How are your referral stats looking? Noticed more traffic from Bing lately?

According to a Nielsen report last month, Bing is growing faster than any other search engine. It was reported Bing had 10.7% of the total search market, up 2% from the month before. Yesterdays report from Hitwise suggests Bing has since dropped to around 8.96 percent.

So, somewhere around 8-10% perhaps.

The new statistics, from internet research firm Hitwise, will make disappointing reading for Mr Ballmer, who has said he is willing to spend as much as $11bn on search. Earlier this week he told The Daily Telegraph: “We’re trying to give Google a little competition in the search business

Microsoft have struggled for along time to make a dent in Google’s share of the search market, so it looks like they are beginning to make inroads, albeit slowly. Microsoft have done a ton of marketing to promote Bing. They’ve introduced cutting edge features like visual search and voice support.

This is not a battle Microsoft can afford to lose, and for search marketers, competition between engines can only be a good thing.

Is Your Site Optimized For Bing?

The thought of adopting different optimization strategies for different engines feels so antiquated now.

Years ago, there used to be a lot of talk about how to optimize for the different engines. Some webmasters would go so far as to serve differently optimized pages to each major engine.

In the past few years, SEO has been about all-Google, all the time, so the rule of thumb is to optimize for Google, and the rest pretty much takes care of itself.

This advice still stands.

Keeping Up With Bing

Google has Google Guy (Matt Cutts). Likewise, the Bing search team regularly reaches out to the SEO community. SEOs should bookmark the Bing Webmaster Centre announcements.

In particular:

• Search Engine Optimization For Bing
• Making Links Work For You SEM 101
• Are You Content With Your Content

NB: You need a Live Id to see those links.

Microsoft released a comprehensive document for Webmasters. Check out page 23 where they address SEO specifically.

Like Google Guy advice, it tends towards the general and is ultimately self serving, but interesting to be aware of, nontheless.

The Bing Difference: Why Bother?

In terms of search engine results pages, the two engines do produce different results. Here’s a nifty tool for side-by-side comparisons.

Why should you be interested in Bing at all?

Even though usage is lower, the user demographic for Bing is different to that of Google. Ask search marketers and you’ll get anecdotal evidence that Bing/Yahoo users don’t tend to be as web savvy as Google users, use the web less often, are more likely to click on ads, and are more likely to be involved in online shopping, whilst Google appeals more to researchers, webheads and geeks. If you’re engaged in web commerce, you need to be thinking about Bing.

Bing Ranking Tips

From the Bing Features For Webmasters document:

Because of this new way of thinking about search, some webmasters might initially be concerned that the shortened primary organic listing in the new Bing SERP might render their SEO efforts as less effective. Instead, Bing makes it easier to compete for broad terms because it surfaces more categories automatically, increasing the number of results on the page and generating more relevant content.

In reality, the same SEO strategies you use for Google apply to Bing.

1. Get Your On-Page SEO Right

Nail the basics.

Make sure your content is unique, use H tags for titles, use alt tags for images, use unique page titles and description meta tags, one topic per page and ensure your copy is free from spelling and gramatical errors. Like Google, you can sign up for MS Webmaster Center which will help you spot and troubleshoot problems.

2. Quality Inbound Linking

Bing appears to favour linking from pages that share a similar topic area.

Is Bing a theme-based engine? Think of a theme as a topic pyramind. A themed site would have the topic “cars at the top. The level beneath that would be makes of cars i.e. Ford, Ferrari, Lotus, then below then models, then components, etc. The theory goes that a site should be all on the same topic to rank well, and links should come from sites on the same topic. Themes used to get discussed a lot, but fell out of fashion when people realised Google didn’t use themes.

Is Bing using themes? I don’t think so. Like Google, the algorithms appear to be largely page based, as opposed to site based. Bing looks at the topic of the page linking to you. If the linking page is on a similar topic, the target page receives a boost. Have a play around with the title tag on the linking page. Try to ensure the title tag keyword on the linking page is the same as the keyword you’re targetting on your optimized page.

3. Domain Age

Domain age seems to be an important factor in Bing – the older, the better. Like Google, Bing tries to establish authority, and domain age is one way it does this.

Got any tips for optimizing for Bing? Any patterns you’ve noticed, particularly in respect to how Bing differs from Google?

Sorta an old post that I forgot to publish until today! Having the site closed to new members has given me time to start working through a few of my almost done posts that were never published yet. It’s hard to have time to do everything while growing a few businesses.

