Where Google Meets BaseballDid you know that Google will help you to have better results in their search engine? Google provides useful advice on how to improve a website’s search engine ranking, and they did it with Brandon’s Baseball Cards. If you have never heard about Brandon or the example Google made with his baseball cards, I would not be surprised. There is a lot of information on the Internet, and it can be hard to take it all in. The information Google provides to explain search engine optimization is worth the time it will take to read and take notes. This is especially true if you are going to try do-it-yourself search engine optimization (DIY SEO) for the first time.
Google Wants to Index Your Site
Google wants to include your website in their index, and for good reason. When you can find anything and everything you ever want to know at Google.com, it is good for their company. This is how Google maintains its ranking as the number one search engine. Being the perfect go-to source for information is what drives Google’s AdWords advertising sales up, and keeps their market share strong. The biggest challenges website owners face mirror the challenges Google faces, and are as follows:
Billions of Competing Web Pages
Providing High-Quality Information
Google works very hard to provide the best results when users search the Internet. If your website is not among the top results, it is not because Google is out to kill your business, but mostly that somebody else had more relevant and easier to index information.
Google Will Help You With SEO
The efforts Google has made to help people better understand their search engine is not a secret. Any decent search engine optimizer (SEO) is aware of Google Webmaster Tools and Google’s Search Engine Optimizer Starter Guide. Most SEO will be happy to share the information with you just as I am here. A good SEO will be glad to know their clients have read the information so they understand the job we do. An informed client will understand the value of SEO work, and is less likely to fall asleep when we talk.
If you put this information to good use, and you do not try to cheat Google’s well-formed system, your Google ranking will improve and your website will receive more traffic. Better yet, it will receive more relevant traffic because people will be finding your site based on exactly what they search for. It will cost you nothing but your time and attention, but what it can return is extremely beneficial to your business. Now that I put it this way, wouldn’t it really seem crazy to neglect it? Really, this is free exposure to your business using the number one way that people find businesses to buy from. Doesn’t it seem like that is worthwhile? I believe your answer is yes, but you may be wondering what this has to do with Brandon’s Baseball Cards, so I will get to that.
Brandon’s Baseball Cards and Search Engine Optimization
If you do not already know what Brandon’s Baseball Cards has to do with SEO, it is only because you did not read “Google’s Search Engine Optimizer Starter Guide” yet. It is only 22 pages in length and I really hope you will take some time to read it. Even if you are a professional SEO, the information contained in the document may just be what your next client needs to help them understand how you can help them.
Since I know some of you will never take my advice and read the SEO starter guide, I will let the cat out of the bag. Brandon’s Baseball Cards is the product Google used in its examples. Go ahead and see what is at brandonsbaseballcards.com. If you did not guess, it goes to Google.com.
What Google Didn’t Mention
The information Google provides about SEO is very important, but it is not everything. There is not a single element that will place your link at the top of every search results page. If there was an easy fix, everybody would be doing it. Effective SEO requires marketing talent, and it is a mix of both art and science. If I could condense all that you need to know into a list of SEO lessons and make it simple, I would do that. As it is, there are still a lot of important tasks that a professional SEO performs. Two search engine optimizers will never achieve the exact same results, and implementation of SEO skills will vary. There is only one position at the top, and I hope to see you there. If you need help with that, ring me any time at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*).
Just one more thing: Can you name the baseball player pictured above? Add your guess in the comments!
Search engine optimization can be a pretty deceitful field. There are a lot of challenges to the SEO every day which can make us look bad as an industry. SEO is a very lucrative field, which makes it prone to excessive competition and it is frequently a target for fraud. The fraud can happen on both sides; from the SEO, as well as from the client. I have a couple ideas on the topic, and I hope this will benefit you, whether as the SEO or the potential SEO client.
Considering that the SEO professional has to look over his or her shoulder at all times, there should be little wonder why even the best SEO with good abilities and intentions can come off as shady. After all, anybody who feels suspicious all the time can appear suspicious, themselves. This suspicion of SEO services prompted me to question how we must seem to potential customers when they read the SEO contracts, proposals, project scope, retainer agreements, engagement letters, needs analysis, non-disclosure agreements, and etcetera.
