My thoughts on Internal Linking and Bounce Rate

[DeadJoe]

I've been working on a site recently and while the average time on page and traffic have been growing consistently, I was facing an issue of a high bounce rate. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on what bounce rate actually is, but the gist of it is that a bounce is recorded when someone comes on your site, regardless of how long they spend reading your content, if they do not visit another page a bounce is recorded.

Bounce Rate examples:

Landing Page > Spends 5 seconds > Leaves (clicks back button or affiliate link)<--- bounce
Landing Page > Spends 5 hours > Leaves (clicks back button or affiliate link) <--- bounce

Not a Bounce:

Landing Page > Spends 5 seconds or 5 hours > clicks on an internal link <-- Not a bounce

Your bounce rate may or may not have much to do with the quality of your content, it speaks more about your site's navigation. Is it a ranking factor? I really don't know. But in all honesty, I don't think it is. I would assume that average time spent on page would be a more credible metric because it speaks more about your content. Trash content would result in a high bounce rate for sure, but well crafted original and engaging content that is designed to trigger clicks to affiliate links will also result in a high bounce rate. Good content may or may not result in a high bounce rate, but will always have good time spent on page metrics.

I think the norm for amazon affiliate sites is somewhere around 80%, that's where I am right now. However, this wasn't always the case. About a month ago I had > 90% bounce rate however my site was still constantly performing well and keywords were going up as they are right now. In all honesty, I just want people to land on my money pages and click affiliate links. I don't care if the bounce rate goes up as long as I am making more money. This concept does not apply to my informational pages though. I am prepping my site to serve ads, and ad revenue increases when people stay on your website and view more ads.

So what did I do to lower the bounce rate? well, of course, I interlinked my content! But how? There are actually two ways to interlink. The traditional way is to insert links into your content, wherever possible. This is great because it looks natural and you're not forcing stuff in, but how creative do you have to be for interlinking multiple pages. I use a plugin where I assign keywords to every article and wherever on the website that word is mentioned the plugin automatically creates a link to that page. This is okay imo, not the best way to lower your bounce rate though.

The second way that has done wonders for me is interlinking between paragraphs with the entire article header. So it would look something like this:

Paragraph 1

Also Read / Recommended: <article page title>

Paragraph 2

Also Read / Recommended: <article page title>

Paragraph 3

You get the idea. This has been super effective in lowering my overall bounce rate pretty much right away. Keep things relevant if you follow a similar strategy. If you insert random ass links into your content then it would look spammy af. Let your plugin do the internal linking from within your content and you can yourself then add other relevant articles in between paragraphs wherever appropriate. Again, I am not convinced that bounce rate is a ranking factor, however, if you plan on running ads on your website or if you use your informational articles as funnel pages to your money content then this is an excellent way to drive traffic to relevant pages while keeping your bounce rate to a minimum. Good luck!

 

[Xdfffninja]

Solid idea, I will give it a shot.

 

[EMAOneBillion]

You can create events for tracking literally everything (button clicks, internal links, even page scroll), and then you'll have the real bounce rate.

 

[DeadJoe]

Solid idea, I will give it a shot.

Sure, let me know how it works out for you.

You can create events for tracking literally everything (button clicks, internal links, even page scroll), and then you'll have the real bounce rate.

I use events for outbound clicks only atm, but I am confused when you say real bounce rate since GA does show the actual bounce rate and you can also check for each page.

 

[Poker_Sputard]

Nice write-up OP, thanks!

I also think that dwell time is vastly more important in terms of a positive signal that your page is good.

Bounce rate is a useful metric, but IMO it is more important to a search engine what happens AFTER they have finished with your page. that is also true for dwell time to some extent.

Let's say I search for 'how many 5s are in 100'. Assuming that the search engine hasn't stolen your content and monetized it (hey google), the user will click on the first result. They will read the answer, then close the browser, or click back and search for something else. Usually porn.

That will result in a bounce and a low dwell time. But... it answered the question, or the user would have clicked on the second result.

Short version - good bounce rates and dwell time are different for different queries.

I'll be completely honest, I've lost the point of my write up, but I have typed too much to delete it, so I'll just go ahead and hit post reply...

 

[DeadJoe]

Nice write-up OP, thanks!

I also think that dwell time is vastly more important in terms of a positive signal that your page is good.

Bounce rate is a useful metric, but IMO it is more important to a search engine what happens AFTER they have finished with your page. that is also true for dwell time to some extent.

Let's say I search for 'how many 5s are in 100'. Assuming that the search engine hasn't stolen your content and monetized it (hey google), the user will click on the first result. They will read the answer, then close the browser, or click back and search for something else. Usually porn.

That will result in a bounce and a low dwell time. But... it answered the question, or the user would have clicked on the second result.

Short version - good bounce rates and dwell time are different for different queries.

I'll be completely honest, I've lost the point of my write up, but I have typed too much to delete it, so I'll just go ahead and hit post reply...

Haha, I see what you're saying. Bounce rates and dwell time both vary for different queries! I just don't think BR is as big of a metric (if it holds any value at all) as most people think it is.

 

[Halch]

That looks like a smart way. I mean if they are on the page for some relevant search term they might be interested to read more about related articles if I understood correctly. People are lazy so good things should be conveniently placed.

Would be good to implement on my own site as well.

 

[Poker_Sputard]

Haha, I see what you're saying. Bounce rates and dwell time both vary for different queries! I just don't think BR is as big of a metric (if it holds any value at all) as most people think it is.

yup, I think so too. Although your idea in the original post is a good one. Not only does it improve the bounce rate (if it is important) but it also keeps a reader on your page which increases the chance of an affiliate/advert click.

 

[EMAOneBillion]

I use events for outbound clicks only atm, but I am confused when you say real bounce rate since GA does show the actual bounce rate and you can also check for each page.

GA will only track events that will create new sessions like page refresh, click on an internal link that opens in the same tab. Other events such as external links, page scroll, subscribe, any other things user interact with on that page will not be tracked because these actions don't actually create a new session.

So practically if the user enters your page do stuff like subscribes, clicks on an Amazon link, which means clearly that the user interacts with your page, but don't trigger events that create a new session (like clicking on an internal link) it will count as a bounce session. This should not be the case since the user did interact with your page. If you want GA to track every user interaction you have to create events: like you can create one to track user clicks on the hamburger menu, or when he press the subscribe button

 

[Rikabu]

yeah, some great tips

I wonder what happens for links that open in separate new tabs and keep the original Landing page alive

 

[Panther28]

Cool, just a simple call to action, which readers will love, I always had mine at the end of the post, but I think I might sprinkle on many of my sites, further up the page recommended links too.

Cheers

 

[DeadJoe]

That looks like a smart way. I mean if they are on the page for some relevant search term they might be interested to read more about related articles if I understood correctly. People are lazy so good things should be conveniently placed.

Would be good to implement on my own site as well.

Yeah that's the point, just putting it in front of them. Try it and let me know how it works out for you.

yup, I think so too. Although your idea in the original post is a good one. Not only does it improve the bounce rate (if it is important) but it also keeps a reader on your page which increases the chance of an affiliate/advert click.

Yeah, keeps them on the site so we can make more $

GA will only track events that will create new sessions like page refresh, click on an internal link that opens in the same tab. Other events such as external links, page scroll, subscribe, any other things user interact with on that page will not be tracked because these actions don't actually create a new session.

So practically if the user enters your page do stuff like subscribes, clicks on an Amazon link, which means clearly that the user interacts with your page, but don't trigger events that create a new session (like clicking on an internal link) it will count as a bounce session. This should not be the case since the user did interact with your page. If you want GA to track every user interaction you have to create events: like you can create one to track user clicks on the hamburger menu, or when he press the subscribe button

Ah I see what you're saying. I need to play with GA a bit more, I've been using it pretty much right out of the box haha.

yeah, some great tips

I wonder what happens for links that open in separate new tabs and keep the original Landing page alive

I believe the session ends and it gets recorded as a bounce, but I am not 100%

Cool, just a simple call to action, which readers will love, I always had mine at the end of the post, but I think I might sprinkle on many of my sites, further up the page recommended links too.

Cheers

Try it out and lmk if it helps! Cheers.

 

[EricPCH]

The second way that has done wonders for me is interlinking between paragraphs with the entire article header. So it would look something like this:

Paragraph 1

Also Read / Recommended: <article page title>

Paragraph 2

Also Read / Recommended: <article page title>

Paragraph 3

Nice idea! Maybe you or anyone else knows of a wp extension that does that?

 

[leechesBleechin]

Nice idea! Maybe you or anyone else knows of a wp extension that does that?

+1 for this question, i too am lazy and wouldn't mind a wp plugin to take care of this. So any recommendations would be nice

 

[DeadJoe]

Nice idea! Maybe you or anyone else knows of a wp extension that does that?

+1 for this question, i too am lazy and wouldn't mind a wp plugin to take care of this. So any recommendations would be nice

I believe there is one, but I like placing them manually because I also want relevant articles to go in between as links and I also strategically place them where they are relevant to the content.

 

[SEO Grand Room]

If you are using hotjar heat map else adding the links in event tracking, you can find where the exactly users are clicking and you can determine the boucerates are reduced due to that links.

So you can improve the links similar to that one.

 

[Android Tipster]

These are really great tips! I like your second way of doing it and I'm going to give it a try this weekend.

 

[Yuga]

The key takeaway is this: while bounce rate doesn't directly affect your page ranking, it bounce rate is still something you should understand and be able to improve upon. High bounce rates (when calculated correctly) are often symptoms of deeper problems like user experience issues or poor targeting.

 

[mystique07]

+1 for this question, i too am lazy and wouldn't mind a wp plugin to take care of this. So any recommendations would be nice

This will automatically place related articles from that category in between your article
https://intellywp.com/intelly-related-posts/

 

[leechesBleechin]

This will automatically place related articles from that category in between your article
https://intellywp.com/intelly-related-posts/

Thanks, m8, definitely going to take a look at this. Was looking at my internal linking via web graph and it's atrocious