Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Will Reduced Bounce Rate, Increased Pages/Session, Increased Session Duration-RESULT IN BETTER RANKING?
-
Our relaunched website has a much lower bounce rate (66% before, now 58%) increased pages per session (1.89 before, now 3.47) and increased session duration (1:33 before, now 3:47). The relaunch was December 20th.
Should these improvements result in an improvement in Google rank? How about in MOZ authority?
We have not significantly changed the content of the site but the UX has been greatly improved.
Thanks,
Alan
-
Hi Jeff:
Happy to report that improved metrics are not caused by bots or any unusual spikes in traffic. So I think we are seeing a legitimate improvement. Last year we focused on UX improvements. Will focus on content and links this year in order to solidify our gains.
Thanks for your input!!
Alan
-
Hello Kingalan1,
Looks like you're already improved your Google rankings! Have you checked your traffic sources in Google? To improve your site authority quicker, start a link building campaign.
-
For starters, congratulations on the improved metrics you're experiencing! I would have to also agree with EGOL on this one, in that it will be important to observe how those numbers are pulled, because it's very easy to get false positives with small amounts of data after large changes.
Some tips:
- You may want to look into your numbers a little deeper, and isolate performance based on location and user type. Meaning: are your numbers being skewed by internal members of the organization? Your tech team is a notorious source of generating false numbers if their IPs are not filtered. An easy way to do this is to compare % new users before/after launch. If the % of new users is substantially down, you may want to drill down into location to see if there is anything fishy going on. Which brings me to #2...
- Drill down into city to ensure that all of the traffic isn't coming from one place. You would be surprised at how much traffic is actually bots. If you see a disproportionate number of sessions coming from one city, take a look at the % of new users from that city. If it's in the single digits, you have a bot or developer, or spammer. I wrote a blog post on how to identify bots (and if they are creating false positives).
**As for rankings...: **
- Lots of controversy over this one, but I think more SEOs than not seem to agree that dwell time (time between leaving SERPs and visiting a site, then returning to SERPs) is an important factor for RankBrain.
- Look up "pogosticking" and its relationship with bounce rate. This is also likely a RankBrain factor.
In my opinion, if the numbers are true, in a very cursory observation, it seems that you have created a better experience for visitors. I would imagine that this **may **result in better rankings. At least, there is a better chance than not resulting in better rankings.
Apologies, SEOs never seem to give clear-cut answers, and qualify every statement
Jeff
-
Lots of people speculate that website usability impacts search rank, but this hasn't been conclusively been proven. Improving your website experience is great for conversions and something you should definitely work to improve, but if you want to improve search ranking it's still important to focus on content & links.
-
Hello Kingalan1,
If you are getting a nice increase in the number of people getting in touch for this time of year then you have made impressive improvements in the function and visitor satisfaction of the site. Nice work.
I expect that you will see some kind of rankings increase.
-
Hi EGOL;
Thanks for your input. I am receiving a dramatically increased number customers inquiries from the redesigned site. Hopefully there is a reasonable chance that Google will reward us with improved rankings. But I guess time will tell.
THANKS,
Alan -
First, nice work on getting a new website with metrics that might be better.
Since you only have a few days of data, and its over the Christmas holiday, don't bet on the new metrics yet. They might simply be a result of return visitors stumbling around the site trying to find things that they were returning to see, or snooping around for something different. Your metrics will probably be improved, but don't take it to the bank yet.
If you get improved metrics, will it increase your rankings? In my opinion, it will depend more on how those metrics were obtained more than the metrics themselves. If your new metrics are a result of people being more pleased with your site and that is what caused them to explore more then you might get a rankings increase. If the new metrics are a result of it being more difficult for people to find they want then you might get a rankings decrease.
Will it change moz authority? I don't know the answer to that question, and I would not give it a single wit of thought. Why? Moz authority has nothing to do with how Google ranks your website, how much money you are going to make, and what people think of your website.
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
-
Page rank and menus
Hi, My client has a large website and has a navigation with main categories. However, they also have a hamburger type navigation in the top right. If you click it it opens to a massive menu with every category and page visible. Do you know if having a navigation like this bleeds page rank? So if all deep pages are visible from the hamburger navigation this means that page rank is not being conserved to the main categories. If you click a main category in the main navigation (not the hamburger) you can see the sub pages. I think this is the right structure but the client has installed this huge menu to make it easier for people to see what there is. From a technical SEO is this not bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AL123al0 -
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Ranking 2 pages on the same domain in the same SERP
I thought it was generally said that Google will favour 1 page per domain for a particular SERP, but I have seen examples where that is not the case (i.e. Same domain is ranking 2 different pages on the 1st page of the SERPs...) Are there any "tricks" to taking up 2 first page SERP positions, or am I mistaken that this doesn't always happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ullamalm0 -
Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server. Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all. For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category. Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants". Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand. Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Do Page Views Matter? (ranking factor?)
Hi, I actually asked it a year and a half ago (with a slight variation) but didn't get any real response and things do change over time. On my eCommerce website I have the main category pages with client side filtering and sorting. As a result, the number of page views is lower than can be expected. Do you think having more page views is still a ranking factor? and if so is it more important than user experience? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
Why do SERP Results ( Rankings ) differ from country to country ?
Hi, I have been doing seo for this client based in Sri lanka for almost 8 months now. Since we started SEO we had set up geographic target setting to UK through google webmaster tools. At the moment Site is completely ranking higher on google uk & other countries except Sri Lanka . On Google.lk site doesn't even come within 1st 5 pages for keywords which are ranked on1st page in other countries ? What do you think about this ? How does it happen ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pyxle0 -
/%category%/%postname%/ Permalink structure
Mostly everyone seems to agree that /%category%/%postname%/ is the best blog structure. I'm thinking of changing my structure to that because now it's structured by date which is bad. But almost all of my posts are assigned to more than one category. Won't this create duplicate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UnderRugSwept0