Thinking about redesigning site to reduce bounce rate - have a couple of questions

[sl_pa]

BACKGROUND

Im looking at redesigning the website for a creative consultancy to improve the user experience. The website is mainly an image portfolio along with “press”, “our services”, “about us”, “contact” pages.

I originally designed the website a few years ago and when we did, we wanted to make the image portfolio the most important feature. So we made it a full screen JS image slider with lazy loading of images, so that there are about 40 full screen images on the homepage that rotate. From a users point of view i still feel this is the best system as it very quickly allows them to browse the portfolio, which we looking for a creative consultancy is their UPS (unique selling point).

The site has a very strong backlink profile compared to its competitors in the SERPS it has about 20-25% increase in PA and DA. But our site has been slipping down the rankings in recent years / months. From spot 1-2 to about spot 5-7.

MY HYPOTHESIS

I think that the reason the site may be dropping back in the SERP is that although its a very usable site, all its portfolio information is “too easy to find / view” and results in a user coming to our site, seeing everything they need to see, then bouncing back to the SERP. Our site has a bounce rate of 40-60%. Where as on competitors sites, their “portfolio” is a separate page off the homepage, so a users has to click through to a separate page, and even if they don't like the design content of the portfolio it doesn't get logged as a bounce.

MY QUESTION

1. Does bounce rate affect SERP ranking ?

2. Could the sites SERP performance be improved by redesigning the site to put the portfolio on a separate page so a user would have to click through to it, if that would get the bounce rate down, would the site see a benefit even if people still clicked back to the SERP results eventually after seeing our portfolio, even though it wasn't a true 1 page bounce ?

3. Dose time on site affect SERP ranking ?

4. Is there a way i can see a competitor's bounce rate ?

Would welcome any other thoughts inputs on this matter.

[paupastorlopez]

Hi sl_pa,

1 & 3) Yes, bounce rate affects SERP ranking and time on site also affects SERP ranking, in fact, they are 2 of the most important factors in 2018.

Take a look at this Ranking Factors Study from Semrush, it's very interesting: https://www.semrush.com/ranking-factors/

4) You can see your competitors Bounce Rate with Alexa: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/

2) Maybe you should try to imitate the model of the competitors that are performing better on Google, the ones who have top rankings and the ones who have a lower bounce rate.

Hope that helps Good luck!!

[sl_pa]

Thanks Paul,

On point 4) i had a quick review and our site is recording an Alexa bounce of 65% where as competitors are 40%. From Google analytics our year to date average bounce is 45%. So presumably our competitors are more around the 25% bounce rate in their Google analytics, but this Alexa number gives us a good general figure.

Do you know how Alexa captures / calculates its bounce rate data ?

[paupastorlopez]

Hi sl_pa,

I don't know how Alexa calculates its bounce rate data, but I have found this: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Alexa-define-bounce-rate

Maybe that helps.

In any case, you can't trust much this stats from Alexa, but as you said, it can give a general figure. The perfect tool to see bounce rate is Analytics, but you can't see your competitors stats with this tool...

Greetings!