Does Having A High PPC Bounce Rate Affect Organic SERPs?

[OctopusHR]

Hi Mozzers.

My website uses a landing page for Google Adwords traffic targeting keywords like HR Software, HR Systems etc. The design of the landing page is similar to our website but a key difference is that, being a landing page, we've removed the navigation (it is still possible to navigate to the main website by clicking on the logo). We've A/B tested this and found that by removing the navigation we get more people converting/signing up for the free trial of our service.

We track conversions using Google Analytics. Depending on the keyword the conversion rate is between 2.5% and 5%. However, because we've removed the navigation the bounce rate is really high, circa 80% for our landing page compared to an average for our website of approx 40%.

Would having such a high bounce rate harm our organic rankings for the rest of the website?

Thanks

[OctopusHR]

Thanks for your great answer David. Just to make sure I've understood this right...

In your opinion would a high volume of people pogo sticking back to the SERPs after clicking on a paid ad adversely affect the organic search performance of the rest of the site? Or do Google discount this high bounce rate for paid ads?

[DavidKonigsberg]

No his ppc setup is made to funnel his users to fill out the lead form which causes a high bounce rate while increasing his ppc ads effectiveness.

[JCurrier]

Maybe this is a little beyond my knowledge, but why would a PPC ad be designed to have a high bounce rate? How does that help get more leads? I get that it would probably be much higher than an organic result bounce rate. And, that it doesn't effect the SEO of the rest of the site.

My comment about optimization of the ad was in regards to the fact that if an ad has a high bounce rate, wouldn't that mean that it is potentially not converting well? So, the traffic arriving to the landing page is not seeing the offer as a fit for what they are searching for.

[DavidKonigsberg]

His bounce rate is high because he is running a Ppc lead gen and it is designed to have a high bounce rate to get more leads. You have nothing to worry about from a SEO perspective this is the way its done.

[JCurrier]

Chris,

I think all of the previous advice is great in regards to your bounce rate. David makes a good point regarding search engines measuring bounce in organic listings by a searcher returning to the search results, and not with analytics data.

I'd be interested in knowing what happened to your traffic when you still had the navigation on the page. Were the searching your site for more information on your company? Checking out your blog? Where were they going on your site?

Also, if you are experiencing a high bounce rate, this could be an indicator that your ad is not optimized. Which is essentially costing you money.

[DavidKonigsberg]

In my opinion this should not hurt you at all because google doesn't use analytics data for their algorithm. All the talk you hear about bounce rates etc effecting seo in my opinion tends to be from google searches that pogo stick back to the search results after an unsatisfied search.

Unless you think that google is using analytics data in their ranking factors and there are those that do and dont use analtics or chrome and wear tin foil hats to make sure they are safe.

Best of luck

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Chris,

There is a chance this could happen. I have seen a high bounce rate affect the whole site (probably for many different reasons). However, this was a site that then was given a manual penalty because of what they were trying to do, but it wasn't that dissimilar to yours.

-Andy

[GregB123]

If it is a landing page ONLY for PPC, and regular organic searchers should not be going there, then you could just noindex that page. I think that will make it's bounce and other stats not count towards the rest of the site...