OK you didn't Photoshop I believe you about the traffic. Sorry my wrong, good work on the traffic. But I still don't agree about the bounce rate.
Well, we'll just leave it there. No one of us really knows how big part the bounce rate plays in Google's constantly changing algorithms, we can only make estimations from our own stats. For me it doesn't seem to have much effect, but maybe for others. Anyways, have a great day. I'm going to sleep, it's 01:23 here and I gotta go to college in 6 hours. Damn you for keeping me awake! xD
Oh, cool, I've got someone around here afraid of me. lol. OK, I'll give you a concrete example that contradicts the idea that high bounce=weak content. I have a site with pet food recipes. All of the pages on the site except two are pages of recipes. One of the other pages refers to a pet food recall, a particular element that cats require in their diet and a little about what happens if they don't get it - someone looking for that information may have absolutely no need for any of the recipes. The other page is a detailed list of human foods that can be dangerous or even fatal to feed to cats or dogs. Someone wanting to know if it's a bad idea to share raisins with their dog (it is), may also have no need for the recipes. Both of the non-recipe pages have ranked well (top 5) for relevant terms for years, are well written and in one case has been referred to by several vets as a good resource. Both have PR and the food guide is the most visited page on the site. They cover topics related to the main focus of the site but are in some ways stand alone pieces. Maybe they are exceptions to the rule but they certainly keep the rule from being an absolute truth.
My bad I mistook you for one of DP SEO experts who roll through and drop links. I really have a hard time discussing SEO to me it is in the same category as religion and politics. I like to study it and play with it and study results but by the time we see results it has all changed and a lot of the old tricks that get results have already changed. To argue about the unknown to me is like arguing about when Buddha got a hair cut. I just don't take it that serious. You brought up some good points I am just the wrong person to discuss and debate them with. I agree not all bounce is from weak content and your examples are good. I have had quality informational pages that have got high bounce,( I also watched these pages fall in traffic in keywords that were bouncing) I came to the conclusion that people using those keywords were looking to buy a product not read info so…good page for copywrite and affiliate link and it actually work well bounce rate went down and it was decent conversions. IMO bounce rate isn't always a shinning example of poor content but I do think overall it is a pretty good gauge. If a page is spun, blinking ads, pop up windows, scraped content 8pt font in ghetto theme are good examples of pages that will get high bounce rates. I think when ever you get a high percentage of trash or irrelevant content that can be categorized it will be used by SEs to screen results. And when google publicly says they see bounce rate as a gauge of relevance I will go with that. How much of that gauge will they add into the algorithm? Did it already change? Could it just be a paranoid thought? A ghost? Meta tag spelled wrong?