Click-through Rate, Pageviews, and Time on Site

[KevinC]

It's pretty well accepted that how the user interacts with your page will impact how google will rank your page in the future.

Lots of bounces could lead to lower rank.


If I have one page on a site that receives a lot of traffic, but nearly all traffic bounces. Does that have potential the impact the entire domain, or just that one page?

The page is about how to tell a real widget Vs fake widgets. By it's nature people will search, get their answer and leave.

We sell widgets. But this traffic is shoppers, they have a widget in hand and want to find out if it's fake or not.

Should I just get rid of the page?

[explorador]

By personal choice I mean you can have diff goals:
- good info just for the sake of it
- good info as bait (traffic in, regardless of the bounce)
- bait and then your strategy: nothing / sell / expose brands / ads
- bait as initial farming of content (your own) positioning topics

Sometimes unexpected articles get good traffic, that's people telling you something!. So that's why my bold above: then analyzing your traffic you can build conclusions and strategies you didn't see before. Many webmasters ask themselves diff questions like "ok this has good traffic, what can I do with it?" with or without bounces.

[toidi]

@kevinC

You could expand the page in any number of ways. Include some of your widgets and maybe pick up some sales, some people actually do research before they buy. Or turn it into a help-line for victims of fraudulent purchases and generate good will and more traffic. Whatever you do, don't get rid of the page. It generates traffic, now you have to figure out how to benefit from that traffic.

[SEOPTI]

Read what Duane Forrester clearly said a few years ago regarding Bing and CTR, bounce rate etc. He did not hide anyhting. He is not a coward hiding ranking factors.

Maybe the same thing will apply for goo$le:

[webmasterworld.com...]

You leaving a website is not something we see - in fact, if you left the website, we'd assume you were more satified than less satisfied simply because you didn't come back to us. Remember, we're looking specifically at the "back" action here. Are you saying you'd find the phone number, then hit back to come back to the SERP, then go about your business making the call? Not a pattern I'd say "most" people would follow (IMO).

This supports the theory of martinibuster, the AFTER event.

[ergophobe]

Great link SEOPTI

This supports the theory of martinibuster

Actually, it kind *is* the theory of martinibuster

I'd suggest SEO is a 2nd tier marketing function, where the first tier is making sure the site is quick, wows visitors enough that they talk about you positively online... SEO and UX spring to mind as BFFs.

[Storiale]

We track Google vs Bing (as most of you do) and I can tell you right out that Bing SERPS have gotten better over the past 2 weeks (more user interactions and CTR). Google - not so much. I'm waiting another week or so during our busy season to see the difference. One thing I can report is that Google dropped our rankings as soon as they lifted their ban on PPC advertised products (wanting us to spend more on PPC).