As an SEO professional, you may or may not have heard of the term “Pogo-Sticking” before? This blog will look at what it is and why you should be aware of it for SEO.

Pogo-sticking describes a situation where a searcher quickly navigates back and forth between pages in search results.

Some SEO’s dread it as they believe this user behaviour is tracked by Google, penalising websites. But is Google penalising pogo-sticking, and is it something to worry about?

Pogo-sticking vs bounce rate

Pogo-sticking and bounce rate are not to be confused; they are two different things:

• Pogo-sticking is when a user enters a site from a search engine results page and quickly leaves to go back to the SERP.
• On the other hand, Bounce rate is when a user enters a site from any source and doesn’t perform any action on it before leaving.

There are many possible causes of pogo-sticking, and not all of them are through poor content or bad user experience:

Clickbait content

Entering a site that overpromises and underdelivers, i.e. “You’ll Never Believe This”, “Do This One Thing for 6 Weeks”, “They Don’t Want You to Know This,” – those types of “ads”. So the user then “pogo’s” back to the SERP.

Buried or “locked” information

The user cannot find what they are looking for even though the information may be “there”. The information they desire has been buried under tons of text that you need to read through first, obscured by confusing language, or is “unavailable” to some users, so the searcher goes back to the SERP to try another website. It could also be that the content is only available to signed-up users or put behind an email or paywall. The website offers the information the searcher needs, but as it’s not immediately available, the searcher goes back to the SERP to find somewhere else.

Poor Experience

When entering a website, the look and feel of a website or how it works can immediately frustrate the user. Whether it is dealing with the slow loading speed, annoying popups/adverts, sign-up forms that they do not want to sign up to, confusing layout, or not working properly on mobile, they return to the SERP.

Just browsing

The searcher may not be intending to stay long on one particular page, so they are just browsing like they would in a shop. i.e. looking for inspiration, comparing prices, or even trying to remember a site they saw the other day. It is, therefore, irrational to penalise these sites because the searcher quickly looked around for something that could catch their attention.

Is pogo-sticking a ranking factor?

You should not be worried about pogo-sticking from an SEO perspective because there can be many reasons why searchers may jump between sites, and Google doesn’t treat pogo-sticking as a ranking factor. It may be something for you to look into, as ranking factors or not, you want your readers to stick around longer than a few seconds and engage with what you have to offer.

How to make content more engaging

Finally, how can you make your content more engaging? The best methods are:

• Fix site User Experience on Desktop, Mobile and Tablet.
• Keep your site fast.
• The inverted pyramid method (a tried and tested journalistic method that puts the “need to know” before the “nice to know.” enabling users to find information quicker)
• Use clear formatting and visual elements.
• Use relevant internal links.
• Demonstrate E‑A-T
• Keep content up to date.

Click here for more information about the services we provide or view more of our blog.