page and then click Download Now link and leave the website, bounce rate will be 0. It because user did something what I expected. So, in this case user do not need to read other pages, just download.

<a onclick="ga('send', 'event', 'Main Page', 'Download Installer');" href="/download-latest-version">
Download Now!!!
</a>

 

@mmerlinn
Really godaddy charges $175 for for security certificate?
Basic one is about $10 at my host, includes www non-www and mail
And letsencrypt one is free, but has to be updated every 3 months...

 

Yes, really.

When I went to fix my HTTPS problem the first thing I did was buy GoDaddy's $69 per year certificate. Two days later I canceled it and got a refund. Yes, it added HTTPS to my site BUT (and this is a big BUT) I could NOT even access my own site! Next GoDaddy told me that they could put LetsEncrypt on my site for $350 for two years, more than double what they were charging for the security that was USELESS to me. When I asked them about me installing LetsEncrypt myself, I was told that they do not allow that. Basically, if I wanted to keep GoDaddy as my host, I would be forced to let them rape me.

My GoDaddy hosting was up for renewal in December but after the above fiasco, I started looking for hosting elsewhere that would either include LetsEncrypt or allow me to install it myself.

Finally, after weeks of contacting hosts and examining all of my options I decided to move my hosting to a different host, one that included LetsEncrypt in their plan, and possibly more importantly, AUTOMATICALLY updates LetsEncrypt every three months. I finally got everything moved, installed, and running the last Monday in June of this year. I have had no problems whatsoever not even needing to worry about updating LetsEncrypt.

Dollars and cents wise, GoDaddy did me a BIG favor. Forced me to move my site to a cheaper and better host. If I had stayed with GoDaddy, the next 3 years would have cost me about $900 to get what I needed. As it is, my new host charged me UNDER $200 to get everything I need. When I renew in 3 years the new host will charge me around $400, still less than half of what GoDaddy would have charged for the same service.

 

I have now corrected my site to be https:// - I will see if I can report back a gain in results.

I have been playing with trying to figure out taking out the critical css from my site. And, since I have extremely beginner, self taught skills when it comes to this stuff I am having a helluva time playing with plugins lol.

I did notice a bump in traffic today from streamlining some of the CSS stuff on some plugins. But that was about a bump in 70-80 people and may have been contributed to my monkeying around on the site.

Now I have switched to https:// (which the site had, but it was going to http for some reason?) and I have tried to get rid of some non critical css - we'll see if I get some good results.

Fingers crossed as I would be exstatic if it was something so silly!

 

@Letzride, hopefully that will solve most of your problems.

I viewed your blog. Overall it is pretty good. You might want to check your grammar and spelling better as there are numerous errors, many of which look like simple typing errors (like 'tapping' instead of 'taping'?)

You also have the word 'undefined' in your lower left corner with a close box that does nothing when clicked. You may want to erase that, too.

 

Thanks! There are a few things I am still working on redoing. I fixed the spelling errors. Those happen from time to time trying to cram everything in late at night.

That box is an ad that only runs part time. When it doesn't run it produces a placeholder. It isn't the prettiest and on my list of things to address...

I will report back in the next few days on the results. I just looked at my analytics and have had 5 page views since midnight and a 100% bounce rate. So hopefully those numbers look a lot better in the morning and throughout the day tomorrow.

 

High Bounce rate and traffic drop are due to the rank drop in SERP. If the title and content relevancy are not good Google will not assign a good rank in SERP. The latest algorithm changes are based on this criteria.

 

Is there something I can use to evaluate this? For example, I can run an online checker to see the speed of my site - is there something similar that exists that I can look at SERP and the title / content relevancy?

I try and title my main articles that are how to's based on string search phrases that I would typically use when searching for answers.

Page views haven't really improved - however it has been less than 24 hours.

My bounce rate has skyrocketed again

 

I also noticed today when I checked for backlinks on my main article page (https://highperformancejunkies.com/how-to-guides/scratch-repair-a-diy-guide-to-fixing-car-scratches-and-key-marks/) on https://www.seoreviewtools.com it is saying that I have no backlinks to my page anymore? Before I updated to https I had 6,400+ backlinks to that page?

What could have caused those to disappear and can that be corrected?

 

Were those backlinks HTTP or HTTPS?

 

Did you configure HTTP -> HTTPS redirect?

 

The backlinks were to the http site.

As far as the redirect goes I am not sure. I had my host make the change. I do know the old links to pages I have tested all go to the https site and work ok. I will double check my redirect on the backend tonight though as well.

 

Don't worry about backlinks. That data will take sometime to update, if the redirect Is happening and Is 301.
You cannot go on telling other webmasters to update their websites because you moved to https, which is why there is that redirect.
Search engines getting a http backlink will follow it and will find your https website.


Also, when I moved my site to https first time, my search rankings fluctuated a bit for a while, for some 2-3 months. Then came back to normal.
This change won't give overnight results.