You might have stumbled upon a term called pogo-sticking, an SEO term used for describing a situation where the searcher navigates back and forth between the pages in the results. Most SEOs dread this situation because they believe the search engine tracks user behavior. 

Pogo sticking happens when any searcher tries to click on a link on the SERP. After clicking on the link, they realize that it is not what they were looking for in the first place. This effect is also defined as going back and forth from a SERPs page to an individual search results webpage. 

Mentioned below are some common reasons why user pogo-sticking method-

1. Slow-loading sites.

The users will likely bounce if your webpage takes more than three seconds to load.

2. Content mismatch.

The users will go back and click on the following result if your content is not optimized for the user’s intent. 

3. Poor quality content.

The visitors are also likely to leave if your content is hard to read and does not answer your audience’s queries.

4. Poor page experience.

When your site shows too many ads, or it is hard to navigate, it will send the visitors back to the results page.

How can you avoid pogo sticking?

The phenomenon of pogo sticking results from a bad experience users had with the website they were on previously. When you tend to offer your visitors a seamless page experience and try to write content that perfectly matches their queries, you reduce the possibility of pogo-sticking.

Following are the ways you can avoid pogo sticking-

1. Write for the user intent.

The process of fulfilling a reader’s expectations by offering satisfying answers that match their queries is called the user intent or search intent. Let’s say you search for ‘buy headphones’. What pops up in front of you are the commercial pages which sell that particular product. This implies that the search engine knows from the query that you want to buy headphones. On the contrary, if you search ‘best headphones,’ there are huge chances that you need a piece of expert advice on which headphones to buy.

Knowing this type of query helps you understand the kind of content you ought to create to appear on the very first page of the search engine.

2. Craft skyscraper content.

If the content that you put up does not understand every question users need to get answered after performing a particular search, you could land up in trouble. Hence, you should focus on offering comprehensive and insightful content which practically answers every question which is related to the query.

3. Make your website load at ‘light speed’.

If your website takes time to load, it could potentially drive the visitors away. Hence, it is your duty to ensure that your website loads faster.

4. Make your website content easy to read.

If your readers have a hard time understanding the content of your webpage, they will leave your site and go to the competitor’s website. Hence, you should always begin by making use of a larger font which is readable. It is the first impression you can make on the visitors.