Many SEO proposals and SEO contracts that I have read lean toward being a bit ambiguous and one-sided. I am “guilty” of this, too, and I have even heard it from clients in my decade plus in this field. What is sometimes hard to overcome are some of the reasons the SEO contracts are ambiguous … and why sometimes they should be.
What to Include in SEO Proposals
The question of what to include in the SEO proposal is a tough one. I think a lot of SEO must have felt that little pang of uncertainty after they have crafted a brilliant SEO proposal and present it to the prospective client. Some of the questions the SEO may ponder are whether the prospective client is just using it to try and implement the proposed work internally, using the SEO proposal to shop around, or even stealing the brilliant work to provide the proposal to their shady SEO who was too lazy or incompetent to do the research themselves. I suspect that every good SEO is cheated at least once.
How much can you include in the SEO proposal before the client thinks they can implement it themselves (which seldom works well for them), and how little can you include in the SEO proposal, yet still convey a high value? There should be a balance, but my approach has often been to just put all the cards on the table and give them the gold. The problem here is that so many people view SEO as a science (see “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Art or Science?“). Clients do not always realize that SEO implementation is not created equally, and there is also an artistic side to SEO. There are many degrees to doing the job right, and even the same strategy implemented by two different SEO will yield different results. After a potential client ends up hanging themselves on that rope you give them, they lose faith in you and even the whole prospect of hiring out SEO services.
The other side of the coin is to show very little strategy in the SEO proposal but provide a lot of proof. In this case, it may look like the SEO strategy is weak and not show enough value. Proof of concept and SEO case studies are fine, but many people cannot relate that into their world due to inherent doubts about SEO.
What to Include in SEO Contracts
A great SEO proposal must be backed up with a great SEO contract. Putting too much information in the SEO contract can have the same results as with the SEO proposal, but worse, this time you are asking them for a signature and money. Leaving any ambiguity may look unprofessional or dishonest, but making it too rigid comes with a risk of not being able to provide the right responses the client needs under changing market circumstances. Just imagine the contract that says exactly what the SEO will do, but then you find an instance where market changes say that you should do something different.
The SEO contract can be a deal-breaker, especially if it is going before a board of directors with a bunch of people who do not have a clue about SEO, or marketing at all for that matter. When you have a company filled with a bunch of people doing all they can to be sure they still have a job tomorrow (most companies), the last thing you want is for them to vote something down just because they didn’t understand what they were approving. This applies to small companies and large, and even a one-person company has a “board” of sorts.
Consider What the SEO Contract Represents
Everybody wants to avoid a lawsuit. It may sound too simple, but let’s look at what the SEO contract really represents. It is a contract that says that the customer agrees to pay “x” money in exchange for “y” services. If everything goes just as planned, and everybody involved is on the up and up, the contract should actually be a very useless piece of paper. Looking at it this way, you can see that the contract is mostly in place solely to make everybody comfortable in case it has to go to a court to be upheld. This is the bottom line with a contract. It is really useless as an instrument unless or until it is contested by one party and is brought to a courtroom or mediation.
With the purpose of the contract in mind, it should be easier to prepare your agreements in a way that addresses these basic components of “x” money for “y” service. A lot of the fluff beyond that is mostly there to address irrational fears. Not all of it, but this is the case with much of the content in most of the SEO service contracts I have read.
I have spent a significant amount of money having contracts reviewed and prepared over the years. I recall something one of my attorneys once said when I asked him to review one of the contracts I used for my customers. He said that the contract looks great, but that he could not “bless” the contract, and for that I would need a priest. He went on to say that any contract is only as good as the people signing it or in the worst case, the judge who makes a ruling on it. Looking at it this way, I may suggest that you just be sure to use waterproof ink before you splatter it with holy water.
SEO Espionage is an Irrational Fear
To the SEO: Collaboration between SEO is great, but sometimes the SEO has to know when to watch his or her back. Right? Well, the answer is yes and no. Most of the time the fear is irrational. I know that many SEO have used my work to build upon their services and their knowledge base. They have used my contracts, my proposals, and they have used SEO espionage to take food from my kids’ mouths. Should I concentrate on that, or the fact that I have done my little piece by using integrity and ideas to make the industry stronger?
