Why is Knowing the Landing Page Important for Keyword Research?

Sometimes knowing the keyword phrase that has brought in traffic isn't enough - especially if you happen to have a lot of fairly diverse content on the same web property.


Sites that are essentially marketing funnels (see Leveraging the Marketing Funnel) will have the worst issue when looking at keyword phrases in isolation, since the net is cast especially wide at first in the hope of bringing in qualified leads among a wide range of visitors.


If you are already getting keyword traffic reports from Analytics - or an equivalent service - on a regular basis, pull one up and look for an entry with a high Bounce or Exit rate.


(If not, the article How to Use Google Analytics Daily Reports for Keyword Research may well be of interest!)


What Does a High Bounce Rate Tell Me?


On it's own, nothing, sadly. The trap that many new Analytics users fall into is assuming that a keyword phrase that has a high number of incoming visitors, but an equally high bounce rate denotes traffic that falls into one of two categories:

• Mis-targeted (i.e. content not related to keywords) or;
• Not interested by the content.

In fact, the visitor who has used the keyword phrase may well fall into a third camp - interested in the content that the site has to offer, but has fallen into the site on a page that doesn't happen to contain that content.


Asking Google Analytics to reveal the landing page as well as the keywords also adds a third metric - the Exit Rate.


Keyword Phrase, Exit Rate, Bounce Rate, Landing Page


The accuracy of keyword research often depends on knowing what the visitor is actually interested in, rather than just guessing from the keyword. 


This is very important when using Google Analytics, as the Bounce Rate on its own may well not be a reflection of the site as a whole, but the validity of a specific page. This page could fall into one of several categories, for example:

• poor content - needs rewriting;
• mis-matched content - needs rewriting;
• no clear call to action - needs rewriting;

Of course, the page could be slow to load, or not load at all - typically looking at the Average Time on Page (all zeros shows no engagement at all) alongside the Bounce Rate and Exit Rate will help to diagnose these pages.


Otherwise, it should be obvious from looking first at the page, then at the keywords that delivered traffic to the page, and then at the metrics, what the problem is.


Sometimes a page with a reasonably high PR (Page Rank) that appears in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) above other more relevant ones, does so because a keyword phrase is quite precise, and has been matched with a reference to the more-relevant content.


More often that not, however, it's a case that there's a high Bounce Rate and/or High Exit Rate coupled with a low Average Time on Page which indicates poor or mis-matched content that needs to be rewritten.


However, it's important not to do anything without confirming the trends by analysis, as the article Using Google Analytics to Improve Stickiness and Engagement explains.