Factors seem endless for search marketers trying to rank websites in search engine result pages. In a recent blogpost by Eric Enge he shed some light on the subject of bounce rates affecting search engine rankings. In other words, if you have a high bounce rate on your site, you could see lower rankings or if you have lower bounce rates, you could see ranking increases.

A bounce rate can be defined as a visit to a site where the visitor only views one page and then leaves the site. Viewing and analyzing a site’s bounce rate can tell you a lot about a site. For example, if a site has a high bounce rate, it could mean that people are not finding what they need and you may need to enhance the site to be more user-friendly. This could also mean that you are not targeting the most relevant keywords on your website, resulting in people coming into the site through targeted keywords and expecting to find something different. For these reasons, and probably many more, search engines may be moving towards considering bounce rates as a significant ranking factor.

In a recent study conducted by SEO Black Hat, they demonstrated the impact a website’s bounce rate has on search engine rankings. However, it is difficult to know this for sure because other factors could have contributed to a site’s movement within the search engine results.

Although ranking factors are not known exactly, I do not think it is far fetched that bounce rates would become a significant ranking factor. As stated earlier, bounce rates can tell search engines a lot about a website. It can also be used as a good measure of a website’s quality when it comes to human visitors. Search engines have to continue to serve up the most relevant and quality results. With that in mind, it would make sense for bounce rates to be an indicator of website quality and usability.