Try as we might, it is impossible to build a website or social media presence that is interesting to all. Not everybody who will stumble across your brand will have interest in what it is offering, but a well-tailored effort involving SEO and various forms of marketing generally ensures that most people who find you are looking for what you have to offer. Whenever a business or brand notices via their analytics that a high bounce rate – the number of people who are quickly leaving a website after arriving – is present, it can be worrisome. Bounce rates can affect how prominently you rank in search and also reflect how large groups of people feel about your web presence. We’ll get to the bottom of what is causing your high bounce rate so that you can take immediate action.

Your Links Are Broken

Perhaps the biggest reason for high bounce rates is related not to the quality of your content, but the accessibility of it. Broken links and pages can cause your bounce rate to spike dramatically. Whether you have just migrated your website and forgot to update your URL structure, have shifted around some pages or recently deleted some irrelevant content, this leads to the same result: increased bounce rates. You’ll want to use your analytics solution to find out which pages are not being accessed by crawlers that are pinging for SEO. Once you’ve identified all of the trouble pages, you can quickly resolve the issue and lower that bounce rate immediately.

Obnoxious Advertisements

There isn’t a bigger put-off for first-time visitors than to see a bunch of aggressive, obnoxious ads all over your page. When the lines are blurred between content and advertisements, many people feel incensed and immediately leave the page, looking for a viable option elsewhere. If your website is currently littered with all types of ads that make it look more like a newspaper classified section than a useful resource, then this very well may be affecting your bounce rate. At the same time, it is also likely affecting your ad revenue: the more ads you place, the more people you immediately turn off, and the fewer people who actually remain to click on any. Tone down the ads and you’ll likely reduce your bounce rate.

Slow Website

If your website is slow to load – whether it’s to due with your unoptimized content management system or due to your hosting provider – then expect many to immediately bounce. Especially in the world of mobile  devices and blazingly fast internet connections, most people are not going to wait more than a few seconds for any one page to appear. If you cannot deliver content to your visitors rapidly, then somebody else will fill that niche. All of that hard work in pinging for SEO will be flushed down the toilet if visitors who find you cannot quickly access your content. There are a number of optimization tools available that can improve page loading times. It may also be necessary to procure a new hosting solution if the broader problem is provider-related.

There are dozens of tiny, individual elements that may be contributing to a higher bounce rate, but these three often are the biggest culprits. By improving page loading speed, removing ridiculous ads and fixing any broken links, you can usually expect your bounce rates to come down almost immediately.