Media has traditionally been afforded a wall between editorial and advertising due to limited marketplace competition. But, as Jim Spanfeller stated, the perception of value in “last click marketing” where search gets most of the credit for the entire demand creation and fulfillment cycle, is killing the value of online content:

A publisher can and should price their inventory at levels that will meet the market expectations and drive their business model. What they should not do is allow some sort of invisible hand (or should I say hands) to price their inventory against a backdrop of objectives that can and often does change at a moment’s notice. This practice has fundamentally driven pricing down across the web and, perhaps more importantly, changed the success metrics from ones based on “demand creation” to ones driven by “demand fulfillment.”

Worse yet, the leading metrics most closely track how the poorest members of society interact with media, creating a media ecosystem designed to exploit the poor. The above linked article states “we now know that 16% of web users generate 80% of clicks and that this 16% represents the lower income and education segments of the total user base.”

It may have cost Google 1 day of revenues to create the default analytics tool, which by default has a last click wins behavior that few people know how to edit.

Google’s web domination is so impressive that experienced and well trained journalists writing for publications like Wired mistake Google’s mission statement as the goal of the web. Literally…

The Internet’s great promise is to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful. So how come when you arrive at the most popular dating site in the US you find a stream of anonymous come-ons intermixed with insults, ads for prostitutes, naked pictures, and obvious scams?

Gary Wolf should know that was actually Google’s mission statement, not the goal of the web.

Sure data mining and sentiment analysis can be parts of the web, but the best bits are often scattered messes and weird stuff we accidentally bump into.

A lot of folks still don’t quite understand the benefit of having user-generated content on your site. It seems logical to have someone else do the work for you, doesn’t it? They create the content and you reap the benefits of indexed pages, better rankings and more sales…or, in growing cases, a book deal. Below I’ve highlighted three sites that have scored book deals thanks to the content others have created for them.

F My Life

F My Life is a site that allows you to send in a message that begins with “Today” and ends with “FML” (f*ck my life). If your submission gets accepted, it’ll get published on the website and users can vote on it with either a sympathetic “I agree, your life sucks” or a “you totally deserved it.” Here’s a sample FML:

It’s a simple concept, and its success lies entirely upon user-generated content. Everything on this site has been contributed by its readers. It even has an Illustrated FML section where users can actually create art based on a previously published FML (FML fan art — can you believe it?). There’s no reward for contributing other than the satisfaction of seeing your sad anecdote showcased on a public forum. F My Life has a book out that I’ve seen gracing the humor section at Barnes and Noble, enabling you to pay for a hard copy of other people’s misery.

This is Why You’re Fat

This is Why You’re Fat is a site that showcases pictures of heinous, calorie-laden food concoctions sent in by users. That’s pretty much all it is — it’s like food porn. Sloppy, unhealthy food porn. Here’s a sample creation:

People are actually spending time and money to make the most shocking and unhealthy combination of food imaginable while the site owner sits back and lets the submissions pour in. In fact, the webmaster’s even set up a separate URL for the book (bad idea from an SEO standpoint), showcasing a quote from Entertainment Weekly magazine. That’s some pretty nice press considering it’s a book “written” by hundreds of free contributors.

Shit My Dad Says

Probably the most egregious (and hilarious) example of UGC leading to a book deal is the Twitter account called Shit My Dad Says. The account was set up by a young guy who lives with his parents. His dad spouts off hilarious non sequiturs and snarky comments that he’s turned them into a Twitter feed. The profile gained a little bit of traction from Follow Friday, and then someone submitted it to Reddit and it pretty much exploded overnight, gaining over 420,000 followers in less than 2 months. Here’s a sample gem from the account:

The LA Times did an article about the Twitter account and revealed that Justin, the “ghost tweeter” and son of a real-life Frank Costanza, has gotten numerous book deal offers. That’s right, a book deal for someone’s Twitter account. It’s the only example in this post where the guy didn’t even create the website — he’s using an existing user generated content platform to showcase another person’s comments and he’s the one reaping the benefits. Basically, it’s UGC within UGC (holy meta — I think my head asploded).

