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I designed a website for a friends business. I am not any kind of web developer its just a fun hobby so I am not very knowledgeable. I designed the website on the bootstrap framework and it only has one page. There are a few models for information on the website. I am thinking the bounce rate will be hurting his search ranking. These are the stats from Google Analytics.

Sessions- 594
Users - 271
Pageviews- 823
Pages / Session- 1.39
Avg. Session Duration- 00:04:38
Bounce Rate- 83.00%
% New Sessions- 45.29%

I added this code to the analytics script on the website to try and not count a session as a bounce if the user spends more than 30 seconds on the site

<script>
  (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

  ga('create', 'UA-69413534-1', 'auto');
  ga('send', 'pageview');

  SetTimeout(function(){_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Control', 'Bounce Rate', ''])},3000)
</script>

I am under the assumption that bounce rate is affected by the session duration and pages/session. Is the 83% bounce rate something I need to be worried about? If so how can I lower it?

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  • While site reviews are off-topic here, I did take a quick look at the site. Nicely done!! The one thing that jumps out at me is locale. It would help significantly to have name, address, phone (NAP) with schema.org mark-up so that search can be targeted. As well, consider a Google+ account for business and getting listed in the various business listing websites. Your bounce rate could be as simple as not being targeted by locale well enough or at all. You want more than a contact form for your potential customers. People do not like forms and answering machines. ;-) They want a human.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jan 27, 2016 at 17:40
  • Few things to note here - 1) Your tracking script throws an error because SetTimeout is not a function, while setTimeout is a function, 2) you're using Universal Analytics but the hit you're sending inside the body of the setTimeout function is for the legacy ga.js tracking script. You should use ga('send', { hitType: 'event', eventCategory: 'Control', eventAction: 'Bounce Rate' }); instead and 3) the ...3000) at the end of the setTimeout function is actually 3 seconds (3000 milliseconds), not 30 seconds.
    – nburr
    Commented Jan 28, 2016 at 0:57

3 Answers 3

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It only has one page and you have a bounce rate of 83%? Bounce rate means they only visited one page and then left. If it is only a page that should be 100%. Don't worry about bounce rate for a single page website.

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I don't believe bounce rate is real, that is describe in Google analytic, because there are many of Spam bots, that visit thousand of website and create 100% bounce rate. Just search this query in Google block spam referral traffic site:productforums.google.com, and you will see lot's of post with spam referral traffic. I know, you are not talking about it, but I just want to say, do not worry about it, because google will never impact any kind of ranking factor, that can be manipulated by user.

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Bounce Rate as it's defined by Google
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

You only have one page, so there is only so much a user can do which could be defined as interaction with the page. Often this would be clicking navagation/switching pages/submitting form, but this is not a thing on this one page website.

The bouncerate is high, but expected. I do recommend adding some pages. S few basic pages would suffice, e.g: Home, about me/us, portfolio, contact (I'm not telling you to make these pages, they're suggestions). This'll give a little oompfh to the website.

Might be worth noting that, while your bounce rate is high, so is "Time on Site", which is an important one aswell.

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