What's your bounce rate?

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Ord Allenbea

Bounce rate can be skewed by bots because you may have 100 bots on your site that go, look, and leave in 10 seconds.

This highlights a fact that many either miss or dismiss, that no 3rd party, Google included, knows of all your server activity, let alone how and why it happened, that only you, by way of your own server logs, have access to record of all on-site activities.

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[Ord Allenbea]

Exactly! I tend to spend my time with my actual customers, my opt-ins, and my "OWN" server stats vs running around the internet and looking at alexa, google stats, and etc.

Originally Posted by deepsand

This highlights a fact that many either miss or dismiss, that no 3rd party, Google included, knows of all your server activity, let alone how and why it happened, that only you, by way of your own server logs, have access to record of all on-site activities.

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[deepsand]

Unfortunately, far too many are abused of the notion that Google knows and tells all re. one's site.

Absent an understanding of the fundamental workings of the 'net, servers, and clients, they both make many false assumptions of their own, and draw false conclusions from the uninformed opinions of others, and become so self-confident of their self-imposed ignorance that they reject out-of-hand that which does not well comport with their foregone conclusions.

The matter of bounce rate is but one of many where so many know and understand so little.

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[MarkHeron]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Actually, Google is not so objective, but rather caters to the subjective whims of its users so long as it does not adversely affect its ad revenues. It has no reason to care if a site is or is not of a commercial nature.

In fact, Google very much depends on its having a large stable of commercial sites to offer up, as shopping and buying now comprise a very large portion of web activity.

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Can you give an example of a Clickbank product page that is ranking high for a competitive keyword?

[Ord Allenbea]

Depends upon if the clickbank product is yours or you are an affiliate. If you own the product it is a great deal easier to rank high for those competitive keywords. Reason being is : you should know your product better than anyone and that includes affiliates.

Originally Posted by MarkHeron

Can you give an example of a Clickbank product page that is ranking high for a competitive keyword?

[sonuparashar]

One of my client bounce rate is 45%. And i am sure coming 4-5 months it will be 35-40%.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by MarkHeron

Can you give an example of a Clickbank product page that is ranking high for a competitive keyword?

The salient questions would be if commercial sites can rank as well as non-commercial sites where both exist for a given query string, and to what extent, if any, is such dependent on bounce rates.

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[MarkHeron]

So, no example of commercial sites raking better than non-commercial sites?

[deepsand]

Not going to waste time on a pointless question.

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[Ord Allenbea]

I am amazed at how much time people do waste on pointless things. Imagine if they put all that wasted time into actually marketing their websites.

If you plant a garden then that garden will only grow if you care for it, tend to it, and nurture it. If all you do is try to figure out what makes your garden grow and never act upon implementing the things for it to grow, then your garden will die.

Stop killing your garden by trying to figure out every little metric on why it should grow.

Originally Posted by deepsand

Not going to waste time on a pointless question.

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[deepsand]

Some people don't grow gardens; but rather, for a few dollars, pretend to know how to tell others to do it.

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[Donnie]

Right all this garden talk is great. However, this is not the same type of case. Were talking about using your bounce rate to improve your site.

Its as simple as... would you use this tool if its going to help improve you garden?

Im no gardner, but if I was I would use the best tools I can find.

My father was a carpenter and he taught me that being a carpenter is all about utilizing the best tools for each project, the difference in quality is always there!

Just found this post on SEOmoz. It has a case study on how one benefited on his site by working on his bounce rate. As I did!

"What we did to increase rankings/visitors


1. Reducing the bounce rate

We stared by working on the high bounce rate pages. We edited some of the content and deleted some of the pages. One of the very high bounce rate pages were the blog section posts. Since we are always committed to build only high quality content, we knew that the problem with the high bounce rate on the blog was elsewhere. We knew that visitors were able to find the information they were searching for and after that they were leaving the blog. We added a suggestion fly-box. The box appears on the right side on the page once the visitors scrolls by the end of a post and suggests another random post from the blog. This had a huge impact on the blog bounce rate by lowering it with more than 30%. From the highest bounce rate section of the website, the blog become the lowest one overnight."

How We Managed to Benefit from the Panda Updates

[Ord Allenbea]

Bounce rates are skewed by many factors. The question is: All that time they spent did it help increase "sales" ? Did it help increase opt-ins ?

It is normal for any marketer to edit their pages if they are not producing the results they want in terms of sales or opt-ins (conversions). This is nothing new and you certainly do not need any bounce rate to tell you if your pages are converting or not.

I agree you should use the best tools at your disposal (many do not and many waste time with trivial things). I can use miracle grow in my garden to grow it larger and faster but is it going to taste better ? Am I going to be able to sale more veggies from my garden ?

If I take the time in my garden to add miracle grow and it takes me 4 hours. Let's assume I sell my veggies for $5 a pound. Let's also assume that adding the miracle grow produced 2 additional sales. Many think I may have increased my sales and made an extra $10.

This is not true though, I actually lost money because I spent 4 hours to produce that $10. At a normal rate of $7/hr (avg minimum wage) I just lost $18. If you look at it from a different perspective. I spent those 4 hours to produce a larger garden which would have created more than 2 sales then I lost a great deal more than $18.

Regardless of what anyone says, business is about making money. The more time you spend on trivial things and not focus on the real problems the more you lose money. You must choose where to spend that time and spend it wisely because every hour wasted is costing your business money.

Originally Posted by Donnie

Right all this garden talk is great. However, this is not the same type of case. Were talking about using your bounce rate to improve your site.

Its as simple as... would you use this tool if its going to help improve you garden?

Im no gardner, but if I was I would use the best tools I can find.

My father was a carpenter and he taught me that being a carpenter is all about utilizing the best tools for each project, the difference in quality is always there!

Just found this post on SEOmoz. It has a case study on how one benefited on his site by working on his bounce rate. As I did!

"What we did to increase rankings/visitors


1. Reducing the bounce rate

We stared by working on the high bounce rate pages. We edited some of the content and deleted some of the pages. One of the very high bounce rate pages were the blog section posts. Since we are always committed to build only high quality content, we knew that the problem with the high bounce rate on the blog was elsewhere. We knew that visitors were able to find the information they were searching for and after that they were leaving the blog. We added a suggestion fly-box. The box appears on the right side on the page once the visitors scrolls by the end of a post and suggests another random post from the blog. This had a huge impact on the blog bounce rate by lowering it with more than 30%. From the highest bounce rate section of the website, the blog become the lowest one overnight."

[Donnie]

Originally Posted by Ord Allenbea

Bounce rates are skewed by many factors. The question is: All that time they spent did it help increase "sales" ? Did it help increase opt-ins ?

It is normal for any marketer to edit their pages if they are not producing the results they want in terms of sales or opt-ins (conversions). This is nothing new and you certainly do not need any bounce rate to tell you if your pages are converting or not.

I agree you should use the best tools at your disposal (many do not and many waste time with trivial things). I can use miracle grow in my garden to grow it larger and faster but is it going to taste better ? Am I going to be able to sale more veggies from my garden ?

If I take the time in my garden to add miracle grow and it takes me 4 hours. Let's assume I sell my veggies for $5 a pound. Let's also assume that adding the miracle grow produced 2 additional sales. Many think I may have increased my sales and made an extra $10.

This is not true though, I actually lost money because I spent 4 hours to produce that $10. At a normal rate of $7/hr (avg minimum wage) I just lost $18. If you look at it from a different perspective. I spent those 4 hours to produce a larger garden which would have created more than 2 sales then I lost a great deal more than $18.

Regardless of what anyone says, business is about making money. The more time you spend on trivial things and not focus on the real problems the more you lose money. You must choose where to spend that time and spend it wisely because every hour wasted is costing your business money.

I understand that time is money, Fortunately from an SEO perspective once it is set up good and the bounce rate is low (in some cases) you never have to work on that page again (at least until google makes another change).

If you have a high bounce rate from people coming onto your page and then going back to the SERP for another result, IMO it will hurt your rankings (there is no proof of this. However, if I were Google I would most definitely mesure that.)

In the example that was posted on SEOmoz the page had a high bounce rate and by simply adding a blogroll to the bottom of the page it reduced the bounce rate drastically. Which led to better SE placement and a higher conversion (AKA more money)

[Ord Allenbea]

Donnie,
I see nothing on that post that even remotely mentions increased sales. There is the mobile section that says - "This of course brings the benefits of higher conversion rates.". Notice the wording as the writer is very careful not to mention the site had increased conversions. It simply states the site has a possibility of higher conversions.

This is an incomplete study because not all the factors are in place and even the post says they could not track everything - "I can't say that all of the gained increase of visitors came because of the above changes".