Back in the day it used to be a bit more difficult to land a book deal. You had to submit a manuscript, know the right people, cross your fingers, and often repeat the process many times until you (hopefully) got lucky. Sure, you could self-publish (as you still can today), but nowadays the Internet has made it easier for publishers to come across a well-written blog that’s attracted some buzz and attention. Writing takes skill, imagination, and a serious time commitment, so imagine how much sweeter it is to get a book deal based on content that others have provided for you. And that’s the beauty of user-generated content.

Here are a few other sites that do a great job with UGC:

1. Yelp — their whole site is pretty much dependent on user-submitted reviews of restaurants and businesses.
2. Cracked — most of their lists that make it on Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon are contributed by their users.
3. Urban Outfitters — a clothing store that allows people to review clothes and merchandise online. Users can see review stats of other people, such as their average ratings, how many times their reviews have been voted as “helpful,” etc.
4. Bleacher Report — the world’s largest sports network that is powered entirely by fan-generated content.
5. Texts from Last Night — a site similar to FML that allows you to submit drunken text messages to be showcased on the website.
6. TripAdvisor — one of the best vacation review websites on the web today.

What other sites successfully leverage user-generated content to their advantage? Tweet your responses to @10e20 or drop them in the comments below, and don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed.

BusinessInsider.com has a chart stating that Digg received 17.4 million unique visitors in August 2009, easily eclipsing other social news sites. Its dominance in the social news sphere brings to mind another company…

Top Search Engines According to a July 2009 comScore Search Report:

1. Google (65% market share)
2. Yahoo! (19.6%)
3. Microsoft/Bing (8.4%)
4. Ask (3.9%)
5. AOL (3.1%)

Top Social News Sites Based on Unique Visitors in August 2009:

1. Digg (17.4 million)
2. Yahoo! Buzz (7 million)
3. Propeller (800,000)
4. Reddit (670,000)
5. Mixx (660,000)

Digg’s dominance in the social news sphere is not unlike Google’s dominance in the search sphere. Digg’s strong community and constant roll outs like Facebook Connect, the DiggBar, and constant Digg Dialogues appear to be having a positive impact on the site’s popularity.

Amusingly enough, Yahoo! Buzz is like the Yahoo! Search of social news. Poor Yahoo! — always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Most surprising to me is how disappointingly Reddit appears to be performing — are they the Ask of social news sites? I remember a few years ago when it was all about Digg vs. Reddit, and now this chart depicts Propeller is beating Reddit in unique visitors and Mixx nipping at their heels (though I suspect the unique visitors for Reddit are incorrect–the number seems a bit low for them, don’t you think?). In any case, Digg fans must love seeing their favorite site spanking Reddit while Reddit fanboys are probably scoffing and saying they prefer the site’s “intimate” community.

Love them or loathe them, but clearly Digg is doing something right since they’ve managed to outshine their competition and seem to be establishing themselves as the predominant social news site on the web today. What do you think the other social news sites need to do in order to better compete with Digg and attract more users to their sites, or do you think that, much like with Google, Digg’s only going to get stronger?

Digg made a change to their site today, adding the no-follow attribute to all external links until they felt sure the link was safe.
They also issued a statement about the change on their blog and even went as far as to speak directly to SEOs, saying they would indeed lose some of the authority they [...]



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An SEO�s best friend (other than a stiff drink) is a good tool. Tools save us time and energy and streamline the process so we can get to making money instead of researching. They provide the information you need when you need it. But it is important to remember that knowing when to use a particular tool and how to use it is more important than any list.

This is why I�ve created Yoda�s ultimate tool to put all the tools one would need in 1 place. Since this list is too massive to fit in one post, it will be a multi-part list that will cover: Competitive Research, Keyword Research, Must have Firefox plug-ins, Reputation Management tools, PPC Tools, Domainer tools and my favorite non-conformist miscellaneous tools

So here we go: Part 1 � Competitive Research

Step 1: Who is your competitor and where have they been?
Competition Finder
A great tool, this shows you how many pages are indexed in google competing for your key terms. This will let you size up the competition and market saturation.

Archive.org will show you what their website looked like the past as well as give you the age of the site

Whois.sc
By adding this bookmarklet to your firefox browser you can find out the whois information for the site you are viewing simply by clicking on it.

Step 2: What kind of marketshare and traffic do they have?
Compete.com is one of my FAVORITE sites. They have a lot of great free tools (and some really cool paid for ones). You can compare sites, get traffic information and get an idea of how much your competitors are spending.

Index Rank
The first time I saw this was on SEOBook, (Aaron has some amazing tool�s listed there as well, so you should definitely check out that list too). Index Rank is incredible useful in showing you how many times Google is indexing your site compared to competitors sites.

