Ranking #1 but Bounce Rate is 90%?!
-
Hi Mozers,
We have a page that's ranking #1 for several very high volume queries but the bounce rate is 90%.
It's puzzling that the page is ranking so well even though the bounce rate is exceedingly high. The algorithm takes user engagement metrics into account so you would think that it those metrics would push the page down.
Having said that, the page does have lots of backlinks. So maybe it's ranking despite the fact that people are clicking out?
Does anyone have an idea?
Thanks,
Yael
-
I find the bounce rate can vary greatly on what type of page it is.
If it's a landing page for a nice bit of hero content, 90% is a lot and it's possible there's something blocking users from achieving what they were hoping to do on your page. But if you're looking specifically at blog/article content you do tend to see pages that are ranking well with bounce rates between 70-90%.
A lot of the time this means there's nothing wrong with the page, the user has just gone "Hey great, this page has answered my question" and left. You might be able to gauge whether this is the case by looking at time spent on page - if people are reading your content this should show it and it's a ranking factor in itself, so as long as your page is answering people's queries and they're taking the time to read it, you might find it stays in its current position.
Here's a simple, but often forgotten tip for lowering down bounce rates: make sure you're actually giving the user somewhere to go after visiting your page. If there's another relevant piece of content on your site that might help broaden their understanding of the topic or what seems like the next logical step in the 'user journey', make sure it gets a link on the page somewhere that it's likely to be seen, whether it's at the end of the page or in its own CTA that stands out.
Hope that helps!
-
Hey there Yael,
Take a look at Rands insights about Searcher Task Accomplishment to discount this as a possible cause. It's rare to hear people questioning good positions not bemoaning bad ones - but I also have done lots of thinking about implicit user feedback and trying to correlate time on site, scroll depth and bounce rate with rankings.
The upshot of my research is that Rand really has something in his video. I implemented Adjusted Bounce Rate in GA and found that people were spending time scrolling and reading my articles that were ranking with a high traditional bounce rate (90%+) but a low adjusted one (17%)
I suggest you take a look at getting more accurate bounce stats by using GTM to set up goals for scroll depth and time on page. It will send an event when a user does something that google measures but GA doesn't in it's bounce rate calculation.
I also noticed with a prices page (from looking at Hotjar recordings of users) that many people scroll to the answer (the price) and then bounce when they've seen the table with the prices on and the price comparisons for my products. This is really helpful info and is not freely shared by other sites like mine so Google is ranking us number one in the UK for one of the most lucrative search terms in our industry.
The page has no links and the only factor I can identify is that people search for 'Veneers Prices' land on my site, scroll to the answer and then bounce or click back to the main services page. We even had the featured snippet and I de-optimised to lose it because I wanted more commercial and less 'just finding out' traffic. That worked too. I'm the only person who doesn't want the snippet!
Bounce rate in GA is a misleading metric and Google does not see the same bounce rate that you see. So your 90% might be 4M time on site or the customer getting the answer they want by scrolling or using on page navigation and then leaving. Google wants to provide the right answer and this doesn't necessarily mean traditional signals. Google is getting smarter than that with it's limitless data from chrome.
Hope this gives you something to think about and to go off and test. Once you have a positive correlation or even a gut feel then start testing to get the solid answer. Then you can start modelling other pages on your success using the data.
Hope this helps!
Ed.
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
-
How do i rank for 1000 keywords?
i have dr 25 and 200 referring domains and ranking for 90 kws in usa. i saw this trend that if you rank for more kws then chances are that you can rank for those high traffic kws in 1 to 5 positions. what i mean is that it increases your odds ? possible answer1 :increase dr and da both and ur and pa ( ahrefs and moz) i know pagerank matters but these are some metrics we can look at for right now possible answer 2 : get a lot of backlinks maybe from same site but how does my backlinks can help me to rank for 1000 kws so that i can have at least 100 kws to rank in position 1 to 5? detailed answers will defi be appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Google Rank 0 - Best way?
