Actual Bounce Rate vs. Bounce Rate, and Why the Difference Matters for SEO

[djbaxter]

Actual Bounce Rate vs. Bounce Rate, and Why the Difference Matters for SEO
by Glenn Gabe, Search Engine Journal
August 9, 2011

I?ve written extensively about bounce rate on my blog over the past several years, including how to lower your bounce rate, blog bounce rate, homepage bounce rate, etc., but I?ve never written about how it?s connected to SEO. Bounce rate is an incredibly powerful metric that can tell you a lot about campaign performance and the quality of your content in a very short amount of time. If you?re not that familiar with Bounce Rate, it?s the percentage of visits that arrive on your site, visit no other pages, and then leave.

Those visitors simply visit one page on your site. From a conversion optimization standpoint, the more you can lower your bounce rate, the more opportunity you have to convert visitors. But although bounce rate optimization is extremely important, it?s not the focus of my post today. Instead, I want to focus on how bounce rate impacts SEO, and specifically, how ACTUAL bounce rate affects SEO. More on the distinction between bounce rate and actual bounce rate soon. First, let?s quickly explore an introduction to quality content from a search engine perspective.

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[Sweet Tooth No. 3]

Thanks for posting that Minstrel. I've been wondering about this for awhile and it's been driving me crazy. Though I think his example of people staying on pages for 10 or 20 minutes is a little unrealistic. It seems like people surfing the web have very short attention spans, they like to get their information, and then get outta Dodge.

My bounce rates (according to Google Analytics), are around 80%, and average time spent on site is just over a minute and a half. And that's all it really takes to scan through a 600 word article and pick out the pieces of information you need.

In fact, I noticed that for my longer articles (located on my homepages) that are over 1200 words, I was getting a much lower CTR on my Adsense ads that are located at the bottom of the article. My ads at the end of the articles are my best earners. But anything above 1,000 words, people just seem to fade out. Maybe they need some Ritalin lol...

Anyway, I'm sure it's not hurting my rankings. I have the weakest link profile of any of my competitors and I'm killing most of them. When I land on a junk page, I'm usually gone within 3 seconds. So compared to that, over a minute seems like an eternity.

Here's something else to ponder. I bet Wikipedia has a really high bounce rate. And they're the best ranking site on the web. I've read hundreds of Wikipedia pages and I don't think I've ever clicked through one of their internal links, but then again, I've never clicked away after only 3 seconds.

 

[djbaxter]

I think the main point is that clicking back to the search engine, although counted as a bounce, is really not necessarily a failure of your site.

When I am shopping, I rarely buy yht first thing I see (it drives my kids crazy but I'm the one paying for it!). But often IU will go back to the first thing I saw and l;iked after I assure myself it's a good buy.

 

[Sweet Tooth No. 3]

I think the main point is that clicking back to the search engine, although counted as a bounce, is really not necessarily a failure of your site.

When I am shopping, I rarely buy yht first thing I see (it drives my kids crazy but I'm the one paying for it!). But often IU will go back to the first thing I saw and l;iked after I assure myself it's a good buy.

That's a good point, I think the important thing to remember is that Google knows how people will react to a substandard site.