How does bounce rate affect seo

For example, we used a custom design for our guide to email marketing. When it comes to getting links and social shares to your content, nothing beats long-form content. For example, this list of SEO techniques is over words.

First, see how your site looks on different mobile devices. I recommend a free tool called mobiReady for this. Next, you need to actually use your site using different devices. That way, you can make sure that every link and button works. We use and recommend BrowserStack for mobile testing. If you want to prevent people from bouncing from your blog posts, consider linking to other content from your site. This is similar to internal linking. But with this approach, you feature specific posts that your visitors might want to read next.

And you decide to test an Exit-Intent Popup. Content Upgrades are super specific lead magnets. Needless to say, everyone that signs up to get that Content Upgrade is no longer a bounce.

Does bounce rate impact your organic traffic? Bounce rate relates to the percentage of single-engagement visits to your site. Google Analytics tracks the number of people who visit your page and leave without viewing other pages on your site. Bounce rate does not necessarily mean you need to improve the quality of your site.

The user flow of your site should be designed for your customer journey, not bounce rate. Here are some myths, facts, and truths you should know about how bounce rate impacts your rankings. However, it indirectly affects other ranking factors that Google cares about — slow page speed, low-quality design, poor mobile optimization, etc.

I realize this might sound a little complicated, but it is fairly simple when you consider how search engines work and why a bounce might affect the rankings of a website.

Google has billions of searches every day. With that amount of data, it can make certain assumptions about users and websites that you might not believe are even possible.

As an example, Google knows that knives are associated with swords. For humans that is an easy conclusion to make, but for a robot that is an incredibly difficult conclusion to make. Ah HA! In the eyes of Google, knives and swords go hand-in-hand! Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google. What could they possibly have gained in 5 seconds or less?

Google tracks this and monitors the traffic of a site and how users react to the site. My assumptions are described above, but they are not concrete or perfect.

I am constantly reevaluating my theories on the effect of bounce rate. This would eventually lead to a bunch of crap websites on the first page of Google — something Google is obviously battling every day. Each website is different. Therefore, empirical research shows that bounce rates are not a ranking factor.

There will also be pages that offer information to users quickly, who do not need to keep the page open once they get what they need. Does this mean that Google will not rank those pages that have the perfect information for users high in the SERP?

Of course not. If no Google Analytics code is installed, Google will not be able to measure the bounce rate anyway. If the bounce rate was a ranking criterion, Google would have to treat websites with Analytics Codes differently. And websites without the Google Analytics Code would have the freedom to offer bad content, so to speak, and Google would not be able to take notice of it.

That would be the end for Google Analytics. Google cannot afford to use the bounce rate as a ranking criterion. And lastly, Matt Cutts made similar statements in the past. This article shows that there are still a lot of emphasis on other factors when it comes to rankings. Google increasingly relies on text mining to recognize the relevance of articles. In addition, the distribution of topics across the entire site naturally plays a major role.

Google has very sophisticated clustering techniques to detect if a website and its pages offer relevant content.