How the bounce rate of your website can affect your Google rankings

Does Google use the bounce rate of a web page to specify the position of that page in the search results? What does this mean for your website rankings and what can you do to get a better bounce rate?

What is the bounce rate?

There are two definitions: the bounce rate of your website is the percentage of visitors who see just one page of your website or the percentage of visitors who stay on your site for a small amount of time (only a few seconds).

The bounce rate helps you to measure the quality of traffic that your website gets and it also helps you to find out where your web pages could be improved.

Google’s definition of the bounce rate

The Google Analytics documentation defines the bounce rate as follows:

“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.”

This Google definition already indicates that Google thinks that web pages with a high bounce rate aren’t relevant to website visitors. If your web pages have a high bounce rate for a search term, Google might lower the rankings of your website for that search term.

Does Google use the bounce rate as a ranking factor?

Google has the ability to collect the bounce rate with the Google toolbar and Google Analytics. In addition, Google can measure the time between visits to their search engine by the same user and they can use the Google Chrome browser to measure the complete surfing behavior of users.

Last month, a webmaster performed a test that showed a significant ranking change as a result of a significant bounce rate change. The test is not very conclusive but chances are that Google really uses the bounce rate as a ranking factor.

The bounce rate alone might not be used by Google but combined with other factors, it could have an effect on the rankings. For example, Google could measure how many people start a new search for the same topic after visiting your web page. That would be an indicator that your website is not suitable for the chosen keyword.

What can you do to lower the bounce rate of your web pages?

A high bounce rate is usually a sign of a low quality web page. This means that your web page either doesn’t offer what the visitor is searching for or the usability of your web page isn’t good.

If you improved the contents and the usability of your web pages, you might lower your bounce rate from 75% to 65%. This would lead to a remarkable 40% increase in conversions (35 out of 100 visitors now stay on your website instead of 25 out of 100 visitors).

In addition to improving the usability of your web pages, you can lower your bounce rate by tailoring your landing pages to the keywords and ads that you run. If your landing pages offer the information that the searchers are looking for then you will get a lower bounce rate.

Lowering the bounce rate of your web pages has two major benefits: it’s likely that you will get more visitors from search engines and you will get a higher conversion rate. The only exceptions to the scenario above are one page websites and web pages that offer very compelling content on a single web page (for example Wikipedia pages).

Search engines use many more ranking factors than just the bounce rate. If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you should make sure that your web pages offer all elements that are necessary to get high rankings.

How To Select The Right Keywords For SEO

Keywords selection is a very important process before you start applying SEO to your website. This is because without proper keyword planning, your SEO effort will not bring you any conversion as visitors to your site are not targeted at all. Relevancy is the key here.

When you are doing your keyword research, it is important for you to choose the most relevant keywords for your business. Basically, keywords can be categorized into 3 types, which are: Too Hot Keywords, Just Right Keywords, and Too Cold Keywords. “Too Hot Keywords” are words like “florists”, “translation”, or “gifts”. These types of keywords are too generic, which do not seem to be targeted enough to get conversions. These keywords usually bring in high search volume (which is naturally tempting to optimize) but the conversion may not be as ideal as targeting keywords which falls into the “Just Right” category.  By optimizing those “Just Right” keywords, you can get more targeted traffic to your website and increase the chance of conversions.

For SEO, it does make more sense to target keywords that fall in the Just Right category. As for “Too Cold Keywords”, they are usually long-tail key phrases like “corporate gifts for any event and budget”. When SEO is done correctly, you will get traffic from the long tail phrases due to the overall targeted keyword theme. So what do I mean by targeted keyword theme?

In order to achieve a targeted keyword theme, it really depends on the content that you put on your website. Unique, informative and keyword targeted content is something that you need in order to succeed in SEO. This is because long tail keywords usually take up 60% – 70% of overall organic traffic of a website and it is something every optimizer must capitalize on. So when your website overall content revolves around a particular theme (for example: if you run a SEO consultancy firm, you should come up with articles that talk about SEO methodology, keyword selection and anything that you can think of with regards to SEO.) Although the traffic from long tail are spilled-overs from page 3, 4 or 5 of the SERPs, these traffic are very targeted and may result in conversions.