We are trying to create tables or bullet points on each of our pages summarising the content of the page and get it to rank on position 0 on Google. This technique worked for some searches but not all so we were wondering: Is it beneficial to add links or not ? Is there a keyword limit? We are on Magento 2 if that helps. Thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesDavison0 -
How recovering the ranking after an hacking
Hello, I'm Alexia and a few months ago (end of March) my site has been hacked: hackers have created more than 30.000 links in Japanese to sell tires. I've successfully removed the hack and after 14 days of struggle even decided to change the domain to Siteground as they've been really keen to help. I still have some problems and I desperately need your tips. In search console, Google is informing about the +30.000 404 errors due to the content created by hackers which is not available anymore. I've been advised to redirect those links to 410 as they might have penalty effects in the SERP I have 50 503 server errors recognised by Google back in April but still there. What should I do to solve them? I still have a lot of traffic from Japan, even if I've removed all the content and ask Googled to disavow spamming backlinks. Do you think I have on page keywords? I don't understand how they can still find me. Those KWs are indexed in analytics, but not effective clicks, as the content is not there anymore. I also asked Google to remove links in search console with the tool removing links but not all of my requests have been accepted. My site disappeared from the organic results even if it hasn't been recognised as hacked in Google (there wasn't any manual actions on the Search Console). What can I do to gain the organic positioning once again? I've just tried to use the “Fetch as Google” option on search console for the entire website. Thank you all and I look forward to your replies. Thanks! Alessia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlessiaCamera0 -
Is Google Certified shops a ranking factor?
Hi This is to spark a debate, rather than an answer which has a specific answer. While Google may claim that being on the certified programme doesn't increase your ranking, but part of their algorithm looks into whether a website is trustworthy. To get accepted onto the certified shops you have to prove your a trust worthy reliable business that constantly gets audited. So surely this must be directly / indirectly be a ranking factor? Just thought I would throw it out there for a debate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday1 -
Brand queries as a ranking signal?
Hi folks, I may be shooting WAY off the mark here for it to be laughable, but I wondered if anyone else was thinking about this. I was trying to get to sleep last night, but was thinking about rankings (as you do... You DO think about rankings instead of counting sheep don't you... I'm not weird or anything am I... AM I?) and it occurred to me that maybe Google uses frequency of brand queries as a ranking signal - was wondering if anyone had done any research into this? Assuming that if more people are searching for a brand name, then there must be an outside influence on this behaviour (offline ads or editorial for example) - and this all points to a site or company being popular or interesting - maybe Google looks at the growth in brand name queries, and boosts based on this... I have done no research into this (I was just thinking about it instead of counting sheep last night... because I probably AM weird...) but was wondering what people here thought of this. Also, I don't have time (or intelligence TBH) to run an experiment on this, but maybe one of you bright sparks would? Best wishes, Amelia PS - if I'm being STOOPID please be gentle with me 😉
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Google is squashing my rankings, insight please?
Last year with penguin, our rankings took a hit. We have worked hard, tirelessly, to recover. Last june we had no social media. We had an old website. We completely updated our website to responsive design, over 500k pages. We post daily fresh content, we expanded into social media. We now have 100k followers on Facebook. We are seeing thousands of Google + in the last few months, and not by hiring a single SEO consultant, and we use no ad-words or any paid advertising (except for adsense, limited on our site). We got thousands of Google +1's simply by sharing content in different circles and they liked us the old fashioned way. And yet our rankings have actually decreased. Just Saturday night, suddenly rankings that were on page 2 of Google dropped to page 5. Rankings on page 5 dropped to page 13, over night. Mind you, last year (prior to the penguin update), those page 2 and page 5 rankings were in the top 3 spots on page one. So its been quite a fall. We are doing something wrong, and I don't know what it is. The overnight rankings drop did not correspond with anything we did whatsoever. They just literally dropped abruptly. here is our site: (redacted for privacy, thanks for answering my question!) here is a sample of a fallen ranking. Friday, for example, we ranked on page one of google in this search:(redacted)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marshill
and now we are on page 3. I am open to ideas, suggestions. I want to raise our D/A and have worked hard over the last year to do so, but it doesn't seem to be working too well. Do i have bad inbound links? Is our site not a quality enough user experience? Outside advice is well received. Thank you to anyone who can lend their insight. 🙂0 -
Why is my ranking not improving???
Our site is about 4 months old now, although the domain is older. We are adding fresh new content, building good facebook/twitter/Goolge+ and undertaking good PR - but our ranking does not seem to be improving at all. Have I missed something obvious???? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jj34340 -
Branded Links : But not got any ranking..
Hi there. I'm SEO expert myself. I am building quality and authority backlinks with branded anchor text. My website has now over 1.5k backlinks with branded anchor text and generic keywords. But my website still not showing in SERPS with my targeted niche or anchor text. Do i need to build backlinks with exact match anchor text if yes then how much? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalitsoft0