With the constantly shifting landscape of Google’s SEO algorithms, it can be difficult to keep up with the aspects of your website that most affect your placement in search results. Considering that 95% of web traffic goes straight to the sites on the first page, it benefits you and your customers if you can find your way closer to the top. One of the ways that Google tracks this is by your performance with customers. They obviously don’t have access to your sales numbers, but they have their own methods for rewarding the sites with the best conversion rates. Here’s how, and what you can do to optimize your site.
SERP Bounce rate - If someone is going to buy something from your site, they are going to exhibit certain behavior. For example, a customer likely can’t buy something without spending some time on your site. While it’s not known exactly how long google considers a successful transaction might take, they do factor in what is known as the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) bounce rate, or the “return-to-SERP.” This is simply a logical parameter -- after all, if most of your traffic leaves within a short period of time after they arrive, it seems unlikely there is much of quality on that particular page, and thus less reason to display it high in the rankings.
You may think you have a lot of quality content, you may have put a lot of work into your website. But Google is not critiquing your page, or even the quality of your content. They are simply ranking your page based on how much time they dwell on it. After all, if customers aren’t interested in your site long enough to stick around long enough to make a purchase, then you had better make some changes anyway.
There are some pretty easy and common sense changes you can make to improve your bounce rate, and some others that involve a bit of guesswork due to the secretive nature of Google’s algorithms.
First off, if you can improve the quality of either your content or the user experience, then do so immediately. Nothing’s going to turn away a fresh set of eyes faster than a boring layout, a cheap design or a difficult to navigate interface. This includes clearing your site of things like annoying pop-up ads, bait-and-switch deals, and fast loading. No need to burden your landing pages with high resolution images that slow the load time by several seconds. If landing pages aren’t your strong suit, try out a template from a place like Go Spaces and direct your attention to the other areas that need help. In our modern world of instant clicks and live streams, even a few seconds can be enough to send an impatient visitor pulling the return-to-SERP rip cord.
Make sure that your keywords match your product as well. You might pull some fresh eyes onto your sight by applying the shotgun-spread marketing approach, but now that you know Google’s wise to that racket, you want to avoid attracting the kind of people that will leave once they see you don’t have what they want. This means honesty and clarity in your keywords are very important. If you feel your prices are inexpensive, then “cheap” is a good keyword. If you deal in luxury items, you ought to avoid that word lest all the bargain hunters wreck your SERP bounce rate and turn your page invisible in Google’s eyes.
Above all, with your landing pages, layout, content and product, there is one thing that ties them all together -- give people a reason to stay. It may seem kind of obvious and general, but if it were then everyone would do it and bounce rate wouldn’t be an issue. Think hard about what your ideal customers are looking for and give it to them front and center when they first arrive. You’ll not only sell more, you’ll attract even more customers than you already have.
.png)