The bad new is that an optimizer will not be able to predict what kinds of long tail keywords that searchers will use. Therefore, long tail SEO can only be done by targeting the right keyword theme and creating relevant content.

When coming up with long tail content, just treat yourself as an educator. Write informative articles to educate your target market about the product or service that you are providing. In this case, you will be able to move your prospects that are in the research phase to the buying phase, which increases your chance of conversions.

Increase your sales with less traffic

Search engine optimization is not about getting as much traffic as possible. It’s about getting the right kind of website traffic. Sometimes, less traffic can be better.

Many website visitors aren’t necessarily a good thing

Many webmasters try to get as many visitors as possible. They join traffic exchange programs and they optimize their web pages for keywords that have very many searches.

Unfortunately, getting as much traffic as possible is not the right strategy for a successful website. Traffic that doesn’t convert is useless traffic. If your website has thousands of visitors but only a few sales then you have done something wrong.

Why less traffic can be better

If you want to succeed with your website, you have to focus on the conversion rate of your web pages. A website with a good conversion rate will do much better than a website with many visitors. Here’s an example:

• Tom’s website gets 10,000 unique visitors because it has a #1 ranking for the keyword “buy inexpensive brown shoes”. The conversion rate is 2%.
• Peter’s website gets 1,000,000 unique visitors because it has a #1 ranking for the much more popular keyword “shoes”. The conversion rate is .02%

Both websites will get 200 conversions. But why does Peter’s website get the same number of conversions as Tom’s although it has 100 times the number of visitors?

There can be several reasons for this. For example, Peter’s keyword “shoes” is very general. People looking for one-word keywords usually aren’t interested in purchasing. They are looking for general information about a general topic.

Peter’s landing page also might have a poor design. His website might not offer what the searcher is looking for. That is very likely if the visitor found the website through a one-word keyword.

Tom’s keyword “buy inexpensive brown shoes” is very targeted. Web surfers who use that keyword know what they’re looking for and they are ready to buy. That means that Tom needs fewer visitors to get a sale.

Multiply your revenue without working more

Four word keywords such as “buy inexpensive brown shoes” have much less competition than one-word keywords such as “shoes”. That means that it is much easier to get top rankings for these longer keywords.

Suppose it takes Tom five hours of optimization per month to maintain the #1 ranking. Each working hour costs $100. That means that Tom spends $500 per month.

To maintain the #1 ranking for the one-word keyword “shoes”, Peter has to invest 30 hours per month because it is much more work to get and maintain high rankings for such a competitive keyword. Peter’s working hour also costs $100, that means that the spends $3000 per month.

As explained above, both websites get 200 conversions. If each conversion is worth $15 then Tom has a ROI (return-on-investment) of 600% for every dollar spent on search engine optimization. Peter has a ROI of 100%.

If Peter had not invested his 30 hours in a single keyword but in optimizing 6 good converting four-word keywords that each needs 5 hours then he would have multiplied his revenue by 6 without working more.

What can you do to increase your conversion rate?

You can do the following to improve your conversion rate:

• Do not waste your time for getting vanity rankings. It makes no sense to get high rankings for one-word keywords.
• Optimize your web pages for multiple-word keywords that attract visitors that are ready to buy.
• Make sure that your landing pages contain a clear call to action and that the content of your landing pages is related to the optimized keyword.
• Make sure that your website has a professional look so that potential buyers aren’t turned off.

Search engine optimization is not about getting visitors. It is about getting conversions. Search engine optimization is about creating conversion paths for the traffic that comes from search engines. If you optimize your web pages for the right keywords then you’ll save a lot of time and you’ll get more conversions.