Site Critique - Feedback needed. Have high bounce rate. Why?

[tdisraeli]

Originally Posted by Mike-N-Tosh

I don't know what type of stats that you are looking at, however you need to look at the referrers stats. (ie: where did the visitor come from to get to your site?)

This is the question of the thread in my opinion. I once paid a firm to generate traffic for a site of mine; not a classifieds site. Within 12 hours my numbers were through the roof...Thousands and thousands of page views. What was my bounce rate??? 96%.

I checked my referer links like was mentioned in this thread and discovered that thet were being generated by 'shell/dummy' sites that this company just used to generate traffic in some way. I realized this after searching the page that generated the link and there was NO link to my site. They said it was from the day before but since my tracking let's me check stats to the second I called their bluff. And yes, I got my $500 refunded.

I now hyper target my marketing efforts and average a 20% bounce rate.

Just my 1/2 cent.