Are Click-Through rates & Bounce Rates as Ranking Metrics ?
-
There are lots of articles around but I would prefer to see what everyone here has to say about it.
Are they ranking metrics ( directly or In-directly )?
If they are then how to get it right?
Can i depend on Google In-page analytic?
What is an acceptable Bounce rate for a home page ?
What is an average click through rate for your landing page ?
thanks
-
There are ways to use math to balance CTR based on position (simple ratio and proportion), and search engines may or may not do so. Depends on who you believe.
But, if you look at Dr. Pete's post in Feb on The 2 Metrics that Matter for SEO you will see how dwell time may be more important.Interesting stuff this SEO.
Best
-
And it's only half the story. We changed the page design for a certain page and while the bounce rate has decreased, our conversion rate has also hit the bottom. This is a high-degree equation with so many variables, and you don't even know some of them. I guess that's why there is the A/B testing.
You will have to keep testing.
As for R. Fisher's answer, I would guess (and hope) Google to not take every page on 1st page the same way. We know most searchers don't even scroll (or look) to see beyond top 4-5 results on SERP's. It is normal for any site between 6-10 to have a lower CTR than the sites at 1-5.
-
While they may not be using metrics from your analytics (bounce rate) I would suggest that which sites get clicked in the SERPS and which sites result in visitors returning immediately to the SERPS to click on another result are used by Google. We know that they can detect people returning to the SERPS as they sometimes/used to present you with the option of blocking the site.
From an SEO's perspective this means that it's not just important to rank, but to rank for the right keywords, where the intent and users expectation are going to be satisfied by the page your providing.
Bounce rate can be a bit of a fickle metric - a high bounce rate could mean that the visitor lost the "information scent" when they visited your page (what's in it for me!) or found that the page quickly and efficiently answered their question.
Either way, if the site owners goals is to get the visitor to accomplish some addition action/goal beyond providing information then it's probably not a good sign.
If you page isn't getting the clicks it deserves in the SERPS then, as Robert said, it's time to take a look at the Title/descriptions to make them as compelling as possible and convey the reasons why the searcher needs to click on your entry!
-
Thing is bit scare to change the page layout, if the data is unreliable it could cause the bounce rate to increase and it would cost the client design and development hours. Is there a more accurate tool in the market.
Thanks
-
If you are saying use those analytics to change outcomes, I say do it. Will it necessarily improve the page rank, I don't know that it will. But, if a site owner focuses solely on rank and ignores conversions, what is ranking worth?
-
Dan,
I've seen Matt's piece on this but still see it as a bit counter - intuitive. I think at some level, (maybe not PR per se) I still see a site with bad CTR to a page as moving down. So something is affecting it.
Good answer though,
Robert
-
Thanks Robert,
What do you think about using in-page analytics to improve your page, ive heard that its not reliable. what are your thoughs?
regards,
-
Yes and most likely are the best answers:
Yes in that if you put a new site up and due to freshness a page is on page one, but the meta description does not fit the query and no one is clicking on the SERP link, therefore little or no Click throughs, you are going off the page quickly.
Obviously, especially with black hat SEO, when someone misleads with a meta description and you land on a page that is no where near what you were looking for, you leave in a heartbeat or less - you bounce. So, one mechanism that Google has is to see that for what it is and count that against you. But, if your bounce rate in your vertical is normally around e.g. 50% and you are close to that number, you are likely ok. If you are a bit better you are likely improved.
So, you want good meta descriptions so that you get people to the page and you want great content to keep them there.
We took on a new client about 6 months ago and he was ranking in top 2 to 3 for almost every major kw in his vertical locally. After a new site, better content his CTR is improved by about 25% and his bounce rate by roughly 5 to 10% (45 to 35-40). His pageviews doubled (images I think) and his time on site is up by over a minute.
He now ranks first for almost everything. I think the CTR and Bounce are huge in that result
hope that gives you a reasonable idea.
