This post is a real world story of how we did a makeover and search engine optimization (SEO) to a website and traffic went down, but the client loved us anyway.  In the story I illustrate the importance of a web visitor statistic called the bounce rate and explain why it is important for web business owners to understand and monitor the bounce rate.

In Sep 2009 we completed a makeover to a business website, converting it to Joomla and upgrading the websites' copy and organization to improve persuasion, content and hopefully results.   The website also included my most aggressive search engine optimization (SEO) consulting program with emphasis on very specific keywords.

As you may know, SEO can take months to kick in - especially if you are going after very competitive search phrases.  This particular site targets one of the most competitive search industries - insurance.  Since the web site went live in Sep 2008, I estimate that my SEO program did not kick in until Feb 2009.

Traffic takes a dive

Well, around Feb 2009 the search engine traffic to the website started to drop.  Over the course of the following 6 - 8 months the traffic continued a slow slide downward, decreasing by 40% for some keyword topics.

Yikes!  What did I do?!  The client is surely going to be extremely pissed at us.

Wrong, the client is actually pretty happy.  He is getting more business than ever from the website, and the web leads are better qualified that ever before.

How can search engine traffic go down and results go up?  Sounds bass-ackward doesn't it.

What happened?

After research of the traffic, the visitor behavior, the keyword ranking and other analytics, here is what I believe happened.

Prior to the makeover, the website was getting a high number of "unqualified" visitors from the search engines.  After the makeover and new SEO program, the site was no longer optimized for the "unqualified keywords" so traffic from people searching the unqualified keyword terms started to drop.

As my SEO kicked in, the traffic from "qualified keywords" started to increase, and since these people were searching for exactly what my client sells, results improved.

The "bounce rate" tells the story

The bounce rate is a web visitor statistic that is extremely valuable, because it is an indicator of the "happy I found your website" factor.  A "bounce" is when a visitor comes to your website, looks at one page, is not happy to be there, and leaves.  A high bounce rate indicates: your visitors are unqualified, your web content sucks, or both.

A high bounce rate is generally a bad thing. (Some SEO consultants might disagree with this statement, they might argue any traffic is good traffic. That is a different article.)

Look at the chart below which is from the actual Google analytics for this website.  The chart shows search visitors only, and the yellow line represents the search engine traffic.  The blue line shows the "bounce rate" for search engine visitors.  Notice how the bounce rate decreased significantly after Feb 2009.  Also notice that the traffic (the yellow line) also decreases during this time.

The bounce rate drop indicates that: the visitors are more qualified, the content is great, or both.

What's the bottom line?

So, can a decrease in website traffic from the search engines ever be a good thing?  I'd say "yes!" in this case.  My client's website was getting junk visitors before the makeover.  Though the traffic was high, it did the client no good because the visitors were not actually looking for his services.  After the makeover the junk visitors stopped coming to the site, so the traffic statistics showed a decrease.  However, as the site started to attract more qualified visitors, the results - i.e. sales - went up.

What do you think? Can a decrease in search traffic be an indicator of SEO and/or web design success?  Please comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Take away.  Monitor your websites "bounce rate" for a good indicator of both the quality of your visitors and the effectiveness of your website.