SEO Is Doing Its Job But You’re Still Bleeding Visitors

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

We all know or should know, that content particularly keyword rich content helps a page with its rankings. On the flip side, apart from keyword research, how much should your search engine optimization strategies influence your content?

In theory, content should be written for the user. Using headings, titles, internal links, well placed keywords and other search engine optimization strategies are supposed to be secondary. To most web site owners it is a quandary – content or SEO?

If you are experiencing a high bounce rate then you need to examine your statistics closely. If you are getting visitors to a page on non keyword searches, you need to find out why. Perhaps your use of that word is to high on that page or perhaps your selected keywords has not been well optimized.

The real concern is where you are getting a high bounce rate for your selected keywords on that page. It is obvious that your search engine optimization program is working – you are getting the visitors. It is also obvious that having found your page, they don’t like what they see and they move on. You need to stem that flow.

If your visitors are bleeding out then you need to closely examine the content and visual appeal of the site. The search engine optimization program has done its job and now its time to optimize the page for the visitor. Are you ‘selling’ and turning the customer off too soon? Is there a clear call to action strategically placed?

Some sites have tremendous search engine optimization appeal, however the page is a total turnoff — slow to load, full of flashing graphics and ads that hit the visitor hard. The actual content is hard to read to the human eye and finding what the visitor wants is darn right impossible.

With this scenario, the visitor takes one look and they are gone. One major problem! Search engine like Google are now measuring this ‘bounce’ rate. If visitors leave your page quickly then it is obvious the page is not relevant to the search term. If it happens often enough they will reduce the ranking of that page – search engine optimization work will all go down the drain.

Your visitors are now becoming your votes – the longer they stay and the more they look at, the higher your pages will eventually rank. Your visitors are now part of your strategy – don’t let them bleed out and reduce your search rankings.