SEO Quake is a pretty cool tool that shows you PR, # of pages indexed, Links, Alexa ratings, Age, whois info and density of every site you open in Firefox.

Who is linking to your competitors?

The Tattler
Originally posted by Todd, this is a great tool to scrape who is linking to your competitors

Backlink and Keyword Tracker
Totally free tool can be used to check search engines for the number of back links to any specific URL over time

Link Diagnosis is a is a great link hunting tool especially if you want to see what kind of anchor text your competitors are using.

Another great one, from a fellow chicklet�s site, is SEOmoz�s Backlink Analyzer. This shows the backlinks to a competitor�s website and the common anchor text. In general the SEOmoz tools section is a must read

What keywords are your competitors buying?
There are a several different tools that do this that vary in prices. Spyfu is a good option, that is not too expensive ($300 a year or about $40/month). It lets you see what keywords your competitors are buying up as well as see what they optimizing their site for.

Have they made any changes?
WatchThatPage will email you with any changes made to a competitor�s site or your site (although you probably should know that already)

Search for Broken Links
Xenu�s Link Sleuth will search for broken links on sire

Great Overall Site Analysis Tools
Last but not least, LinkVendor. This is a site filled with awesome research and site analysis tools.

Originally published on SEO Chicks

Okay, so it has been a little more than a week since Part I, but SES NY takes a long time to recover from.

There are a ton of keyword research tools and tool lists out there, but it is still incredibly important to have all of your tools in one place. There are a lot of familiar tools in here, but there should also be a some lesser known ones here as well.

Let’s start this off with an SEO snack provided to you by one of my newest friends, Gareth

Free Tools

SEObook�s ultimate keyword research tool is a great place to start. Another tool on the site, is the Google Scraper tool

We can�t forget everyone�s old favorites, the Adwords Keyword Tool or Overtures Keyword Selector (although it doesn�t always work)

Quintura shows keyword maps to help you to generate more keywords!

Track keyword trends with Blogpulse.

If anything, Kartoo is a lot of fun. It provides keyword maps of who is ranking for what terms. Results could be a little bette

Find your competitors Keyword!

Start off with figuring out how competitive a keyword is

Long tail keyword discovery shows you the 3, 4 and 5 term keywords for your (or a competitors) site.

SEO Digger is pretty awesome tool. Find out what keywords your site ranks in Google�s top 20 for, or use this to spy on the competition

Shoemoney review

Keyword Spy is great at finding what your competitors are bidding on and ranking for and you test it out for free right on their homepage. The free version only lets you see 10 results, but the paid version for $90/month lets you see a lot more.

Digitalpoints Keyword suggestion tool is another good free option. It also lets you specify what country you are looking for data for. They also have a free keyword position tracking tool.

Paid

Wordtracker has a 7 day free trial for their tool, otherwise, it is paid for at $329 a year. They also have very good free version of their keyword research tool.

Trellian�s keyword discovery is another fantastic tool. It draws info from over 180 search engines around the world and has keyword brainstorming tools as well as the ability to import import keyword lists and add descriptors. This is paid for with prices varying, but a 1 year standard subscription will run you about $600.

Keyword Discovery also won Best Keyword Research Tool in 2007 on www.toprankblog.com

Wordze has gotten a bit of a following with tools that let you perform keyword research, get historical keyword data, perform competitive research, and download top searches. They cost $45/month

Wordze also had a great deal of praise TopRank Blog

Wordze review on copyblogger.

AdGooroo, which also deserves a mention in Yoda�s Ultimate Competitive Research Tools Post is also a great keyword research tool. It allows you see what terms your competition is bidding on so you can make sure you don�t miss any opportunities. Prices range from $89/month to $399/month depending on what you need.

Spyfu also let�s you see what your competitors rank for as well as help you find new keywords to use fro your own site. They let you perform some research for free, but if you want to dig deep, it will cost you $308/year or $6.75 for 3 days

Miscellaneous

Shimon Sandler listed some keyword stemming tools on his site a while back that are very useful. Basically, they help you to take the stem of a word and build out additional keywords by adding in the variations of that term. Here are a few good ones:

http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/wordcheck/index.php?word=work

http://www.related-pages.com/adWordsKeywords.aspx

Other Great Keyword Research Lists

The other Loren (Baker that is) recently wrote a post at Search Engine Journal asking what keyword tools his readers liked � WordTracker, SEOBook, and Keyword Discovery seemed to make it out on top.

