Will Reduced Bounce Rate, Increased Pages/Session, Increased Session Duration-RESULT IN BETTER RANKING?

[Kingalan1]

Our relaunched website has a much lower bounce rate (66% before, now 58%) increased pages per session (1.89 before, now 3.47) and increased session duration (1:33 before, now 3:47). The relaunch was December 20th.

Should these improvements result in an improvement in Google rank? How about in MOZ authority?

We have not significantly changed the content of the site but the UX has been greatly improved.

Thanks,

Alan

[Kingalan1]

Hi Jeff:

Happy to report that improved metrics are not caused by bots or any unusual spikes in traffic. So I think we are seeing a legitimate improvement. Last year we focused on UX improvements. Will focus on content and links this year in order to solidify our gains.

Thanks for your input!!

Alan

[jasongmcmahon]

Hello Kingalan1,

Looks like you're already improved your Google rankings! Have you checked your traffic sources in Google? To improve your site authority quicker, start a link building campaign.

[Jeff_Baker]

For starters, congratulations on the improved metrics you're experiencing! I would have to also agree with EGOL on this one, in that it will be important to observe how those numbers are pulled, because it's very easy to get false positives with small amounts of data after large changes.

Some tips:

• You may want to look into your numbers a little deeper, and isolate performance based on location and user type. Meaning: are your numbers being skewed by internal members of the organization? Your tech team is a notorious source of generating false numbers if their IPs are not filtered. An easy way to do this is to compare % new users before/after launch. If the % of new users is substantially down, you may want to drill down into location to see if there is anything fishy going on. Which brings me to #2...
• Drill down into city to ensure that all of the traffic isn't coming from one place. You would be surprised at how much traffic is actually bots. If you see a disproportionate number of sessions coming from one city, take a look at the % of new users from that city. If it's in the single digits, you have a bot or developer, or spammer. I wrote a blog post on how to identify bots (and if they are creating false positives).

**As for rankings...: **

• Lots of controversy over this one, but I think more SEOs than not seem to agree that dwell time (time between leaving SERPs and visiting a site, then returning to SERPs) is an important factor for RankBrain.
• Look up "pogosticking" and its relationship with bounce rate. This is also likely a RankBrain factor.

In my opinion, if the numbers are true, in a very cursory observation, it seems that you have created a better experience for visitors. I would imagine that this **may **result in better rankings. At least, there is a better chance than not resulting in better rankings.

Apologies, SEOs never seem to give clear-cut answers, and qualify every statement

Jeff

[TakeshiYoung]

Lots of people speculate that website usability impacts search rank, but this hasn't been conclusively been proven. Improving your website experience is great for conversions and something you should definitely work to improve, but if you want to improve search ranking it's still important to focus on content & links.

[EGOL]

Hello Kingalan1,

If you are getting a nice increase in the number of people getting in touch for this time of year then you have made impressive improvements in the function and visitor satisfaction of the site.  Nice work.

I expect that you will see some kind of rankings increase.

[Kingalan1]

Hi EGOL;

Thanks for your input. I am receiving a dramatically increased number  customers inquiries from the redesigned site. Hopefully there is a reasonable chance that Google will reward us with improved rankings. But I guess time will tell. 
THANKS, 
Alan

[EGOL]

First, nice work on getting a new website with metrics that might be better.

Since you only have a few days of data, and its over the Christmas holiday, don't bet on the new metrics yet.  They might simply be a result of return visitors stumbling around the site trying to find things that they were returning to see, or snooping around for something different.  Your metrics will probably be improved, but don't take it to the bank yet.

If you get improved metrics, will it increase your rankings?  In my opinion, it will depend more on how those metrics were obtained more than the metrics themselves.  If your new metrics are a result of people being more pleased with your site and that is what caused them to explore more then you might get a rankings increase.  If the new metrics are a result of it being more difficult for people to find they want then you might get a rankings decrease.

Will it change moz authority?  I don't know the answer to that question, and I would not give it a single wit of thought.  Why?  Moz authority has nothing to do with how Google ranks your website, how much money you are going to make, and what people think of your website.