The goal of every website owner is to draw people to the site and keep them there. This not only improves sales for profit-driven websites, but it also improves a site’s search engine ranking. Google and similar search engines have come up with elaborate algorithms to determine search rankings, and these algorithms are constantly changing to fit the needs of the average web user.
One of the newest factors that influence search rankings is “pogo sticking,” when a visitor comes to a website and immediately leaves. Search engines measure the amount of time a person spends on a landing page and use that data to determine how valuable a website is to certain search terms. The more time someone spends on the page, the better the ranking will be.
Pogo Sticking And Bounce Rate
Your website’s bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors that only encounter one page on your website. A high bounce rate typically leads to a low search position for target keywords. Pogo sticking and bounce rate are somewhat related in the sense that they both measure how much people interact with your website. The difference is that pogo sticking takes into account the time a person spends on the page, not just the number of pages someone visits. You can have a high bounce rate without having a high pogo rate, but not vice versa.
Why People Pogo Stick
There are several factors that may cause a person to leave a website shortly after coming to a page. These include:
- Long Loading Times
- Invaluable Content
- Content That Did Not Match The Search Term
- Poor Website Design
- “Spammy” Content And Advertisements
- Small, Illegible Text
- Difficult Navigation
Chances are you have visited a website that you left immediately after you got on. What caused you to look elsewhere for the information you needed? Your visitors feel the same way, so you need to make sure your website design and content is enticing enough to keep people from moving on.
How To Prevent Pogo Sticking On Your Website
To prevent pogo sticking and reduce your bounce rate, you need to provide quality, search-specific content for each landing page on your website. This applies to webpages you think people will never fine. You don’t know which pages will end up ranking well in Google, so you might as well make them all valuable, entertaining, and factual. Provide links to other valuable pages on your website, and you will soon have a thriving audience that continues to improve your search engine ranking.