Mona Elesseily also put together a great list about spying on your competitors including Compete and Spyfu (mentioned above).

SEOBooks keyword research tool list is another great one.

Anne Smarty’s list on SEOMOZ is also very comprehensive

Originally Published on SEO-Chicks

Google Ad Planner has been beta testing for more than a month now, but there still isn’t a lot out there about it except for 1 greatpost and an even better rant, so I decided to check it out for myself.

At first, it looks amazing. The data is easy to find, easy to sort and more comprehensive than what you will find from Comscore. As an internet marketer, I find myself performing extensive competitive
research and this tool makes it easy to not just find more competition but gives me site statistics about them.

If I am creditcardguide.com for example, and I do not know who my competition is, I can simply enter my own website in the Online Behavior section and I get results showing acclaimvisa.com, smartbalancetransfers.com and creditcard321.com.

I can then drill down on smartbalancetransfers to see their websites demographics (in the US only at the moment). This can be a great way to show your boss your websites market share or see how the competition stacks up.

This also works great for e-commerce sites to help you find which competitors or even complimentary sites are also running Google text ads for site placement targeting. When searching for thefind.com, a shopping portal, I see that shopwiki.com and bedbathstore.com display Google ads. If I were TheFind and looking to grab some more of the market share, I would target these sites.

Google Ad Planner is very useful in regards to research and planning, but it still isn’t perfect.

Initially, while looking to see what websites Ad Planner associates with www.seo-chicks.com the list looks pretty good. It was populated with the likes of Sphinn, Bruce Clay, SEOMOZ, and SEO Round Table. It also mentions Chris Hooley, but did you know that Chris Hooley is in the Alcoholic Beverages category? I know he likes to have a good time, but do you think this is a little extreme?

Drilling down for more information about SEO Chicks, I found out that all of the US visitors to the site are 35-44 year old men. Am I the only one a little creeped out by this?

Beta errors aside, there is a lot of potential with this product for both media buyers as well as paid search professionals looking to do some more advanced site targeting, but in its current state it is still missing some key features. In addition to displaying websites that do not accept advertising, Google Ad Planner can be sorted to show if it accepts Google image ads, Google text ads, or gadget ads.

This feature is great if you are looking for new sites to placement target your PPC campaign, but there is no way to ONLY display websites that accept certain formats of Google ads.

Also, once you build your media plan, there is no way to actually execute it inside the interface. If I just spent all the time finding sites to advertise on, I can’t do much with it because there is now way to integrate this with my Adwords account. I could manually add everything into my Adwords account, but Google should know this better than anyone – PLEASE make spending money easy!

Overall, if you can get on the beta list for this one, it is pretty cool and well worth it despite some miscategorization. When checking their stats on my own sites to verify accuracy, the pageviews, visitors and demographics were spot on, even for the sites that do not run Google Analytics. This does beg the question of where Google is getting this information from, but I am not going to ponder that too much, because if I do I will likely run screaming from the internet and go back to two tin cans and a string for communication and the Dewey Decimal system for research in fear that Google really is Skynet.

If you have a high bounce rate on your website, you’re not alone. Analyzing the underlying factors which lead to a high bounce rate can be the difference between hitting your conversion target or consistently losing customers. A high bounce rate should be considered as 80% upwards.

To accurately measure the bounce rate metric, you need a pretty sizable amount of visitors. If your blog or website only gets around 50 visitors and you have a high bounce rate, I would suggest waiting until you get your traffic up to at least 100 – 150 visitors p/day before you start measuring. It’s much harder to spot patterns and trends with a smaller traffic amount. Anywhere less than between 100 – 150, and consistency becomes an issue.

The issues for a high bounce rate can be segmented into three different areas:

• Site Design / IA
• Content
• Technical Issues

Poor Site Design:

The Problem:

The aesthetics of a site is the user’s first impression of your company. You want to give them a reason to return. A visit to Web Sites that Suck will give you all the details on what not to do. If your site makes it on there, it needs changing — and quick.

A user should be encouraged to stay on your site. This means that if I hear music playing as soon as your website opens, you’ve just given me a reason to leave. It’s the user’s choice to decide whether he or she wants to listen to music while browsing your site. Never assume that you know what your user wants to do.