-
Google claim that they do not use click through rates or bounce rates as ranking metrics. Also, no Google Analytics data is used in the ranking algorithm. Matt Cutts confirmed this in this YouTube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLmO1GE4GvI
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
-
What's Causing My Extremely Low Bounce Rate
My client's site that is reporting an under 10% bounce rate for all sources. Direct is the highest at 8%. I'm no expert in GA but wondering if there is a problem with the analytics/tag manager code on the site. I'm especially concerned about the GTM body script being in an iframe which I read could be trouble. <!-- Google Tag Manager (noscript) -->
Reporting & Analytics | | bradsimonis
<noscript><iframe src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-MWGMNW6"
height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript>
<!-- End Google Tag Manager (noscript) --> You can see all the source code here:
view-source:https://nfinit.com/0 -
Is real google bot like "fetch"or more like "fetch & render"?
In GWT we have two options to mimic googlebot visits, "fetch" and "fetch and render", but when the real googlebot visit a page, is he behaving like the former or the latter? I can see fetch does fetch only the html, while fetch and render does fetch .js and .css as well. But what does the real googlebot does? I have checked the web server logs, and I can see the real googlebot sometimes request the .js files too, but not every time it visit a page, sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. Has anyone figured out when googlebot actually request javascript files?
Reporting & Analytics | | max.favilli0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
Can underscore blanks trigger home page bounce rates
Buongiorno from 8 degrees C Wetherby UK 🙂 On this site the scrolling banner has been hyperlinked with underscore blank causing new pages to open when a user clicks on a banner. My question is please... "If a user clicks on a banner will Google measure this as a home page bounce" ( I dont think it will i just want to be 100% sure) Click here for illustration:
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/home-page-sw-banner_zps0fda6318.jpg Grazie Tanto,
David0 -
Moz Rank & Trust | Page vs Sub vs Root
Hey guys, Just need some help deciphering my OSE link metrics for my site theskimonster.com . Page MozRank: 5.51 (highest among my competitors) Page MozTrust: 5.74 (#2 among my competitors) Subdomain MozRank: 4.19 (#4 among my competitors) Subdomain MozTrust: 4.63 (#2 among my competitors) Root Domain MozRank: 3.89 (#5 or last place among competitors) Root Domain MozRank: 4.1 (#5 or last place among competitors) What does this mean? What am I doing right, what do I need to do?
Reporting & Analytics | | Theskimonster1 -
How Do I Create Custom Reports In GA For First Click Attribution?
It only took me a year and a half to get the code Will Critchlow laid out in a blog post last year put on my website. Now I've finally got it but I need more instruction on how to create the custom report I need in GA! Will said he was going to expand on how to set up the custom reports but I'm not sure he ever did. So, can anyone either direct me to Will's follow-up post about setting up custom reports for first click attribution or tell me how to do it? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | eTundra0 -
Does an internal link inside an iframe result in a bounce?
We built a landing page with a wufoo form. Inside the wufoo form is a link going to another page on our website. We are wondering if clicking on that link will result in a bounce since it is in an iframe. We are using google analytics.
Reporting & Analytics | | seozachz0 -
GA custom reports involving pages and goals - what are the metrics saying?
Hi, All! I would like to create a custom report that will enable me to see which of my pages are contributing to goal completion on my site (so I can then optimize the pages that are contributing the most, with maximal ROI for the optimization investment). If I make the dimension "page/page title" and the metric "goal X completions" - which would make sense - what exactly are the numbers that I am seeing telling me? Is it how many times a person started the goal funnel from that pages (meaning every goal would appear only once and there be no overlap)? That doesn't appear to be the case with the numbers, because the headline in the main "Goals" section tells me I have 30 goal completions for that goal, for example, but the headline in the custom report (which is adding up all the numbers) is, say, 100. Or does it mean the number of times that this page was ever in the navigation path of someone who ended up completing a goal? Then the same goal would be counted multiple times, for each page in the path. Additionally, I see this strange thing on some of my reports where the actual funnel pages appear as contributing towards goals, which I guess makes sense, but again the numbers don't match up. If the goal was to get to page B, and the funnel was A->B, and there were supposedly 30 goal completions, my custom report says that A gave 28 goal completions and B gave 25. Anyone know for sure - or through testing - what the case is with all these things? Any explanations will be much appreciated!
Reporting & Analytics | | debi_zyx0