Ranking #1 but Bounce Rate is 90%?!

[yaelslater]

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

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

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.

[JamieCMF]

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!