The Solution:

Hire a designer who understands the concepts of modern web design, which will give your company credibility. So, out are flashing gifs, Comic Sans font, and a table-based design. In are images that compliment the content, semantically structured copy, and readable web fonts.

Never autoplay video or music. Make sure the choice is available, however, in case that’s the user’s preference. Oh, and those annoying flashing banner ads need to go.

Poor Information Architecture:

The Problem:

A navigation that doesn’t aid or funnel the user into information is a wasted process. The user needs to be aware of where he is, how to get where he wants to go, where he has been, and to see it all on a consistent basis. Amazon does a great job of this. When looking at a product page, you can see which products you’ve looked at previously and which products you might like.

The presentation of your content can be a significant barrier to the user’s finding what he wants — so much so that the user may just quit trying and go to a competitor’s site. You may have the larger selection of items, but if the user becomes frustrated trying to find whatever he is looking for, you’ve just lost a potential sale. In today’s world of Social Media, that one negative experience could potentially be shared with the user’s friends, which in turn could cause you to lose future revenue.

The Solution:

A good navigation is based on simplicity – overly complex will only create confusion for your users. Think intuitively. There’s a reason that the vast majority of navigation on websites is predominantly the same – because they work. Don’t try to think outside the box when designing your navigation.

Without doubt, if you own or run an e-commerce site, displaying Top 5 or Top 10 lists of items in certain categories can provide an alternate form of navigation. They may not be related to the item(s) on that page, but you’ve just provided multiple options in case the user has been unable to find what he wants.

Content Unrelated to User’s Search Query:

The Problem:

If you check your analytics thoroughly, you will quite often find users who have found your site through the most unusual terms, like Mexican Donkey Show Pictures. Digging through your analytics is a must if you’re truly to discover the user’s intent. Obviously, there are only so many niches where Mexican Donkey Show Pictures would be an appropriate search. However, if you look hard enough, you will begin to see a pattern.

The Solution:

A web user can be split into two different categories — those who are just browsing and those who are searching. For the most part, the user who is performing a search query knows what he is looking for. The casual browsing user is searching without as much intent.

Contextually, an intentional searcher is much more open and along the purchase path than a casual browser. You need to find patterns and consistencies, then create funnels where the intentional searchers are concerned. Find out what page the user is landing on and work from there. However, don’t ignore the casual browsers. They can be persuaded by list items such as Top Sellers, Highest Rated, and also discounted items.

Content Unrelated to Inbound Link:

The Problem:

A user clicks on a link that lands the user on your website. However, the link the user clicked on is unrelated to your website. This leads to a frustrated user experience.

The Solution:

If the link is an organic link and you have no control over it, a good step to rectify the situation is to email the webmaster and suggest another page to which the website could link.

An alternative would be to display internal links on the landing page(s) with something like ‘perhaps you were looking for X, Y, or Z ?’. If you promote your site using Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon, another technique would be to suggest to the user something else he might like which is related to the page he landed on — for instance, a sentence similar to ‘If you like what’s on this page, you may also like these articles’. This encourages the user to further explore your site.

Technical Issues:

The Problem:

A user lands on your site and is struck by slow loading times, 404’s, and non-working links. As a result, the user has a bad experience and leaves the site. This is not an uncommon scenario, and it’s something the majority of us have experienced.

The Solution:

A valuable piece of software that should be part of any website owner’s tools is Integrity – Mac only (Windows users should use Xenu’s Link Sleuth). You will need to input your URL; the software will follow all of your internal links to find your pages and will check the server response code for all internal and external links found.

Google’s own Webmaster Tools can also be used to check how the search bots are crawling your site and will notify you of any spidering problems.

Remember, it’s entirely possible that the user found everything he needed without having to go any deeper on your web site. If you’re vigilant and check your stats often, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get that bounce rate down to within normal range.

If you have a high bounce rate on your website, you’re not alone. Analyzing the underlying factors which lead to a high bounce rate can be the difference between hitting your conversion target or consistently losing customers. A high bounce rate should be considered as 80% upwards.

To accurately measure the bounce rate metric, you need a pretty sizable amount of visitors. If your blog or website only gets around 50 visitors and you have a high bounce rate, I would suggest waiting until you get your traffic up to at least 100 – 150 visitors p/day before you start measuring. It’s much harder to spot patterns and trends with a smaller traffic amount. Anywhere less than between 100 – 150, and consistency becomes an issue.

