How do loading time and bounce rate affect Google rankings?

A bounce rate of around 40-60% is considered normal; it’s the design of your website and its content that determines the bounce rate of your website. Factors like page load time, ease of navigation, search engine rankings for target keywords, links, and quality of content amongst many others have an important role to play in determining whether a visitor remains engaged with your site.

Now we come to the important question. Do bounce rates affect your Google rankings? This question cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. That’s because if your web page offers all the information to the user in a single visit, it’s actually done a pretty good job and this singe page visit isn’t a bounce.

For my money, bounce rates don’t directly affect the rankings, but do so in conjunction with other factors. Say somebody has come to your site, but doesn’t find what he expects and just goes on to another site, by clicking the back button and going back to search results. This user behavior is something that figures in search engines that use bounce rate as a signal. If the user directly types in a website name in the browser, while he is on your webpage, this is something that a search engine like Google doesn’t take into consideration, while ranking your site.

This Back button bounce rate tells Google that the user didn’t find anything of value on your website, and so your website doesn’t get a high rank for that particular search query, that the visitor used to come to your site.

Page Load Time and Bounce Rate Bounce rates go down if your pages load faster. If your pages are taking an eternity to load, visitors will just go on to some other site.

This will reduce you conversion ratio, bringing down your website’s profitability. Add to that the fact that both are ranking factors and you have a nightmarish scenario that’s going to see your website put in a very poor performance.

So, it makes sense, but in terms of website profitability (sales figures) and Google Rankings, that you get both the page load time and the bounce rate of your site in order. SEO has become more challenging now, but if you focus on improving the UX of your visitor, there is a good chance that your site will rank high in SERPs. So, do it and reap the benefits.