Does Having A High PPC Bounce Rate Affect Organic SERPs?
-
Hi Mozzers.
My website uses a landing page for Google Adwords traffic targeting keywords like HR Software, HR Systems etc. The design of the landing page is similar to our website but a key difference is that, being a landing page, we've removed the navigation (it is still possible to navigate to the main website by clicking on the logo). We've A/B tested this and found that by removing the navigation we get more people converting/signing up for the free trial of our service.
We track conversions using Google Analytics. Depending on the keyword the conversion rate is between 2.5% and 5%. However, because we've removed the navigation the bounce rate is really high, circa 80% for our landing page compared to an average for our website of approx 40%.
Would having such a high bounce rate harm our organic rankings for the rest of the website?
Thanks
-
Thanks for your great answer David. Just to make sure I've understood this right...
In your opinion would a high volume of people pogo sticking back to the SERPs after clicking on a paid ad adversely affect the organic search performance of the rest of the site? Or do Google discount this high bounce rate for paid ads?
-
No his ppc setup is made to funnel his users to fill out the lead form which causes a high bounce rate while increasing his ppc ads effectiveness.
-
Maybe this is a little beyond my knowledge, but why would a PPC ad be designed to have a high bounce rate? How does that help get more leads? I get that it would probably be much higher than an organic result bounce rate. And, that it doesn't effect the SEO of the rest of the site.
My comment about optimization of the ad was in regards to the fact that if an ad has a high bounce rate, wouldn't that mean that it is potentially not converting well? So, the traffic arriving to the landing page is not seeing the offer as a fit for what they are searching for.
-
His bounce rate is high because he is running a Ppc lead gen and it is designed to have a high bounce rate to get more leads. You have nothing to worry about from a SEO perspective this is the way its done.
-
Chris,
I think all of the previous advice is great in regards to your bounce rate. David makes a good point regarding search engines measuring bounce in organic listings by a searcher returning to the search results, and not with analytics data.
I'd be interested in knowing what happened to your traffic when you still had the navigation on the page. Were the searching your site for more information on your company? Checking out your blog? Where were they going on your site?
Also, if you are experiencing a high bounce rate, this could be an indicator that your ad is not optimized. Which is essentially costing you money.
-
In my opinion this should not hurt you at all because google doesn't use analytics data for their algorithm. All the talk you hear about bounce rates etc effecting seo in my opinion tends to be from google searches that pogo stick back to the search results after an unsatisfied search.
Unless you think that google is using analytics data in their ranking factors and there are those that do and dont use analtics or chrome and wear tin foil hats to make sure they are safe.
Best of luck
-
Hi Chris,
There is a chance this could happen. I have seen a high bounce rate affect the whole site (probably for many different reasons). However, this was a site that then was given a manual penalty because of what they were trying to do, but it wasn't that dissimilar to yours.
-Andy
-
If it is a landing page ONLY for PPC, and regular organic searchers should not be going there, then you could just noindex that page. I think that will make it's bounce and other stats not count towards the rest of the site...
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
-
Will this affect
Hi there! I've got a question that I'm having trouble answering. My client has one site url essentially has two sites within it. The homepage (name-photography.com) content focuses on her fashion photography services with a specific design and look with almost no mention of weddings unless you click the weddings icon. When you click on weddings, it takes you to a "new" site on the same url (name-photography.com/weddings) that has entirely different look and feel. The client would like to improve her visibility for her wedding services and not the fashion photography side. Would it be more beneficial to house the wedding services on an entirely new URL so that homepage content can be wedding focused. Again, with the current homepage, it's all fashion photography focused and not easy to redo. Or could one implement a 301 redirect from the fashion homepage (name-photographer.com) to the wedding homepage (name-photographer.com/weddings)? Thanks for your advice! Jessica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zigzen0 -
How will this affect the rankings and traffic of the new site once this happens?
Hi, we will be moving a clients’ site address from one domain to another and will of course be doing 301 redirects and notifying Google of the site address change in WMT. The problem is, that at some point in the future (say 3-6 months), the old domain will be going live with a new site as the current client does not own the domain and the owner will be wanting it back unfortunately. How will this affect the rankings and traffic of the new site (new domain) once this (old domain with new site) happens? Will the site address change be enough to keep the rankings but it will lose backlink traffic? Or will rankings go down since the 301 redirects will in essence no longer be in affect? Many thanks for your help in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSIDW0 -
Losing Organic Traffic After A Redesign?
Hi, I wonder if anyone can help me. After a recent site relaunch caused a substantial loss of organic website traffic. http://www.health4mom.org/ the site went live 2 months ago(using the same url's as the previous one) unfortunately the organic traffic have dropped (-65%). I would appreciate if anyone can let me know why we lost organic traffic. Many thanks in advance. Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | One2OneDigital0 -
Does having a ? on the end of your URL affect your SEO?
I have some redirects that were done with at "?" at the end of the URL to include google coding (i.e. you click on an adwords link and the google coding follows the redirected link). When there is not coding to follow the link just appears as "filename.html?". Will that affect us negatively SEO-wise? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoxBrock1 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Does onsite content updates have an effect on SERPs?
Hi, Some might see this as a very (VERY) basic question but wanted to drill down into it anyway. Onsite content: Lets say you have a service website and attached to it is a blog, the blog gets updated every other day with 500 words of relevant content, containing anchor text links back to a relevant page on the main website. Forget about social signals and natural links being built from the quality content, will adding the content with anchor text links be more beneficial then using that content to generate links through guest blogging? 10 relevant articles onsite with anchor links, or 10 guest posts on other websites? I guess some might say 5 onsite and 5 guest posts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
How to beat Wikipedia article from the top spot on SERPS?
Hi Guys, One of our clients has a good web site with lots of content that is ranked already on #2 for the top keyword (singular and plural) on Google UK. The keyword itself is a competitive one. The top spot is occupied by a wikipedia article that doesn't have much content in general. Can anyone come up with an advice what strategy we have to apply to outplace that article? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | myclicks-1636030 -
Video SERP assistance needed
I'm working on a site with a great deal of video content. We also have a youTube page. I've recently created a site map and submitted to Google. I really want for our videos to show up in our search results, but so far, nothings happening. Site: www.roydwyer.com Any advise to what's missing? Thanx in advance! annular-tear.php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aaronetics0