To what extent the design of website influences the site's overall PR?

[janettfung]

To what extent the design of website influences the site's overall PR?
I feel our site looks a bit out of dated. However, my manager thinks it okay. The bounce rate is really high. I assume it is because the website does not look well. But this is a very trick question, different people have different taste on design...

I wonder: to what extent the design is related to the doowngoing trend of our ranking and PR?

[aristotle]

The overall PR is mostly determined by the quantity and quality of the incoming links from other websites, and this is also a big factor in determining the rankings. If you can improve the design and quality of your site, it will attract more of these incoming links, which in turn will lead to an improvement in PR and rankings.

[janettfung]

So, the design of the website is partly related to PR. The only function is to use good looking to attract more links.

If the design does not look, but we work on incoming links,the result is going to be similar?

btw, could anyone share some bounce rate? ours is quite high, nearly 80%. does that indicate the design of website is problematic?

[aristotle]

So, the design of the website is partly related to PR. The only function is to use good looking to attract more links.

Yes, a better design should attract more links.

If the design does not look, but we work on incoming links,the result is going to be similar?

Yes, you can sometimes get these links yourself and they will help in the same way. But you have to be careful because buying links or imprudent link-building can cause Google to penalize your site.

btw, could anyone share some bounce rate? ours is quite high, nearly 80%. does that indicate the design of website is problematic?

There are a lot of factors that affect bounce rate so it's hard to compare different sites. But almost any site can be improved, and the improvement produce a lot of good effects.

[tedster]

It can also be different for sites with different purposes or markets. Jakob Nielsen's usability website (useit.com) has a design right out of the 1990s - and a PR8 home page.

As a rule, I think many businesses redesign too frivolously and often make the website less usable. It's important to have good reasons and a solid plan - the "look" of a site is only a very small part of why others link to it, in my opinion. It's really about what the site is offering.

[anand84]

There was a discussion here around the time Panda first broke out where there was speculation that design had a role to play in the rankings (or PR) on SERPS. The argument was that with the display of site preview alongside the results on Google, it is possible that the search algo is looking to place better designed pages on top since users are more likely to click on them as compared to a badly designed page.

As far as I know, that argument has not found many takers.