I place providing value to the industry very high. I have been giving away information and putting my ideas out here on the Internet since the 1990’s and somehow people still pay attention. They flock to things like my very old article on h1 tags, and constantly find me when searching for SEO contracts. Being useful and providing value is a good thing … a very good thing. When you look over your shoulder with fears that somebody will get a leg up on you, it is easy to miss the big picture. There are enough SEO clients out there, and even if somebody takes your prized prospect away, there is always another one better suited to be your client.
A better way to look at it is that if you are working with a good spirit of collaboration between SEO, the whole industry becomes stronger. When the industry becomes stronger, your business becomes stronger. The market for good SEO will never be saturated. Really, pay attention: “The market for good SEO will never be saturated.”
Why SEO Contracts Don’t Matter
I Love Buying Stuff!
If contracts were ever a deal breaker, it should be with the credit card industry. If people actually read everything they agree to by using a credit card, spending habits would surely be a whole lot different, and the credit card industry may not even exist. It is not because they are all that bad, but reading the contract can be a bit scary.
Think about this and tell me if you can relate. I have purchased a lot of things over the years. I love buying stuff! When I think about the things I wanted the most, I recall that I barely even paid attention to the contracts. I already knew that I wanted to buy, I had a pretty good idea of who I was dealing with, and I knew that I would not have the “thing” I wanted until I signed the contract.
An extreme example is when I purchased the house I live in. I went to the closing at about 4:00 p.m. and signed about a squillion contracts by the close of business. I did this with little more than a brief explanation from my real estate agent of what I was signing. If you have ever purchased real estate, you surely know what I mean. Your hand probably got cramped before you were done, right? Now consider whether you read and scrutinized every line of those contracts.
As I consider the people who signed contracts with me over the years, I recall that some of the happiest ones barely even scanned through it. They had an absolute faith in my work, my integrity, and they wanted the help that I can provide them. The ones who got hung up on fine details of the SEO contract simply did not have that faith in me. I had failed them long before it was time to sign the contract.
I hope that you will consider this, whether as a prospective SEO client or the SEO provider. Getting the job right and having a signed contract is really the last thing that should matter. Gaining the client’s trust should never come down to the contract, but rather all of the gains that the SEO contract represents.
SEO Contract Examples
If you would like sample SEO contracts, proposals, or other documents, just leave me your comment here on my blog. Let me know what you think of the matter, and what kind of document you need help with. If I have something I believe will be useful to you, I will post an example here in the comments. If you can provide some input to help others, whether as SEO or client, add your piece. Collaboration is a good thing, and usually a whole lot more useful than coming off as shady to avoid somebody stealing your work.
Brian Forsythe of Suture Express, a leading Johnson & Johnson Ethicon surgical suture supplier that promotes “cheap surgical suture supplies”, made a decision to rejuvenate the failing sutureexpress.com website. Naturally, he contacted a search engine optimization provider to suture the damage. In fitting with Suture Express’ core value of “cheap surgical supplies” he contacted a friend with whom he could make a great deal. What he did not realize is how much “cheap” can haunt a company, and especially as it involves selling surgical sutures and outright lying to the SEO provider and not paying him. Note: Stealing information from a search engine optimizer and website developer is not a good way to do more business. What amazes me is that some companies still fail to grasp the reach of the Internet or the power of truth against fraud.
Suture Express Cheap Johnson & Johnson Surgical Sutures? Yes Cheap Surgical Supplies!
Brian Forsythe claimed that Suture Express paid $150,000 to build sutureexpress.com and admitted that they made some pretty big marketing mistakes. Forsythe set out to make it right, but only made it worse when he contracted with a skilled SEO and did not pay the bill. The prior costly marketing mistakes made by Ed Kuklenski, Suture Express’ CEO at the time of the $150,000 disaster yielded only $50,000 gross revenue in the following year according to Forsythe. Forsythe stated that customers had refused to use their website and that it was too slow and ineffective in meeting the Suture Express customer needs and expectations.
