If you’ve lost rankings and traffic and suspect that the Google Panda is to blame, here’s something to consider….your bounce rate. A high bounce rate can hurt you not just from the perspective of visitors lost but it could cause your search engine rankings to slide.

1. Google Panda Got You Down? Check Your
Bounce Rate
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2. If you’ve lost rankings and traffic and suspect that the Google Panda is to blame, here’s
something to consider….your bounce rate. A high bounce rate can hurt you not just from the
perspective of visitors lost but it could cause your search engine rankings to slide.
Do You Know Your Bounce Rate?
A bounce is a visitor that bounces off the same webpage they landed on. Even if someone
doesn’t follow your call to action of buying or subscribing, clicking at least once to one page
within your site is a good thing and tells search engines that your site satisfies the needs of
visitors. If a visitor bounces, the perception is that they didn’t find what they wanted. So
Google and other search engines could see it as a sign that they shouldn’t send traffic based on
a specific keyword phrase because there’s a low likelihood that visitors will get what they need.
A high bounce rate could be disaster for you.
Alternatively, the more time organic traffic spends on your site and the more activities done
once that visitor arrives, the more the search engines will believe that they have done a good
job in matching a searcher to their heart’s desire. The end result= even more traffic and a
temporary place at the top of the heap.
Google aims to continue to be the crème de la crème. If they’re going to hold that top spot of
being the de facto standard, they will continually fine tune their algorithms so that they meet
the needs of their visitors. By making sure that your site does more than try to rank well based
on keyword density, you will be demonstrating to Google that you deserve high rankings.
Search engine optimisation tactics need to go deeper than keyword density and deeper than
number of incoming links. You need to appeal to search engines by showing them that you will
appeal to your visitors.
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3. Here are some ways you can improve the perception of your site by search engines and
visitors:
Quality On-Page Content
On page content needs to be of a high calibre. High quality and relevance will ensure that
visitors find something that suits their needs on your page. Lack of bouncing and a good
number of repeat visitors will bode well for your SEO efforts. A solid on page SEO strategy is
essential.
Write for People
It’s tempting to think in terms of SEO when writing content. But you need to strike a balance
between SEO and writing for people. Yes, use keywords and populate tags with optimised
content but realise that quality is more important than density. Make sure that each web page
delivers on the promises made to lure people to the site.
Read Your Reports
Don’t discount the importance of website traffic reports. They truly paint a picture that shows
you things like: bounce rate, which search terms are bringing people to your site, entry and exit
pages of visitors, which sites link to your site, and more. Reporting will help you fine tune local
SEO efforts as well as analyse the pages that seem to be getting both the best and the worst
results.
Get some SEO Help
Don’t hesitate to get help fine tuning your SEO strategy. What you’re currently doing might be
archaic. Website owners that were working with reputable SEO companies prior to Google
Panda (and previous algorithm changes, for that matter) didn’t experience a big plummet in
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4. rankings or in traffic. Skilled SEO companies leverage knowledge about past algorithm changes
and intelligence about upcoming changes so that they stay ahead of the curve. If your SEO
company let you down by not diversifying your online marketing approach enough to help you
withstand Google Panda, maybe it’s time to try a new approach. Oracle Digital would be happy
to give you an SEO consultation.
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