Can a 100% bounce rate page hurt whole website?

[Berner]

Hello,

So with trying to figure out what I can do to better my website, I noticed a post on here that mentioned bounce rates.

So I went to my Google analytics pages and listed my bounce rates. My average is 44%

But I have a picture page that is 100% and a contact page that is 80%

Can pages like this cause an algo penalty that could hurt a whole site?

Thank you for your valuable insights

[SeenDigital.co.uk]

Another point I was considering...

If Google only counts click backs to the results as a bounce does that mean bounces caused by external link clicks are ignored in the ranking factor?

For instance, say you have an affiliate site where the bounce rate is high because people are clicking your affiliate links and leaving your site. This would be a good thing if you're an affiliate.

But you look at your analytics and see the bounce rate is high and start to panic thinking that google will demote you for having a high bounce rate.

But in actual fact Google is only looking at the rate at which users return back to the serps which might not be high at all, and ignoring those external link clicks which are causing a high bounce rate in analytics.

And therefore you needn't worry about your high analytics bounce rate.

I guess it's the type of bounce that counts when it comes to google rankings

[SeenDigital.co.uk]

Isn't analytics bounce rate ignored by Google with regards to rankings?

Isn't it the rate at which visitors return back to the search results that Google looks at?

No amount of analytics manipulation will change that. Only usability..

[JaneCopland]

Just adding to this thought - it really is about context. I suspect that bounce rate is used very carefully and that Google tries to add context, given that a bounce on an informative article and a bounce on an opening hours page are very different. If you believe the pages should either attract further clicks, conversions or longer periods spent on page, then 60% is a worry.

I would never go as far as to say that you will ever be "penalised" for bounce rate - keep in mind that bounce rate should also be easy to fake, either for positive or negative consequences, for a website or a competitor. Google tends to weigh lightly factors that can be easily influenced. It would not be very hard to fake a high bounce rate from real-looking visitors on a competitor's website if you wanted to - you could do it with automated activity or use something like Mechanical Turk. As such, Google can't put too much weight in things that are too easy to manipulate. Hence why they put more weight in backlinks than in on-page mark-up, etc.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Guy's

you referenced a 100% bounce rate on a few pages this will hurt your site.

If the pages are worthless to your visitors you should try to improve them and try to figure out exactly why your visitors are leaving 100% of the time. If there pages that are not full of content that is worth reading or something that is obviously junk I recommend you nofollow no index them.

A gallery page may load somewhat slower than a page with only text on it however that is no excuse you need to accelerate your site if that is the case.

If people find a page is running slowly then you must fix it.

You can take your photos that are not transparent on parts of them and make them into JPEG's then use a program called  JPEGmini.com in order to shrink the size of the photograph down to something reasonable.

our recommend running your homepage and problem pages through the tool below.

http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

This link also will give you a lot of insight on how to properly speed up your site.

I believe there more easily to digest format.

http://www.feedthebot.com/pagespeed/

Check your problem pages for issues with the crawler here also check your entire site for issues that will be highlighted when you run the tool's

http://www.feedthebot.com/

four very general page speed issues check out using all three tools

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

http://www.webpagetest.org/

if you find your photos/gallery page is loading extremely slow then you must take steps to fix it. If you find your contact us page is loading extremely slow you must take steps to fix that as well.

It sounds to me like your entire site possibly could be loading very slow I do not know.

However you can speed up most sites using Google page speed and a decent hosting company.

Something inexpensive and fast would be digital ocean or Linode

add google page speed via

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/

Who ever gave me the thumbs down I do not understand why. Maybe I should have been more clear on what proto sticking is.

http://moz.com/blog/solving-the-pogo-stick-problem-whiteboard-friday

Then this is a link to help make your site more user-friendly.

the UX of the site is going to make a difference and rather not you funnel people to the right pages may be the contact us page is almost never look that however it should be coming up in search for your address or phone number. I would recommend adding schema if it is not there. Here are some tips on how to make fix ux problems

http://moz.com/academy/on-page-content-ux

Travis makes a good point where people may not go to the contact us page because your phone number is displayed in the top right hand corner of the site however most people in my opinion still go to the contact us page regardless.

Having a bounce rate that you are talking about really needs to be solved because as shown in the whiteboard Friday video linked above it will drag down your site in the eyes of Google.

Berner

if you feel comfortable sharing your link I would be happy to take a look at it if you do not you are welcome to send it to me via private message and I agree again with Travis that the 60% bounce rate is extremely high. However, I do not know your industry is I do not know what your site does so honestly I cannot tell you without being able to see it.

It sounds to me like the site is not very user-friendly how many people do have going To your site?

could you tell me what are your top pages the ones people land on most?

Many times the contact us page is up there. If you want people to contact you on your website and that is the goal of the business obviously you should use multiple tactics in order to do this. However,

I would want to have a very low bounce rate my contact us page.

All the best,

Thomas

[Travis_Bailey]

If you get much above 60% for a general page, you should start wondering what you're not doing so well. When it comes to a contact page, and you have given them phone numbers et al, there is very little need to be worried. When people find what they need, they stop clicking.

Conversely, when people don't find what they need they stop clicking as well.

All of this is based on context. I can only generally answer the question without a concrete example.

[Berner]

Thank you Travis

So would you say that I should be concerned then?

I am just at wits end trying to figure out what to do next. I figured maybe a bad bounce rate could be causing some of this issue.

A part of me says burn the site down, and start fresh, but I have branding and friends that know us. Some say they never recover, some say wait it out.

Its frustrating for sure.

Thank you again Travis for your insights

[Travis_Bailey]

The picture page may load pretty slow, or the 'ranking' picture in Google image search may not be in the immediate view. The contact page is another thing, if there is a number to call, maybe they got it. That's not a bad thing.

If there are alternate means of communicating to the client in their industry, make sure to include that as well. It may not help your bounce rate on the contact page, but you have definitely helped your client.

[Berner]

Thank you Thomas

I had just noticed these pages that had high bounce rates and wondered if I deleted these pages if it would indeed help my page rankings if indeed a few 100% bounce rate pages can take down a whole site.

I am unsure if I have a panda or penguin penalty. I have disavowed bad links, and removed a bunch.

Yet now I am looking at page content. I have 2 pages posting bad bounce rates, yet I want every I to be dotted and T crossed.

So I truly appreciate your insight as you are the expert, and I greatly value your time.

[BlueprintMarketing]

If you are the site has pages which are pogo sticking and getting extremely high bounce rates as you have discussed.

Then yes it can hurt those pages most however if you affect the page you affect the site as well.

I am not saying that two pages are going to destroy your site however it is something you should look at having the  bad pages re-created so that it is more end-user friendly.

I hope that helps,

Thomas