It seems that cheap did not fit the bill in this instance, so the fax machine is still the primary method of taking orders. Forsythe claimed that the CEO, Ed Kuklenski had refused to present the proposed budget for site redevelopment, search engine optimization, and social media marketing services to the board for approval. Forsythe cited that since Ed Kuklenski had previously made too big a mistake on the website development that it would shame the CEO to request further money to rectify the mess. Instead, the company CFO, Brian Forsythe, decided to structure payments toward the proposed services in smaller amounts that would each come under the limit that must be approved by the board. Forsythe signed what was to have been the first of multiple contracts and claimed that payment had been sent. Brian Forsythe lied, the checks never came, and he stopped taking calls.
Is Suture Express a Fraud?
I am not an attorney, but what Brian Forsythe did on behalf of Suture Express as the CFO would probably stand out bad in any court of public opinion. Not only did Forsythe agree to a series of contracts to circumvent his board, he also signed a contract and said that the check was in the mail. Brian P. Forsythe
With a signed contract in hand and the Chief Financial Officer’s word that the check had been sent, it seemed safe to produce a report and a plan to achieve Suture Express’ Internet marketing goals. I provided the report, and Suture Express received the benefit of initial plans to improve their search engine ranking. Again, I am not an attorney, but I do recall hearing terms like “Theft by Deception” and “Fraud” somewhere. I am not sure what legal terms apply, but in any case, good business ethics do not seem to be this company’s strong point.
Beating the Surgical Suture Supply Competitors
Suture Express’ ill-considered plan to one-up the competing surgical supply companies had all the making of failure from the very beginning. Stealing from a top-level SEO just sealed the deal. This should be no surprise from a company that claimed to produce between six and seven hundred million per year in revenue (you believe that, right?), yet bragged in their marketing about using duct tape to fix an office toilet seat rather than buying a new one. That is how cheap they are, and they are proud of it. Ladies, can we hear from you on this topic? They are using duct tape to fix a toilet seat, but spent $150,000 on a website that does not work and irritates customers. Sorry ladies of Suture Express, the money for your toilet seat is at sutureexpress.com. Go there when you need to pee, like the rest of the surgical suture supply people around the world.
I am I kidding? No, they actually used the duct taped toilet seat in their marketing. Sure, people having surgery and hoping to live through it probably want that kind of “cheap”. That makes up for wasting $150,000 on a website, for certain.
Suture Express Cheap Sutures Acquired by “Diamond Castle Holdings LLC”
In what I can only imagine as a panic, Brian Forsythe and key operatives in the Suture Express marketing team decided that after costly failed attempts at selling surgical supplies online, they had to do something to advance their cheap surgical supply company. Instead of doing business with integrity, such as honoring a signed contract with the SEO, maybe the best thing to do was to sell the company again. I imagine it to sound something like this:
“Let’s sell Suture Express again! Selling a surgical suture supply company seems to work well. It has worked before, and to heck with Suture Express’ reputation, this is millions of dollars. We can buy a new SEO with that kind of money, and the new shareholders will never know better. Shareholders don’t get the Internet anyway.”
I can actually kind of expect this kind of logic from these people, because the company who purchased Suture Express in January 2010 is named Diamond Castle Holdings LLC. Really, a diamond castle is what people want to build when they buy cheap surgical supplies, right? Diamond Castle acquired Suture Express in a leveraged buyout from Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC. Does anybody want to guess the shareholders of Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC and Diamond Castle Holdings LLC? I’ll bet we can find some pretty classy cheap surgical suppliers in there somewhere. I can imagine the pride they all shout about at the shareholder meetings. Can you make up a good cheer to suit this?
Ethicon Surgical Supply Truth, with Suture Express
What I know today answers a lot of questions of how America’s health care system is in shambles. I waited well over a year from the time that Brian Forsythe at Suture Express told me directly that a check was in the mail before I decided to share the truth. I never wanted to battle with the huge health care industry or to hurt a one-time friend who suckered me into it. In over a year of waiting for that check to arrive and watching Suture Express being sold twice for millions of dollars each time, I had to shake my head and wonder what went wrong. There were many instances when I missed what I knew as my one-time friend, Brian, who had served as the CEO, CTO and CFO of Suture Express, and any other position he could regain in the next sale of his company. He gained millions of dollars by selling a company and effectively reselling it multiple times. Some people call this genius, but some people would call him a conman. I did not judge him, because I knew him as a friend who came to me when he needed to market a company that had made huge and costly mistakes.
