Are Click-Through rates & Bounce Rates as Ranking Metrics ?
-
There are lots of articles around but I would prefer to see what everyone here has to say about it.
Are they ranking metrics ( directly or In-directly )?
If they are then how to get it right?
Can i depend on Google In-page analytic?
What is an acceptable Bounce rate for a home page ?
What is an average click through rate for your landing page ?
thanks
-
There are ways to use math to balance CTR based on position (simple ratio and proportion), and search engines may or may not do so. Depends on who you believe.
But, if you look at Dr. Pete's post in Feb on The 2 Metrics that Matter for SEO you will see how dwell time may be more important.Interesting stuff this SEO.
Best
-
And it's only half the story. We changed the page design for a certain page and while the bounce rate has decreased, our conversion rate has also hit the bottom. This is a high-degree equation with so many variables, and you don't even know some of them. I guess that's why there is the A/B testing.
You will have to keep testing.
As for R. Fisher's answer, I would guess (and hope) Google to not take every page on 1st page the same way. We know most searchers don't even scroll (or look) to see beyond top 4-5 results on SERP's. It is normal for any site between 6-10 to have a lower CTR than the sites at 1-5.
-
While they may not be using metrics from your analytics (bounce rate) I would suggest that which sites get clicked in the SERPS and which sites result in visitors returning immediately to the SERPS to click on another result are used by Google. We know that they can detect people returning to the SERPS as they sometimes/used to present you with the option of blocking the site.
From an SEO's perspective this means that it's not just important to rank, but to rank for the right keywords, where the intent and users expectation are going to be satisfied by the page your providing.
Bounce rate can be a bit of a fickle metric - a high bounce rate could mean that the visitor lost the "information scent" when they visited your page (what's in it for me!) or found that the page quickly and efficiently answered their question.
Either way, if the site owners goals is to get the visitor to accomplish some addition action/goal beyond providing information then it's probably not a good sign.
If you page isn't getting the clicks it deserves in the SERPS then, as Robert said, it's time to take a look at the Title/descriptions to make them as compelling as possible and convey the reasons why the searcher needs to click on your entry!
-
Thing is bit scare to change the page layout, if the data is unreliable it could cause the bounce rate to increase and it would cost the client design and development hours. Is there a more accurate tool in the market.
Thanks
-
If you are saying use those analytics to change outcomes, I say do it. Will it necessarily improve the page rank, I don't know that it will. But, if a site owner focuses solely on rank and ignores conversions, what is ranking worth?
-
Dan,
I've seen Matt's piece on this but still see it as a bit counter - intuitive. I think at some level, (maybe not PR per se) I still see a site with bad CTR to a page as moving down. So something is affecting it.
Good answer though,
Robert
-
Thanks Robert,
What do you think about using in-page analytics to improve your page, ive heard that its not reliable. what are your thoughs?
regards,
-
Yes and most likely are the best answers:
Yes in that if you put a new site up and due to freshness a page is on page one, but the meta description does not fit the query and no one is clicking on the SERP link, therefore little or no Click throughs, you are going off the page quickly.
Obviously, especially with black hat SEO, when someone misleads with a meta description and you land on a page that is no where near what you were looking for, you leave in a heartbeat or less - you bounce. So, one mechanism that Google has is to see that for what it is and count that against you. But, if your bounce rate in your vertical is normally around e.g. 50% and you are close to that number, you are likely ok. If you are a bit better you are likely improved.
So, you want good meta descriptions so that you get people to the page and you want great content to keep them there.
We took on a new client about 6 months ago and he was ranking in top 2 to 3 for almost every major kw in his vertical locally. After a new site, better content his CTR is improved by about 25% and his bounce rate by roughly 5 to 10% (45 to 35-40). His pageviews doubled (images I think) and his time on site is up by over a minute.
He now ranks first for almost everything. I think the CTR and Bounce are huge in that result
hope that gives you a reasonable idea.
