Str82u - 11:58 pm on Aug 10, 2012 (gmt 0)

DO NOT noindex them. This is advice from a recent experiment I ran, I have a site with policy and links pages ranking higher than content when doing a site:domainname search. So I changed the robots directive to "noindex,follow" and they all went from PageRank 2 to nil (nothing/10 versus 2/10).

My solution for pages that had high bounce rates took a little work and creativity but if you can move the user to another page, get another pageview out of them, that's the solution. I can't say what will work for your situation and it's hard in situations where SERPs target the correct page for a user's query, but if you can generate some interest in a related topic without changing you current page's content it would be optimal. Adding a link to another page like the index or table of contents at the top of the higher ranking pages content that said something like "See every thing about this <keyword>" would redirect them to a set of links they can look at and bounce around. Doing it honestly they will end up on the same page the search engine sent the user to but you gave the user options and got some extra pageviews and on site time.

It's deceptiove in a way, yes, BUT, if you have several pages/folder/directories about several topics and have a "table of contents" for each topic, it's not deceptive to send the user to the start page for that topic from each of the internal pages.... "Here Is The Start Page" which is also a call to action if you present it properly.