I should explain that Brian Forsythe was one of the people I credit the highest with my learning to drive race cars. I met Brian when I was learning to master driving Corvettes. As you can imagine, I trusted Brian Forsythe. We have been just a few feet apart in our Corvettes at 150 miles per hour and taken high speed turns where mistakes count dearly. I don’t do this with people I do not like or respect. After all, I have a family to come home to.
Brian Forsythe Porsche Club and Corvette Race Car Driver
Brian is an amazing race car driver, and he instructed me in driving to the absolute limits a Corvette can withstand. He has been in a car with me at 150 miles per hour and has coached me when I placed 4th in a competition with top drivers from all around the world. He was the guy who once said “Mark, you made the quantum leap today, and you will never see that much improvement in your driving skill again.” He was also the guy who consoled me as I frantically worried that I had finished a time trial at less than my capability. He had been timing me and assured me beyond my tears that I had done a smashing job. Yes, race car drivers are close like brothers, so it actually does trouble me to say how badly this man conducts business. It means that I will never see my friend on a racetrack for fear that he will treat human life the way he does his business … like a true liar and cheat.
Yes, you read it correctly, and I will defend it in a court of law … Brian Forsythe of Suture Express is a liar. I cannot say how often he does it, but I can prove multiple instances of Brian lying to a friend, so you go ahead and make your judgments how you like. I always figured that if a man will lie to his friend, it is generally a reflection of how he will treat people in business as well.
My opinion is that Ed Kuklenski, Brian Forsythe, Kurt Rall, Steve Boyer, and the rest of the executive team and marketing staff at Suture Express probably could have done well to just own up to their contract instead of selling out the little guy who just wanted to help his racing buddy.
When people tell the truth, there should be no harm to the person reporting it. Fairness is subjective, but factual data should never hurt. The day that the truth becomes damaging to the truth-teller, is the day I will give up and stop doing business. If you do not like the truth, stop reading my blog right now, because you would probably not like me. If you are in the Ethicon surgical sutures supply industry, the truth may either upset you, or it may delight you. In the end, it is only the truth.
I wonder how Diamond Castle Holdings LLC’s shareholders will feel about their acquisition. I don’t wonder too much, because I think if anybody facing a life-saving surgery knew that their sutures were building a diamond castle, that their holdings would perhaps include holding their breath and waiting for some surgical supplies by a company with more integrity. Really … Diamond Castle Holdings? Are you kidding me? Is that part of the big healthcare reform thing we keep hearing about?
How many people here on my blog want to finance a Diamond Castle when they get sick and need a doctor to stitch them up?
A Surgical Supply Question for Johnson & Johnson
Do you generally do business like Brian Forsythe at Suture Express? I wonder if you can sell any sutures that can stitch up this surgical marketing mess Brian and his coworkers made. I really wonder how Johnson & Johnson looks at companies promoting their Ethicon line of surgical sutures in this way. Will I get any answers?
About Surgical Suture Suppliers
I doubt that surgical sutures suppliers are all so shady. I would be delighted to assist a suture supply company like Ethicon by Johnson & Johnson, Suture Direct, Novartis, Angiotech, MPS Medical Supply, DemeTech or others.
I would like to add that I do not often say unkind things about companies or friends. This is an instance where I believe that it is in the public’s interest and that Suture Express’ shareholders, prospective customers, and even competing surgical suture suppliers should know what happens when you treat people with dishonesty. Especially the ones who already proved they know their way around SEO. Just see my comment on the article “Ethicon Sutures: Endo Surgical Sutures” to see what I mean.
