Well, I've been noticing that stupid threads my members are making are getting ranked better than the ones that are more informational or even topics are being ranked higher than the same keyword sections/forums. So, what I've been doing lately is 301 redirecting them to where I want them to be and their rank has stayed the same, if not improved! "But what about the thread you just redirected?" At least with my site, these threads only have a few posts in them and then they are dead for months. So, I noticed high bounce rates on them and 301'd, and now the bounce rates decreased by half.

 

Here's the code you can use in your .htaccess (for FURL's):

 

RewriteRule ^topic/98262-topic-title(.*) forum/185-forum title$1 [R=301,L]

Obviously, you can go from topic to topic if you want, I hope that's easy enough to figure out to where I don't need to add an example.

 

So how can I use this?

 

Go through your google analytics data. I like to view my keywords so I know which ones I'm getting the biggest bang for my buck on. Depending on your global bounce rate will determine what is high for you. For me right now, I don't like anything that is above 50%. Track down any keywords higher than 50%, enter them into google, see what shows up and if you can, 301 it to a better topic that will probably capture people's attention better.

 

I had pages that were 60-70% bounce rate. Started doing this trick, I've seen some go as low as 20% now. Give your users what they want!!! :D

That's a great tip. I have noticed that I am getting traffic on one site that is the same as what you are seeing. I'll have to use this to get the traffic to a better thread.

Definitely! Let me know how it goes. It was cool to see my bounce rate just plummet! I loved it :D