Bounce rate is an important aspect of SEO. Higher bounce rate makes it tougher maintaining SERP ranking. Lets say a user searches for "gas efficient cars" and click on one link. After 5 minutes or 1 minute later user goes back and clink on another site. In general that means user did not find what (s)he was looking for in the first site; in other words initial find was not satisfying. In true case scenario, that does not really mean the page user landed didn't have what user was looking for. For example most people going to wiki pages via SERP would not really continue searching more pages in wiki. As you have seen on Google Analytics or similar web traffic tracking softwares Bounce Rate is noted. Google and other search engines do that this into account determining the SERP ranking. To mention here, sites similar to yours would suffer the same situation as it would be. So it would be even playing field for all the competitors. Source http://www.webcosmoforums.com/search-engine-optimization/6168-bounce-rate-importance.html#post42303 Code (markup):
This is a double edged sword... One page is listed in the serps and contains the information the visitor wants on that page. Another page in the serps makes users click two more times to get to the information. Clearly the page with the higher bounce rate is more precise and relevant to what the searcher wants.
High bounce rate refelect a search that lands on a page that does not have the information the searcher is looking for. If the page has low traffic, I would agree with you. But if the page has high traffic, then the page is suppling the searchers with what is needed and many searchers agree that the page is worth look at. Whether they move deeper into the site or are satisfied is where the A/B testing come in but that is on a case by case basis.
I do believe this, but what is a high bounce rate? Around 30%, 40% or might be even higher? Should we compare it with the sector's bounce rate? Is it enough just to offer some addictive game on the site? I think it doesn't really matter, quality content is the most important to get low bounce rate ratio's. Just like it is the most reliable and effective way to get a good link flow...
Well, offering an addictive game might not be it. If what catanich says is true about your site, then you need not worry. If your site is an aracde site, then an addictive game on the main screen would work. The point is not to keep people people on your page for longer amounts of time, its to get people to use your site more often and find your site useful.
are you saying that if my site has a high bounced rate or force traffic i will loose all my rankings?
I was working a clients website which had a bounce rate of 97% we change the landing page, so now the bounce rate is 50% but it did not affect the traffic in a way, it only converted sales better.
You are right that bounce rate is very important for any website. Its determine the status of your website like how many time visitors are staying on your site. If bounce rate is high then your website is going down.
Say less than 20 bounce rate is good, less bounce rate indicates that the browser sitting long time on it and not many browsers sitting long time. Some case only less than 10 browser per day and all of them sitting more than 3 minutes will get < 10% bounce rate i hope this not means the site is good with traffic and so how can tell bounce rate is so important. Any how its important for the site have enough traffic
Do not relate bounce rate with traffic, you can not use either to determine a value for the other. Bounce rate should be low, thats all, if its not low, then maybe its not a bad thing depending on how your site is like. Low bounce rate on a site thats supposed to provide a lot of information is bad, because this means your providing bad information. Low bounce rate on a site with small quick information is fine.
Bounce rate can be good and bad. Bad because they didn't find what they expected or found exactly what they expected. I don't think the search engines would use this as a metric because you could just bomb another site and change there bounce rate and then you would rank above them. Anything an outside source could do to your site will not have a negative effect on your website. Or else so many people would attack other sites and we would spend all are time fighting each other.
No i don't think Google would use any metric an outside source can effect. Do you have any proof this actually works.
Well, are you suggesting that bounce rate is the only metric that can get us better SERPs? Thats impossible, there are definitely metrics that outside sources can affect. Outside sources such as directories, social bookmarks, articles, backlinks, all affect SERPs. Other things that affect SERPs and traffic are PR, backlink count, forums, and other such things.