High Bounce Rates On Web Pages Can Hurt Your Web Pages’s SEO
As we all know, Google wants fast web page upload time and relevant content. But the grape vine now indicates that Google will soon keep tabs on and penalize web pages with high bounce rates. Some think this is good because it will eliminate fluff and web pages that fool users. Others think it is unfair because the time users spend on a web page cannot be controlled and is not 100% indicative of a web page’s content: After all, web surfers may get distracted and exit a very relevant, high-content web page simply because the movie is starting and the popcorn is hot.
What do you think? Do you think this is fair? Do you have any better solutions? And mostly, what are you willing to do about it to back up your opinion? Protest to Google?
Well I have heard that Google is already using bounce rate as a factor in determining SERPS. It is obviously important to make sure your anchor text is relevant to your landing page content. This means your content must have value or your sales copy better be converting.
If Google is already doing this with pay-per-click, via click through rate, etc. and ranking paid advertisers on their sales copy, it makes sense that hey’d do it for organic search results.
They’re trying to provide valuable content for viewers, high bounce rates mean the value just isn’t there.
Stephan Bevan
Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization Strategist
www . adventurecapitalism . ca
I’m glad that someone is starting to address this issue. I think it works two ways. On the one hand, Google wants to be sure that users searching for relevant content get strong information, and the time users spend on any given web page does matter because it indicates a certain amount of interest.
On the other hand, a user may exit the web page within 10 seconds because the web page clearly gave the user the relevant information so fast that no further time was required to stay on that web page.
I only hope that Google uses their logarithms in a way that fairly differentiates between fast exit times based on successful information, and fast exit times due to lousy content.
Time will tell.