Pogo Sticking in SEO: Why Is It Happened & How to Reduce It?

Have you ever found yourself bouncing from one website to another in search of the most relevant information? If so, you're experiencing what's known as 'pogo sticking'.

This user behaviour shows that your website isn't meeting some user's expectations and of course, it signs that your website needs improvement. Read the article below to learn more about pogo sticking in SEO and tips to reduce it!

 

What Is Pogo Sticking in SEO

Pogo sticking in SEO is considered a bad signal to your optimisation performance. If your page has high pogo sticking, then Google will consider it as a sign that your website is disfavoured by users and it's possible that Google will downgrade your rank. 

Pogo sticking in SEO also shows that your website is not linear with user intent, has poor user experience, and your content doesn't have good enough quality to keep the audience staying. This means you need to improve or invest on new and better SEO strategies to reduce it.

Pogo Sticking vs. Bounce Rate

You may be wondering what is pogo sticking. Well, pogo sticking is a user's behaviour of visiting several different websites in search results to find the most relevant information they need. Sounds like a bounce rate, right? 

Though it may sound similar, there is a difference. Pogo sticking happens when users visit your site from a search result and quickly leave and return to the SERP. 

On the other hand, bounce rate is when users visit your website and do not do any action there like clicking, filling out forms, or other. So if someone visits your website, reads the article but doesn't do anything, and then leaves, that counts as a bounce. Also, the bounce rate is characterised by a very short visit time, less than 10 seconds, and not followed by clicks or other interactions.

Why does Pogo Sticking Happen?

There are a lot of reasons why users might bounce back to the search engine, look at different things on the search result, or just stay on the page for a short time. Here is the list of why pogo sticking often happens:

• Clickbait content: Sometimes, the site owner creates overpromising and irrelevant titles just to get users to visit their site, and when the users click, the content is not what they expected.
• Buried information: This means that although the information that users need is included in the article, it is difficult to find it since it is buried by other text.
• Poor user experience: Users may also go back to the SERPs due to your site’s poor experience; whether your site loading is slow, the font of text is too small or too large, confusing site layout, and you have many annoying ads covering your content.
• The searcher just browses: Another reason why pogo sticks can happen is because the searcher is just browsing around with no intention of staying on a particular page for a longer time.

How to Reduce Pogo Sticking

After understanding what a pogo stick is and why it happens, now it's time to go deeper into how to reduce it on your website. In order to avoid this happening, here are the tips you can take:

1. Understand User Intent

The first important thing to do is to understand your user's intent. When you are creating content, you should first know what your audience needs, whether they seek information, navigation, or are looking to make a purchase. Then, you need to match your content to that intent.

In addition, you can add value to your content by providing detailed information, case studies or answers to frequently asked questions related to the content you are creating.

2. Prioritise User Experience

Next, think about how you can improve the user experience on your website. If your users have a great experience on your site, they'll for sure stick around longer. 

To achieve that, you can start by making your loading speed faster than 3 seconds. Also, you need to make sure your navigation is simple and mobile-friendly since this will help users find the info they're looking for faster. Crucial tips: Don't ever let ads cover up your content.

3. Use Suitable Font Size

Another tip for reducing pogo stick to happens is to use the appropriate font size. Sometimes, audiences face readability issues when reading an article in which the font is too small nor big. 

Therefore, you need to make sure that your content is using a suitable font. The ideal font used by website owners ranges from 15 pt to 17 pt.

4. Update Old Content

There's nothing wrong with old content if it's well-written and well-structured. However, users tend to search for the most complete and recent information. If you don't update your content, you could end up being outranked by a competitor.

Updating old content can help you create more valuable information, which is good for attracting audiences, increasing your website ranking, and also reducing pogo sticks.

5. Reduce Organic Bounce Rate

If people leave your site, they're likely to click on something else. So, when you're trying to reduce your page's bounce rate, you're basically trying to get fewer people to do the pogo stick. 

The first step you can do is to check your website's bounce rate using any available SEO tools out there. Those tools will help you identify where the aspect that increases the bounce rate and gives insight into what you need to do next.

Conclusion

Pogo sticking is a common user behaviour that may indicate that your content is not good enough to satisfy them. Many factors can cause this practice from clickbait content to poor user experience. 

But, in a positive way, this practice can also wake you up to make some improvements on the website to satisfy audience needs.

Sometimes it can be tricky to know where to start with making improvements, especially when you need to do more in-depth analysis to get the full picture. But don't worry, SEO Services by cmlabs can help you out with that. 

Our experienced and professional team (powered by advanced SEO tools) can help you solve your SEO issue. More than SEO, we can also help you create engaging and high-quality SEO articles/blogs with our SEO Writing Services. Keen to know more? Contact our marketing team now to book your free consultation!