# Pogo Sticking: The Hidden SEO Killer (and How to Fix It)

Channel: Edward Sturm
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXguz_tKHS0
Duration: 9 min
Language: English
Words: 1761
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/LXguz_tKHS0

---

[0:00] We're talking about a very serious aspect of search engine optimization today. It is one of the most important things in SEO. It is and honestly not just SEO, geo as well because if you're ranking high in Google, you're getting cited a lot in chat GPT and and AI search. Okay, so what is this important thing? It is called pogo sticking. We're going to do a crash course speedun of pogo sticking. I'm going to say what it is and how it came to be, why it is so damaging for SEO results, and then the top four things to keep in mind when making a page or a post in order to

[0:36] avoid pogo sticking. All right, pogo sticking is when a search engine user visits several different search results in order to find a result that satisfies their search query. You've probably experienced it yourself. You search for something, you click the top result, it's not what you're looking for. You hit back, you go into the second result, also not what you're looking for. You

[0:57] hit back, you go into the third result. That is pogo sticking. This is from the book In the Plex by Steven Levy. In the Plex, how Google thinks, works, and shapes our lives. And this passage is how Google engineers figured out how to improve search results by mining their user behavior data. So this is the quote. Google could see how satisfied users were. The best sign of their happiness was the quote unquote long click. This occurred when someone went to a search result, ideally the top one, and did not return. That meant Google

[1:30] has successfully fulfilled the query. But unhappy users were unhappy in their own ways. Most telling were the short clicks where a user followed a link and immediately returned to try again. And then this is a quote in the book from somebody named Patel. Maybe it's Neil Patel, I don't know. But it says, "If people type something and then go and change their query, you can tell they aren't happy." Says Patel. If they go to the next page of results, it's a sign they're not happy. But we have these things called short clicks and long clicks. And then if you remember the famous Google API leak last year, the

[2:07] biggest Google leak of all time, these are two quotes from Ran Fishkin's article on it which publicized it, made it go viral. These are two quotes from that article. A handful of modules in the documentation. This is the leaked documentation. A handful of modules make references to features like good clicks, bad clicks, last longest clicks, impressions squashed, unsquashed, and unicorn clicks. They also seem to measure length of clicks, i.e. pogo sticking, when a searcher clicks a result, and then quickly clicks the back button unsatisfied by the answer they found and impressions. And it makes common sense. If somebody goes into a page, doesn't stay for very long,

[2:46] leaves, goes back to the search results, and clicks into something else, it means they are not satisfied. You want them to come to your page, and you don't want them to go back. you want them to stay and then maybe they want to search something entirely different because you've satisfied their intent or hopefully you can even predict what they're going to try to search next and you can offer it there right there in the page. So pogo sticking when people are going back and forth in the search results because they're unsatisfied. So the top four ways to prevent this because it is really important. Google wants their users to be satisfied and so

[3:20] if you help its users be satisfied, Google's going to be happy and it's going to put you very high. Number one, the top thing that causes pogo sticking. It's not giving searchers what they are looking for above the fold. Above the fold means before they start scrolling. That is a top thing that will cause pogo sticking. This is a quote from from Back Linko and it's a tip on how to avoid pogo sticking. The tip is add internal

[3:46] links especially above the fold. Internal links are an easy way to keep people on your site, especially if you put those internal links high up on your pages. Why? Internal links send people deeper into your site, which makes them less likely to go back to the search results. This is why I always say have call to actions for your bottom ofunnel pages. Your pages targeting transactional keywords, have call to actions above the fold. This is partly why it works so well. And you're also giving people what they're looking to to achieve. They're looking to talk to someone, to use an app, to buy something. Give it to them above the

[4:22] fold. Anyway, predict search intent. Give what searchers are looking for right away, immediately. Don't bury the main answer halfway down. Use a clear heading, a summary box, or a takeaway early. Satisfy search intent immediately. Number two, the second top reason for pogo sticking is giving an incomplete answer. people only get a little bit of what they're looking for, they are going to leave and try to find another result that's going to give them

[4:50] everything that they are looking for. Number three is making it too hard to find the right answer. [clears throat] Maybe you have to navigate a lot to find it or or the right answer is scattered in a bunch of different places throughout the page or the post. It's just too annoying to find the right answer. People will bounce and go and look someplace else. And you see that all the time in super long posts. Maybe the right answer is there. Maybe it's there, but it's just so annoying to dig through all this fluff and garbage and try to find it. And maybe half of the right answer is at is at the top and the

[5:24] other half is at the bottom. You just want everything right there so quick. So yeah, people are going to pogo stick in an instance like that. And then the fourth thing that will cause pogo sticking is if you actually if you give the right answer but it comes off as untrustworthy. So what could cause untrustworthiness? An old design, something that looks completely outdated. If it's a blog not having an author, not citing sources. If the publishing date is too old, so maybe people are just going to think that this information is out of date. Or if you're selling something, it's superlative copywriting. So, you just don't believe

[6:01] it because it kept keep saying this is the best, the best, the best. Okay, chill, chill. You know what? I don't even believe it's the best because you keep saying it's the best and it's on your site. You're saying that you're the best and you're saying it over and over again. Or lowquality visuals can come off as untrustworthy. Poor grammar, broken links can come off as untrustworthy. So, those are the four top things that will cause pogo sticking. not giving searchers what they're looking for above the fold, giving an incomplete answer, making it really hard to find the right answer, or the information or the product or the

[6:33] service comes off as untrustworthy. A lot of people will say slow loading speed causes a high rate of pogo sticking, but you know what? I didn't say that here because actually I believe a lot of people will put up with above average loading times if they believe that their intent is going to be satisfied. Neil Patel tested cart abandonment and found that this is kind of similar and found that slow delivery time pailed in comparison to things like extra costs. Extra costs kind of equals an incomplete answer. And slow delivery times that's kind of like slow loading times. People will put up with things that are slow to get what they want. So

[7:14] that's why I didn't say a slow loading time in this list. Similarly, a lot of people will say pop-ups are going to cause pogo sticking. Pop-up too many pop-ups aren't great, but again, if people believe that their search intent is going to be met, they will put up with a poor user experience. User experience is still very important. I have an episode on how important user experience is. That's episode 813 of this show. Why UX beats SEO best practices and gets better rankings. It's a really good episode. If you haven't listened to that one or watched it, you're going to love it. But poor UX that pales in comparison to not

[7:51] satisfying search intent or giving a thin answer or making it just way too hard. I mean, making it way too hard for somebody to find what they're looking for. That is also poor UX. I also could have said things like thin content or clickbait page titles, but these fall into the first categories, the first two categories, not giving searchers what they're looking for immediately or giving incomplete answers. All right, pogo sticking really important. I hope you will do your best to avoid it when you are making your website, putting up pages on your website, putting up posts on your website. And that is everything that I got for you on this episode of my

[8:25] podcast. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 853. 853 days in a row doing this crazy podcast. I got some amazing guests coming on the show this week. This is going to be a great week. And if you want to learn more ways to avoid pogo sticking and see how I make pages that avoid pogo sticking pages and a site and sites that avoid pogo sticking and find keywords with purchase intent behind them where

[8:56] people are looking to to take action. This is my SEO course compact keywords at compactkeywords.com. Just if you haven't watched the video at the top of that landing page, please watch it. has a lot of great information on why my method of SEO is different than a lot of other methods of SEO. All right, thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again

[9:19] tomorrow. Bye now.

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt