How to Optimize Your Google Analytics Report

The average bounce rate, or the percentage of people who land on a page and leave without performing a specific action, for most websites is somewhere between 26% and 70%. Your industry, where your traffic comes from, and where that traffic lands can all affect your bounce rate. Your bounce rate can also vary dramatically by traffic source. Google has repeatedly said bounce rate does not directly influence Google ranking rankings. However, you can still find and lower your bounce rates. Google Analytics has two data collection technologies, Universal Analytics and GA4, which measure bounce rate differently. Google Analytics uses bounce rate in its Analytics dashboard to help users understand their site’s exit rate. The bounce rate metric looks like this in a UA dashboard. The bounce rate for a page is calculated by taking the number of single-page visits and dividing it by the total number of visits to the site. Google Analytics will stop using Universal Analytics on July 1, 2024. If you click on one of the entries in the table, you can get more specific details about that page. You can use advanced search to narrow down the search results by adding inclusions, exclusions, or dimensions and metrics to the report's data set. The bottom line is still the same though: You want your visitors to land on your page and take some action. To exclude /home from your Google Analytics report, use the advanced search form. To customize the report, use the pencil icon on the top right portion of your screen. To include bounce rate, click “Add metric” at the very bottom of the report. Click and drag the six dots beside the “Bounce rate” to move it up so that it’s one of the first columns. Google has a Mobile Friendly Test to see how your site preforms on mobile devices. You can also use Google Chrome to see what your page looks like on different devices. To enable compression on your webpages, download a plugin like PageSpeed Ninja or TinyPNG to keep your image sizes small. If the URL isn't usable on mobile, you can go to the "Details" section to learn why it isn't. The report will give you specific recommendations. For example, in this case, it might show that there are uncompressed pages on the site. If you want to reduce the number of visitors who leave your pages prematurely, you should add links to other content within your site. Internal links are also beneficial for optimization because they allow Google to find and comprehend the different pages on your domain. Write your content in a way that is easy to read, dividing it into small, manageable sections. Use brief paragraphs and sentences, and employ plenty of white space to give your content room to breathe. Use subheadings and keep paragraphs relatively short to make your work simpler to read. Stick to one main idea per sentence. Creating a table of contents for your article can help show the reader what topics will be covered and allow them to easily navigate to the section they are most interested in. You can also make your article more appealing by writing it in a way that entices the reader to continue reading, similar to how a movie trailer encourages someone to watch a movie. Additionally, you can use a tool like Semrush's Keyword Overview to determine the intent behind a specific keyword search.

(source: https://www.semrush.com/blog/bounce-rate)