Twitter is a great place to gather useful information. It can also be a good place to find an audience of people who care about what you have to say. Twitter makes it easy to create a lot of business and personal connections. If you use Twitter with a little foresight, it can become an extremely valuable resource. If I did not believe this, I never would have spent the time and effort to write a book about Twitter, but blogging is even better. I am using Twitter as an example here, but much of this can be applied to other social media resources as well. What I wish to show is that many tools may be used for effective social media communications, and at the hub is a blog.
Many Twitter users have a blog, or even more precisely many bloggers have a Twitter account (or several). Blogs still outnumber Twitter users by hundreds of millions after all. Although Twitter can be useful, particularly in conjunction with a blog, it is not a silver bullet. I will explain this with data that I collected between March 2009 and March 2010, and provide charts to include comparisons as follows:
Twitter update (tweet) frequency and website traffic
Twitter followers and website traffic
Blog frequency and website traffic
Blogging is Better than Twitter, but Twitter is Still Useful
This is not a criticism of Twitter. I like Twitter, and I find a lot of great uses for the service. I meet a lot of wonderful people, I have interesting conversations, I learn from Twitter, and I share information with people using Twitter. However, it seems that while millions of business people have been fascinated by Twitter and a handful of other social media sites, it can be easy for them to overlook the even greater value of creating excellent website content, and doing it often. Social media can bring many people to a website, but consistent and high quality content development is key to keeping them coming back and keeping them telling their friends. This is extremely valuable to most business efforts.
In order to emphasize the importance of content creation (blogging), I will illustrate the side by side growth and reach of a Twitter account and a blog which were both created near the same time. The first blog post was on 7 December 2008 and my @murnahan Twitter account was created on 9 January 2009, so about a month apart. I used Twitter in conjunction with several other sites prior to this (copmagnet.com, stormmagnet.com, and others) but my @murnahan Twitter account and this blog create a good comparison. This is a one author blog and a one author Twitter account of about the same age.
Twitter Update (tweet) Frequency and Website Traffic Comparison
Many people believe that if they tweet at high velocity all day and night that it will bring huge traffic to their website. There has been some validity to this, but the landscape has changed. It should be obvious that influence is more important than simply yelling across a room and the same is true with Twitter. Here is a chart showing numbers of Twitter updates (tweets) compared with blog visits. I will add additional metrics later, but this may be an eye-opener to some people. Since lines on a tiny chart will not do this justice, I am providing the number of actual Twitter updates I sent during this period, below the chart. The high levels of traffic in the earlier part of the chart coincide loosely with a huge numbers of tweets, but then toward the more recent months you can see that traffic went back up (after I finished writing three books in 2009) while there were many thousands fewer tweets per month. Look at March 2009 with 9091 tweets compared to March 2010 with 175 tweets month-to-date.
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
9091
5969
1272
659
671
850
314
406
329
400
355
238
175
Twitter Followers and Website Traffic Comparison
A lot of Twitter followers should surely do the trick, right? It seems that there has been some amazing wool pulled over Twitter users’ eyes with this myth about Twitter followers. Sure, it is great to make a lot of connections, but how does that play into actual relevant website traffic? After all, website traffic is a common reason that a lot of people use Twitter. A squillion followers is a big dream for many people, but the way Twitter follower numbers relate to website traffic is not the same as some people may imagine. There is a lot more to building a brand and building website traffic than sending a bunch of tweets to a large number of followers.
I must say that in the beginning, Twitter was massively helpful in introducing people to this blog. In those days, people were retweet crazy, and it seemed that people retweeted everything I wrote. An example is an article I wrote about Twitter retweets … it was retweeted over 400 times. It was probably actually retweeted a lot more, but that is just what tweetmeme has on record.
Twitter helped to spread the word and create a lot of incoming links from many other social media sites as well. In May 2009, I wrote about how Twitter improves blog traffic (NOTE: “improves” and not just “increases”). In social media time, that was a long time ago. Twitter still holds great value that should not be overlooked or underutilized, but Twitter is different now.
Blog Frequency and Website Traffic Comparison
Twitter gets them there, but frequent content creation keeps them coming back.