I am not knocking the dude or anything but I seriously think far too many people worry about the why didn't my visitor stay and read more vs why am I not converting my window shoppers into customers. Just because I stay on your page longer does not mean I am going to buy from you.

[Donnie]

Originally Posted by Ord Allenbea

Donnie,
I see nothing on that post that even remotely mentions increased sales. There is the mobile section that says - "This of course brings the benefits of higher conversion rates.". Notice the wording as the writer is very careful not to mention the site had increased conversions. It simply states the site has a possibility of higher conversions.

This is an incomplete study because not all the factors are in place and even the post says they could not track everything - "I can't say that all of the gained increase of visitors came because of the above changes".

I am not knocking the dude or anything but I seriously think far too many people worry about the why didn't my visitor stay and read more vs why am I not converting my window shoppers into customers. Just because I stay on your page longer does not mean I am going to buy from you.

Right, the whole debate is whether or not this influences a Google SERP. If reducing a bounce rate helps my SERP results then I will have more traffic. Which in most cases results in more money or more money saved on buying these leads.

Conversion rates and bounce rate are two different things. Personally I like to use AB testing for conversion optimization.

[Ord Allenbea]

Google has no idea what your bounce rate is unless you install their God Aweful stats code on your site. Personally I use my own server stats and not some 3rd party stats.

Give Google exactly what they have been asking for all along and you have nothing to worry about as far as rankings. People seem to "fear" the panda update and many ran to change their websites. The problem is Google has stated on their own website (if you can read between the lines) what they want and they have done so for years.

Those of us that gave Google what they wanted to begin with was never effected by the Panda.

[Donnie]

Originally Posted by Ord Allenbea

Google has no idea what your bounce rate is unless you install their God Aweful stats code on your site. Personally I use my own server stats and not some 3rd party stats.

Yeah I let Deepsand convince me on that as well... heres what happend when i said that on an SEOmoz thread http:// (remove space) www. (remove space) seomoz.org/q/google-analytics-referral-traffic-question[/url] look how many thumbs down I got. (giving false information can hurt peoples rankings)

Originally Posted by Ord Allenbea

Give Google exactly what they have been asking for all along and you have nothing to worry about as far as rankings. People seem to "fear" the panda update and many ran to change their websites. The problem is Google has stated on their own website (if you can read between the lines) what they want and they have done so for years.

Those of us that gave Google what they wanted to begin with was never effected by the Panda.

I agree with this. Google wants to show people what people want to see. If I search for something and hit back on the browser button that means I did not find what I am looking for and I continue to search within Googles SERP. That right there is an easy indication to Google. All they have to do is follow the IP of the searcher and check how they use the SERP. did the user like the first page? no he left and went to the second page, etc...

http:// (remove space) www. (remove space) seomoz.org/q/google-analytics-referral-traffic-question

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Donnie

I understand that time is money, Fortunately from an SEO perspective once it is set up good and the bounce rate is low (in some cases) you never have to work on that page again (at least until google makes another change).

Nonsense. There is no "set it and forget it" condition.

Originally Posted by Donnie

If you have a high bounce rate from people coming onto your page and then going back to the SERP for another result ...

That is not the real bounce rate of a page.

Originally Posted by Donnie

the example that was posted on SEOmoz the page had a high bounce rate and by simply adding a blogroll to the bottom of the page it reduced the bounce rate drastically. Which led to better SE placement and a higher conversion (AKA more money)

The author of the cited article makes no such claims.

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[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Donnie

Yeah I let Deepsand convince me on that as well... heres what happend when i said that on an SEOmoz thread http:// (remove space) www. (remove space) seomoz.org/q/google-analytics-referral-traffic-question[/url] look how many thumbs down I got. (giving false information can hurt peoples rankings)

What you actually said there was

Google Analytics can only determine referred traffic if a site has Google Analytics installed on it. Sites that do not have GA installed will not be able to see any of these stats.

You got the "thumbs down" for saying that:

• One only gets GA stats if one has GA installed, which is a tautology;
• One has analytical data available only by way of GA, when in fact there are a plethora of such data available in ones Server Log, data that GA has no access to; and,
• Access to Referer data is dependent on using GA, when in fact such are contained in your Server Log.

Nothing in your statement there relates to what Google does and does not know of by way of relying solely o its own available means.

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