Does Bounce Rate Really Matter in Content Marketing?

Does Bounce Rate Really Matter in Content Marketing?

Time after time, clients come to me with the same troubling question.“Our engagement metrics look great,” they say, “but our bounce rate is so high. Google Analytics defines bounce rate as the number of “single-page sessions divided by the number of total sessions.” In other words, it’s the percentage of all sessions on a site when a user leaves after viewing a singular page. If the goal of the campaign is to move the users through the funnel and drive leads, a high bounce rate could be cause for concern. If the objective is to drive more top-of-funnel awareness and engagement, however, then a high bounce rate may not mean much. Brand Awareness vs. This adjustment helps distinguish a true bounce, where a user immediately leaves a page within a few seconds, from an engaged session, in which a user eventually navigates away after giving you some attention. By mapping content and KPIs to each stage of the funnel, marketers can ultimately use content distribution strategically to compel the right actions from the right users at the right time. We agreed to open up the targeting to reach a wide audience. The campaign reached users at the beginning of the discovery phase. By looking at the data, the client came to understand the relationship between content distribution and bounce rate.

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In my opinion, content marketing’s most misunderstood metric is bounce rate. As Contently’s manager of distribution services, it’s a data point I deal with on a daily basis. Time after time, clients come to me with the same troubling question.“Our engagement metrics look great,” they say, “but our bounce rate is so high. Isn’t that bad?”

Not necessarily.

Google Analytics defines bounce rate as the number of “single-page sessions divided by the number of total sessions.” In other words, it’s the percentage of all sessions on a site when a user leaves after viewing a singular page.

A bounce occurs in a handful of common situations: when a user clicks the back button, navigates to a new URL, or closes the browser. The only time a bounce does not occur is when a user clicks through to a second page on the domain.

So how does this knowledge impact marketers? When planning a paid distribution campaign, one of the first considerations I discuss with a client is the objective. Bounce rate can be an important indicator of success. But it doesn’t have to be. It ultimately depends how a brand wants to define success.

If the goal of the campaign is to move the users through the funnel and drive leads, a high bounce rate could be cause for concern. If the objective is to drive more top-of-funnel awareness and engagement, however, then a high bounce rate may not mean much.

Brand Awareness vs. Conversion

Take a thought leadership blog post. A visitor could come to the site, read the entire article, and leave. Even though this session would have a high finish rate, the session would have a bounce rate of 100 percent. That’s just what happens when you have a binary metric. You either bounce or you don’t.

To add meaning to brand awareness campaigns, Outbrain suggests modifying the bounce rate parameter in Google Analytics. By adding a little code to your site, you can…

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