The issues for a high bounce rate can be segmented into three different areas:

• Site Design / IA
• Content
• Technical Issues

Poor Site Design:

The Problem:

The aesthetics of a site is the user’s first impression of your company. You want to give them a reason to return. A visit to Web Sites that Suck will give you all the details on what not to do. If your site makes it on there, it needs changing — and quick.

A user should be encouraged to stay on your site. This means that if I hear music playing as soon as your website opens, you’ve just given me a reason to leave. It’s the user’s choice to decide whether he or she wants to listen to music while browsing your site. Never assume that you know what your user wants to do.

The Solution:

Hire a designer who understands the concepts of modern web design, which will give your company credibility. So, out are flashing gifs, Comic Sans font, and a table-based design. In are images that compliment the content, semantically structured copy, and readable web fonts.

Never autoplay video or music. Make sure the choice is available, however, in case that’s the user’s preference. Oh, and those annoying flashing banner ads need to go.

Poor Information Architecture:

The Problem:

A navigation that doesn’t aid or funnel the user into information is a wasted process. The user needs to be aware of where he is, how to get where he wants to go, where he has been, and to see it all on a consistent basis. Amazon does a great job of this. When looking at a product page, you can see which products you’ve looked at previously and which products you might like.

The presentation of your content can be a significant barrier to the user’s finding what he wants — so much so that the user may just quit trying and go to a competitor’s site. You may have the larger selection of items, but if the user becomes frustrated trying to find whatever he is looking for, you’ve just lost a potential sale. In today’s world of Social Media, that one negative experience could potentially be shared with the user’s friends, which in turn could cause you to lose future revenue.

The Solution:

A good navigation is based on simplicity – overly complex will only create confusion for your users. Think intuitively. There’s a reason that the vast majority of navigation on websites is predominantly the same – because they work. Don’t try to think outside the box when designing your navigation.

Without doubt, if you own or run an e-commerce site, displaying Top 5 or Top 10 lists of items in certain categories can provide an alternate form of navigation. They may not be related to the item(s) on that page, but you’ve just provided multiple options in case the user has been unable to find what he wants.

Content Unrelated to User’s Search Query:

The Problem:

If you check your analytics thoroughly, you will quite often find users who have found your site through the most unusual terms, like Mexican Donkey Show Pictures. Digging through your analytics is a must if you’re truly to discover the user’s intent. Obviously, there are only so many niches where Mexican Donkey Show Pictures would be an appropriate search. However, if you look hard enough, you will begin to see a pattern.

The Solution:

A web user can be split into two different categories — those who are just browsing and those who are searching. For the most part, the user who is performing a search query knows what he is looking for. The casual browsing user is searching without as much intent.

Contextually, an intentional searcher is much more open and along the purchase path than a casual browser. You need to find patterns and consistencies, then create funnels where the intentional searchers are concerned. Find out what page the user is landing on and work from there. However, don’t ignore the casual browsers. They can be persuaded by list items such as Top Sellers, Highest Rated, and also discounted items.

Content Unrelated to Inbound Link:

The Problem:

A user clicks on a link that lands the user on your website. However, the link the user clicked on is unrelated to your website. This leads to a frustrated user experience.

The Solution:

If the link is an organic link and you have no control over it, a good step to rectify the situation is to email the webmaster and suggest another page to which the website could link.

An alternative would be to display internal links on the landing page(s) with something like ‘perhaps you were looking for X, Y, or Z ?’. If you promote your site using Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon, another technique would be to suggest to the user something else he might like which is related to the page he landed on — for instance, a sentence similar to ‘If you like what’s on this page, you may also like these articles’. This encourages the user to further explore your site.

Technical Issues:

The Problem:

A user lands on your site and is struck by slow loading times, 404’s, and non-working links. As a result, the user has a bad experience and leaves the site. This is not an uncommon scenario, and it’s something the majority of us have experienced.

The Solution:

A valuable piece of software that should be part of any website owner’s tools is Integrity – Mac only (Windows users should use Xenu’s Link Sleuth). You will need to input your URL; the software will follow all of your internal links to find your pages and will check the server response code for all internal and external links found.

Google’s own Webmaster Tools can also be used to check how the search bots are crawling your site and will notify you of any spidering problems.

Remember, it’s entirely possible that the user found everything he needed without having to go any deeper on your web site. If you’re vigilant and check your stats often, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get that bounce rate down to within normal range.