Twitter can be instrumental in generating and cultivating an audience for a particular blog topic or service offering. A chart that cannot be overlooked is the one below which shows the direct relation of blog content creation and site visits. I used actual numbers of visits to my blog, so I multiplied the blog post numbers in order to be more visible in the chart. What I wanted to point out is how the lines follow a very similar course. While comparing nearly every metric of my website traffic, the one thing that relates more closely than any other is to continually create useful information for my readers. I hope that you will see this as an important focus in your efforts, too.
A blog is a hub for good social media outreach and is what keeps the machine moving. It is where you can reach more people with the information you want to share the most. All of the many related tools in your social media marketing strategy are fantastic and should be used to the best of your abilities. In the end, the tool that is expected to create more sales for your business is your website, so take good care of it and pay attention to the numbers.
If you have not already read the following articles, I encourage you to take time for these.
Do You Know Your Bounce Rate?The bounce rate of a website, or of any given page, is an important measure of whether you have captured a reader’s interest enough to click and visit another page on your site. It is more important to some types of sites than others, and is often dismissed by considerations of the ratio of returning visitors to new visitors, but it should not be ignored. I know a lot of people understand bounce rate, but I still thought it was worth blogging about because you should hear it from somebody, and maybe I will give you a different angle on this.
Does Bounce Rate Affect Search Engine Rankings
The answer is no … and yes. Although bounce rate is purportedly not used in the ranking algorithm of Google or other search engines, some people will still try to insist that it is. I have heard arguments that even if Google used it, they would keep it very secret because it is too easy to cheat in the ways people have cheated to have higher Alexa rank. I think it is worth considering what Google has to say about bounce rate, and how true it is. According to Google’s Matt Cutts, it is “Spamable and noisy” data, and I agree. There are many things that can cause a higher or lower bounce rate that it is not useful as a single measure and requires other factors to become useful data. The ways that bounce rate can affect search engine ranking are outside of the search engine algorithms, and come down to how useful your site is to people and if it is not useful, they are probably not linking to it. Bounce rate is a symptom and not a cause.
Bounce Rate Factors
Bounce rate is subject to many different diluting factors, and a good example is Wikipedia. If I search for something and I find the answer at Wikipedia, I will likely not visit another page in that same browser session, thus creating a “bounce” for Wikipedia. This is an example of a high bounce rate being a good thing, because I did not need to click around to find my answer. I found it, Wikipedia’s job was done well, and I will still return often. There are a lot of things which may cause a high bounce rate, and it is not all bad. This does not mean you can ignore it, though.
You really should not ignore your bounce rate, because it can still play a role in your SEO efforts and make a difference in your rankings for other reasons. For example, if your bounce rate is on the rise but your site has not changed, it would be best to determine why before you start losing people’s interest any further. Is the information less relevant than it once was? If so, you really should pay attention to this. If people lose interest, they will probably stop returning to your site, linking to your site, and sharing it with others. If it is a blog, maybe you need better content, or maybe the content is so good that they come back every day to read more. Whatever the instance, you should be measuring this and know the answer. An important measure is not only whether the bounce rate is high or low, but whether it is changing.
How Bounce Rate is Calculated
Bounce rate of a website is calculated based on the total number of visitors of only one page in a session divided by the total number of visits to the site. Because it is based on a “session” there are several ways a bounce can occur. Things that can cause a bounce are clicking a link to another site, closing the browser window, clicking the back button to try their search again, or a session timeout, which could mean they just left your page open and went to lunch.
Don’t Bounce Me Just Yet!
I did mention the ratio of returning visitors to new visitors. If you have a high bounce rate, but you still have a very high number of returning visitors, it is easy to be relaxed about this. There are a lot of instances where a high bounce rate can still be a sign of potential improvements, such as emphasizing a further call to action. If you give people a reason to stick around right now, you will also improve your chances of a return visit, that they will bookmark your site, subscribe to your blog, or better yet, share it with friends.
The bottom line is that if you are not doing all that you can to make your website more useful, you are leaving the doors open for the competition. Knowing your bounce rate and knowing why it is high, low, or on the move can be a good step in the right direction.
By the way, while you are here, you may like to take a look at my “Recent Articles” listed to the left of the page. I would also invite you to visit the list of articles in my blog archive. I have worked very hard to make it useful for you.