-
Google claim that they do not use click through rates or bounce rates as ranking metrics. Also, no Google Analytics data is used in the ranking algorithm. Matt Cutts confirmed this in this YouTube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLmO1GE4GvI
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will adjusted bounce rate affect avg time on page?
I recently read Rob Beirne's piece on how and why to set up an adjusted bounce rate in Google Analytics (https://moz.com/blog/adjusted-bounce-rate). I am getting myself ready to talk to our site team about why we should set up an adjusted bounce rate and am anticipating some questions I'd like to be able to answer: 1. Will an adjusted bounce rate improve the accuracy of our avg time on page metrics? 2. Are we able to keep the unadjusted bounce rate in GA as well, so we can compare the two metrics if we ever need to? Does anyone know the answers to these questions? Any help would be much appreciated!
Reporting & Analytics | | seoisfun0 -
Why few pages have more than 100% bounce rate?
Hello All, For my ecommerce site approx more than 30k products I have. In Google Analytic approx daily for few products approx 10-15 products bounce rate show 300%, 200%, 150%, 140%, 125% how? and what is the solution? Product page daily change. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Johny123450 -
Bounce Rate Reduce day by day? how?
Hi, I have implemented enhance ecommerce with tag manager after that all working fine but bounce rate suddenly started reducing. Then again i implemented ehance ecommerce then mobile bounce rate also started reducing. As per me tag assistant showing okay. Can you please check my attached site and let me know the issue? Thanks! John
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Someone mentioned us on facebook and brought 10k clicks to homepage.. how do I find the content?
So this morning our website started to go crazy with hits all coming from Facebook, and I am trying to figure out how I can see who was talking about us? All the traffic landed on one page specifically. When I look in analytics it just shows social, and then I can drill down to see they are coming from facebook, but that's it.
Reporting & Analytics | | DemiGR0 -
Keyword Rank Dip - Estimated Wait Time to Return to Higher Spot?
The organic traffic to our site (fairly new) took a ~50% hit about a month ago due to the drop in our most important keyword. The numbers have come back up and are now exceeding the number before the dip. While this is all fine and dandy, we're still not ranking in the top 50 for our most valuable keyword. We've put out a number of guest post on reputable outside sites and are building a regular cadence of those posts, but my question is, what is the realistic wait time for those organic rankings to increase again?
Reporting & Analytics | | smf434340 -
Previously performing page no longer ranking
The best performing page on my website www.danielalexandra.com/personal-training/ has suddenly completely fallen off the google radar and all of my ranking results for keywords have dropped significantly as a result. My domain is only 4/5 months old but was already becoming relatively competitive and generating some interest until this? Any ideas as to why this may have happened?
Reporting & Analytics | | DAlondon0 -
Will javascript generated links affect my bounce rate?
Hi all, I run a site called Applicable Jobs (http://www.applicablejobs.com) and from analyising my analytics I notice my bounce rate is unusually high at around 85%. I'm keen to get this right down as I've read recently that a high bounce rate is a metric Google uses in determining positioning in the SERPs. I honestly don't think it's the quality of my content because I feel it's genuinely useful to my target audience but I'm wondering if the way my jobs list is generated is causing an issue. At the moment I have my jobs listings generated through javascript so I can have nice effects and use a bit of ajax but if Google crawls it, it obviously won't be able to see the listings. So I'm wondering if when a user comes to the site and they click on one of the job listings, does the Google analytics code recognise that click because that link is generated through javascript? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Benji870 -
Analytics, Traffic and Rankings. Something is wrong, can you answer it? ;-)
So I've been monitoring analytics to see where our clients are ranking for terms that have brought visitors to the site over the last month to find that the website isnt ranking in the top 100 for that keyword. What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think this could happen? One of the keywords has brough over 700 visitors in the last month yet is not in the top 100 for this term. I've also looked Google Webmaster Tools and have found that the exact same term hasn't had 700 impressions let alone 700 click throughs! Weird! Cheers, Sean
Reporting & Analytics | | 0111001101100100