Does your website do what it needs to rank well and generate more business? Examine the right metrics and understand what they mean to find out!

If you sell a service, your website is probably content-heavy. It can be tricky to precisely interpret the meaning of metrics for such sites.

Check out some of these top metrics to know in Google Analytics or any other analytics tool you might rely on:

1. Bounce Rate

For service-based companies with lots of content, this is a key metric. A “bounce” is a person who visits just a single page on your website and leaves. Also called “pogo-sticking,” a high bounce rate means your website visitors aren’t getting what they need from your site. Two culprits are often responsible:

1. You’re not offering the right content
2. You’re writing content that attracts the wrong audience

A typical bounce rate is 40-60%. With e-commerce sites, a higher bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing: people may buy right away and then leave.

So, to fully understand the metric, you need to know the context of your own unique situation.

2. Average Session Duration

When it comes to this number, the higher, the better. Content-heavy websites that sell a service should see visits of at least 1-2 minutes, but again, if you’re e-commerce, session durations are sometimes shorter due to quick purchases.

Nevertheless, e-commerce sites should also offer engaging content such as blogs: pushing you closer to the lower end of the 1-to-2 minute range.

3. Return Visitor Rate (RVR)

Neil Patel discusses this one on his blog, and the thing about this metric is that Google Analytics doesn’t actually calculate it. However, it is valuable. What could be better than someone who visits your website again and again? Out of the millions of websites out there, these consumers chose to come back and visit yours on multiple occasions.

This is a tricky feat.

RVR is simple to calculate. Just go to Google Analytics, add up all your visitors, and divide the total by your number of “returning” visitors.

For perspective, Contently—a content-heavy website for freelancers—boasts a RVR of about 40%. Neil Patel says anything above 30% is good, and we say that if you’re anywhere around 30%, you’re doing spectacular.

In a digital marketing world filled with vanity metrics, be sure to zero in on these three numbers both now and in the future.