Controlling Bounce Rate Through Targeted Keywords

Bounce Rate measures when visitors to your site come in, and then exit within a few seconds. A reason for visitors leaving might be that you have a dubious or perhaps overwhelming website. Another reason could be that you might have a fine website, but the wrong person just happened at your doorstep -- a wrong number if you will.

"Oops, this is not what I was looking for."

The problem is, if you get too many of these quick click-aways, the value of your website is diminished in the eyes of Google. This is not good for SEO and therefore high page ranking.


Some means of engaging your visitor would obviously be to have an interesting landing page with a video perhaps, a special offer, or some call to action. But what I'm suggesting here is what you think about even BEFORE the visitor comes to the website. Get those visitors pre-screened so that the visitors that you truly want are the ones clicking through to your pages. A way to do this is to optimize your site for organic search results and PPC campaigns on the RIGHT keyword phrases.


What are the Right Keyword Phrases?
If you target too broad of a keyword, you risk bringing visitors to your site that you really do not want. For example, if you sell vintage clothing, you do not want folks seeking vintage cars and vice versa. So "vintage" might be too broad a term to target. It might be smarter for you to target long tail keywords. These are very specific keywords that home in on the niche you truly represent. So perhaps for our "vintage" example, you might optimize for "1920's vintage clothing" or "vintage muscle cars for sale" -- depending on which aspect of all things vintage you happen to represent. I mean, think about how YOU use Google as a user. I do not know about you, but, I get very specific in my searches and have good luck in Google with this specificity. Therefore field such searchers on the other end in kind by having your page optimized on long tail keywords and by aiming at long tails in your pay-per-click campaigns.


A good place to start on finding good TARGETED keywords is learning what your competition is doing. Of course observe what keyword phrases, ads, and landing pages bring and KEEP folks on your competitors web sites. (That is precisely what our keyword tool helps you do of course!) Emulate what keeps your competitors in the top search engine pages as part of your SEO strategy. You can springboard off of those and develop your own long-tails from there.


By doing that, you are setting up an up-front filtration process that takes place on the SERP instead of on your site page. This lowers the dreadful bounce rate, and increases your site in Google's esteem, hence pushing you up the page ranks.

Time to shake a [long] tail?