Engagement - but high bounce rate?
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
I certainly am a team player.
Thank you for the advice, but not what I was looking for.
Anyone else?
-
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.
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
-
Moz bot not discovering important links (high DA sites link)
Moz bot is unable to crawl and discover my links on the high authority websites like microsoft, linkedin, pinterest, etc. Where is the problem?
Link Building | | TechG0 -
Can high SERPS and/or social signals minimize Google penalties and a back linking removal question
As I am continually sizing up my competition in the SERPS I have scanned their sites with a fine tooth and comb. I have found that these sites practice in the very things that I have practiced in the past and have removed thinking that may be some of the reasons I was hit with Penguin. Some of these factors are: Link Scheme with sites they own (C Blocks) Content for Search Engines (Keyword rich text) Exact anchor text in back linking profile Yet even though my competition practices in these methods (One site even places exact anchor text in the footer and header of every page for one of their other forum site) they seem to have not even been touched with any of the recent updates. In fact it seems their ranking have increased. In scanning these sites the only major difference that I have been able to see between them and I is that their SERPS are higher than mine and they have way more social signals than me. One site has about 73k facebook likes where I only have about 300. My question is Can Google ignore penalties for sites that have higher SERPS and /or social signals that would effect another site that had lower ones? My other question is related to back links My main site has links from another site I built a long time ago (Pre SEO and not knowing what I was doing) somewhere in the 73k range. Obviously a HUGE signal to Google that this might be spam and I am aware. I have removed the links from that site but unfortunately the average crawl rate per day is very low so it is taking a very long time for Google to find those pages and re-crawl them to find the links gone. Since that site I have than has those links pointing to my main site has very low traffic I am totally willing to kill that entire site with a 404. Can this help speed up the removal of those links from that site? I figure since the site no longer exists all links from that site will be removed almost immediately from my main site. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Good Link VS Bad Bounce Rate what wins?
Hi all, this is only my second question on SEOmoz since becoming a member over three months ago so sorry if it’s a little bit basic. As small part of one of our websites promotion we have been giving really good advice on good authority blogs/forums related to our product website. One of the sites we have offered advice on is from a US website and we added a link to our guide for the problem to our UK site. In hindsight the product solution is not branded the same in the US so our bounce rate is over 90%. So the question is when is a link from a related site not worth the high percentage bounce rate?
Link Building | | jtay1230 -
How to out rank well with category page for high competitive keyword?
This is really silly question to ask over here! But, I have to drop my mind bubble after long R & D and efforts! Right now, I am working on Patio Umbrellas keyword and want to out rank with following landing page. http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas I have implemented too many ways on this page since January 2012. Right now, my website is in top 20 position with this keyword. I want to achieve top 10 ranking with Patio Umbrellas keyword. Now, I have certain limitation to make changes on web page. This is client requirement. So, I have to drill down more with link building. I have started work on link building on since February 2012 and rank well with keyword. Now, I'm searching for link building way which help me to improve ranking in short time frame. I don't want to do any single activity on this page which is UN-productive for me. If you have any on page inputs so it may help me more. SEOmoz is really big source to search and justify answer but, I want to add expert advice in it. Thanks,
Link Building | | CommercePundit0 -
How to find high PR & Domain authority websites to build links?
Hi Guys, Please can you help me if you can. How to find high PR & Domain authority websites to build links? I really want to learn as much as I can from link building, but I am not sure how to find out how to find high PR websites to build links from.. Can any help me?? Thanks Gareth
Link Building | | GAZ090 -
I am seeking a high quality sites to submit articles for free in order to get links. Can you recommend me on those sites?
I am seeking a high quality sites to submit articles for free in order to get links. Can you recommend me on those sites?
Link Building | | yoavm0 -
Need ideas to get do follow links from highly competative niche "wedding"
I need to get high quality do-follow links and my target market/keyword is ‘Maui wedding’ and a few others. Because it is such a competitive market I am having a hard time getting links from local companies providing Maui Weddings (I know why because they are my competitors) and national companies sites aren't much help because they are trying to provide leads to their advertisers. I would like do-follow links from non-paid sources any ideas or resources you could help with would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Link Building | | photoseo10 -
What is the typical response rate and success rate for email link requests?
What is considered the normal response rate and success rate of acquiring a link through email link requests?
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0