Engagement - but high bounce rate?

[Meier]

Hey gang.

So I am a writer/amateur SEO/outreach guy for my agency.

We have a client that fixes garage doors only in the the city of Portland Oregon.

I wrote him a blog (this is not the real title) Called 5 ways to fix my garage door fast.

It is doing pretty well and getting over a thousand visitors a month. But we all know that people coming to that blog could be from anywhere in the world, and most likely are not going to purchase garage door repair service from my client.

We all know that. And that's why the page has a 98% bounce rate, but an overall good time on page.

My superior sat me down and told me that I have to stop writing content like this, because all the content we write should be location focused.

He said having a high bounce rate like that is actually bad for the site and is not helping at all.

What do you guys think?

Is he spot on?

Thank you!

[Meier]

Thank you for that suggestion.

I believe the more keywords you rank for and the more traffic you get to your site, the higher your authority will be, and the easier it will be to rank for the KW's you want.

[brettmandoes]

98% bounce rate is more indicative of ghost spam in your analytics than actual users. Moz writes a great article about what ghost spam is and how to stop it here: https://moz.com/blog/stop-ghost-spam-in-google-analytics-with-one-filter

A high bounce rate isn't helping the site, so at best it's a null effect, at worst your superior is correct and it's impacting your rankings. Again, Moz has a great article on the topic: https://moz.com/blog/traffic-engagement-metrics-their-correlation-to-google-rankings
From the article: "**Bounce rate: **At first glance, with a correlation of -0.08, the correlation between bounce rate and rankings may seem out-of-whack, but this is not the case. Keep in mind that lower bounce rate is often a good indication of user engagement. Therefore, we find as bounce rates rise (something we often try to avoid), rankings tend to drop, and vice-versa."

Keep in mind that's measuring correlation, not causation. As no one has been able to prove that Google uses engagement metrics as ranking signals we cannot definitely say whether or not bounce rate has a direct impact, but for obvious reasons we want to keep bounce rate low.

I hope this answers your question more fully.

[Meier]

I certainly am a team player.

Thank you for the advice, but not what I was looking for.

Anyone else?

[brettmandoes]

Your client is a small business owner whose concern is in bringing in quality leads that are going to turn into customers. The strategy your superior wants you to follow is in line with your client's business objectives of bringing in leads with a local SEO strategy. At the end of the day, whether or not you bring in leads from organic sources is what your client is going to judge your performance on.

Whether your superior is technically right or not doesn't truly matter here. What matters is your client, and he's counting on you and your team to grow his business with a competitive local SEO strategy. Be a team player, and focus on the strategies that will bring him quality leads.