Why You’re Bounce Rate Shouldn’t Keep You Up at Night

People have been questioning whether a relationship between bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who land on your site and return to the referrer after viewing only one page) and search engine rankings exist for some time now.  Despite past signals that Google employees considered bounce numbers too “noisy” to use effectively as part of the site rating process, rumors persist that the search engines are looking at bounce as one factor in the process.

A recent post by David Leonhardt, for instance, builds a case for why people might want to start looking at their bounce numbers if they’re interested in achieving optimal search engine performance.  Leonhardt concludes that high bounce rates will hurt a site’s SEO status:

Cheap sites that do a lot of link-building - bouncy SEO - counting on large volumes of traffic to offset poor conversion rates, will suffer - because the search engines will stop sending them that traffic. 

 It’s just a matter of time.  Or perhaps it has already started.

Leonhardt’s argument has a great deal of prima facie appeal.  It’s well-outlined and features some good reasoning.  However, the information we have from the folks at Google contradict his assessment.

Matt Cutts, the face of Google to those in the SEO blogosphere, recently said:

Without reading the article, I’ll just say that bounce rates would be not only spammable but noisy. A search industry person recently sent me some questions about how bounce rate is done at Google and I was like “Dude, I have no idea about any things like bounce rate. Why don’t you talk to this nice Google Analytics evangelist who knows about things like bounce rate?” I just don’t even run into people talking about this in my day-to-day life.

That seems like compelling evidence that Google isn’t relying on bounce stats in any significant way when it comes to building its search engine results.  

Some people have been pointing to Avinash Kaushik’s (Google’s Analytics Evangelist) remarks on the topic as evidence that bounce may be playing a role in results.  However, if one really reads what Avinash is saying, it appears as though his answers are more about how Google Analytics defines “bounce” than it is about how Google’s algorithm uses the metric to determine rankings.

Adam Lasnick, one of the Google Search crew has also given us a pretty strong indication that there are more important things to worry about than bounce rates:

If you’re talking about bounce rates in the context of Google web search and webmaster-y issues, then we really don’t have specific guidance on bounces per se; rather, the key for webmasters is to make users happy so they find your site useful, bookmark your site, return to your site, recommend your site, link to your site, etc. Pretty much everything we write algorithmically re: web search is designed to maximize user happiness, so anything webmasters do to increase that is likely to improve their site’s presence in Google.

It is possible that bounce rates could influence search engine results, but it’s unlikely that they do so in any meaningful way.  Additionally, the people at Google are bright enough to realize that traditional bounce isn’t always a negative.  They understand the concept of blogs, for instance, that only display one post per page and that people may visit for only that story.  They know there are good one-page sites designed to accomplish particular goals.  They’re also bright enough to realize that all bounces aren’t created equally.  If they are examining bounce, you can bet their also evaluating the length of time that transpires between a visit’s start and the subsequent visitor departure.

The bottom line?  Don’t worry too much about bounce from the SEO perspective.  Obviously, lower bounce rates are preferable for multi-page sites for a host of very good reasons.  SEO, however, doesn’t necesarily seem to be among them.

 

SEO Hats

If you want to attract search engines and more online traffic, then don’t forget to watch out for those ‘black hat’ techniques and avoid them at all costs. Black hat SEO is not only unethical, it’s just plain poor judgment. Using a strategy that neglects to follow the rules for proper online etiquette, that leads the site visitor to a poor experience and great disappointment, and that goes against what is considered appropriate for online marketing, may be a way to quickly gain a visitor, but more quickly, lose a potential customer and everyone they talk to in their community.

The worst thing you can do is Read more

SEO Guidelines

Serious SEO takes consistent and persistent attention. You can’t simply create your website, sit back, and wait. You have to be active with what’s going on in the world of online marketing and new technology.

But there are some simple things you can do to make sure your website is ranking high enough in the SERPs. Read more

Organize for SEO

SEO requires that you create a website that is easy for the search engines to find AND to evaluate. Keep in mind that search engines don’t really know how to navigate and understand a website filled with lots of graphics, JavaScript links and menus, and tons of forms or questionnaires. They like to see lots of words - keyword rich, relevant, unique words!
Of course, a website just filled with words is boring and unappealing to your target audience. A balance of content that includes keyword rich articles and information, along with relevant graphics and design is important.Some tips to help you make your website “search friendly” include: Read more

Welcome Seasonal Shoppers

Have you ever noticed that the things people search for in November and December are quite different than other times of the year. But you have probably also noticed that the searches for November and December from year to year are somewhat similar. 

If you keep the ’seasonal’ search terms Read more

Optimize Landing Pages

The economic tide still hasn’t turned yet and people are tightening their belts even more when it comes to spending. Whether you’re managing an online or an offline business, you can attest to the fact that there has been a slow-down in sales of most products and services.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can save money by dicontinuing your pay per click strategies for your online business. At least not until you’ve evaluated your success with PPC. If you stop and evaluate what PPC is doing for your business, you may find Read more

SERPS and Other Traffic Attractors

Moving to the top in search engine results pages (SERPS) is a way to attract more traffic and potential customers to your website. It all starts with the basic strategy of optimizing keywords and keyword phrases to attract the search engines.  But don’t mistake a high page rank according to SERPS as the best or only way to increase traffic.

SERPS are just one way to bring in traffic, but search engines themselves are more focused in evaluating your content to ensure relevancy, depth, and continual refreshment of content than just directing traffic to you. That’s what they are really starved for and websites that offer all of this will rise quicker in the SERPS. And that’s why you need to have a multi-faceted strategy to really succeed. Search engines will reward you for attracting traffic in a variety of ways.

Capitalizing on content is a great way to optimize your search results and gain those relevant clicks that are most likely to convert to paying customers. Read more

Optimize PPC Campaigns

I’ve received a few questions lately about optimizing the pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for websites. It seems that some people aren’t getting the traffic they expected, so I thought I’d give you a few valuable tips on making the most of the PPC strategy.

After talking with a couple of these online marketers, I found out that they haven’t taken advantage of the tools to help them refine keywords or wrap keywords effectively. In one case, adding negative keywords made a difference almost instantly.

First of all, PPC will only be as effective Read more

One-way Linking Strategies

Incoming links are great for your website and can help you increase your search engine ranking. But you need to make sure you have the “right kind” of incoming links. Although reciprocal links are good, one-way links are better.

The old way of linking had everyone exchanging links. Search engines have become more intelligent now and they want to find links that are based on the quality, content, and integrity of a site. That is most often indicated by a one-way link. Since you have no reciprocal link, the search engines assume that the linking site found you valuable for reasons other than ‘reciprocating’.

So, how do you get other sites to link to you without Read more

Effective Submission of Sites to Search Engines

If you’re wondering how to avoid those costly fees with resubmitting your website to search engines, you’re not alone. People pay a lot of money for companies to do this for them monthly. But I’ve recently seen some articles and information about whether or not this is really necessary. And I’ve learned a lot about resubmitting to search engines.

I do believe that resubmitting your website to search engines is a good strategy for online marketers. But the frequency and the process can differ and you can still get good results. After all, once you’ve submitted your website to search engines, they will eventually find you if you have relevant links from other sites – especially authority sites. This helps to keep your site on the map too.

But you always want to optimize Read more

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