Does Traffic Affect Your Search Rankings?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Comments (3)

Internet marketing legend Sugarrae wrote a blog post about a new site launch from which she concluded that traffic matters in search engine rankings. Of course, to some of us this isn’t really news. But she does provide some food for thought.

First, the whole idea that is search engine optimization is still important but doesn’t run the show is itself a controversial statement. There will be some who disagree and for good reason, but you have to understand her point. In this age of social bookmarking and social networking, it is highly possible that a website can rank well in the search engines based on its social proof alone. There will be a tendency by some to say that those websites rank based on inbound links, but not necessarily. There are some good reasons to believe that traffic to a website can influence search rankings.

First, the fact that her website was mentioned by TechCrunch is a big clue. The value in being mentioned by TechCrunch, a highly authoritative site, is the traffic that it can deliver. Yes, the link likely gave Sugarrae’s site a real good, quality link, but that only goes so far and one authoritative link isn’t going to be enough to rank 300 pages in record time and get the site ranked well. But a site that can deliver you thousands of visitors in a short period of time will do you some good. What happens after that, however, is a really big deal.

I believe Sugarrae is onto something. Google has said over and over again that its primary task is to deliver value to searchers. If we consider that its backlinks policy started as a measurement of value as measured by the votes of others, isn’t that was traffic is? And bounce rates? And RSS subscriptions? It is wholly feasible that these measurements could be considered important by Google in terms of measuring website authority and value, which could be translated into search rankings.

Comments (3) Category: SEO

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3 Comments

Comment by Joe

Made Sunday, 18 of January , 2009 at 4:47 pm

I wonder this exact thing as well, and I may have some evidence in favor of your post.

This last December, I was so desperate for traffic that I paid for guaranteed hits (shameful, I know, but I was desperate, and new). Now, even though it was super low quality traffic, it was ACTUAL traffic nonetheless.

My point is this: Because of all the traffic I paid for, my site got over 60,000 unique visitors. It was on the second and third pages of Google for my main keywords. When I realized how low quality the traffic was, I stopped paying for it and my traffic returned to normal levels. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop at normal levels, as my site slowly slipped further and further back in Google rankings. Now, less than a month later, it’s on the 8th page for those keywords.

I have looked into it, and my site has not been penalized, I have not stopped building quality links, and I continue to update the site. I came to the conclusion that Google must have seen that my site got 60,000 visitors, and in the blink of an eye was down drastically. I’m tempted to start paying for the low quality traffic again to prove my theory, but I hate the thought of being in a mess where I have to pay for traffic to retain my rankings.

Any thoughts on this?

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Sunday, 18 of January , 2009 at 5:23 pm

Hi Joe, thanks for weighing in. I see three things that you can do here:

1) Pay for the traffic and increase your rankings, which will lead to further organic traffic. Depending on how much you pay for the traffic, you could realize an ROI on the nonpaid traffic you get from organic listings.

2) If you’re going to pay for traffic spend that money on a PPC campaign and drive targeted traffic to your site. If you get enough targeted traffic that way then you’ll rise in the rankings again and see more organic traffic.

3) Go on a link building spree and target your inbound link anchor text to specifically rank for certain keywords that are high value keywords for you.

Comment by Darryl

Made Friday, 20 of February , 2009 at 12:02 pm

I talked with a Google rep at a SEMNE event at one point and she said traffic from an organic listing was very important in terms of SEO and something that Google tracked. For example, if your website often gets clicks from your organic listing and that traffic bounces (hits the back button) and then clicks on another organic listing, chances are your listing is going to eventually drop in rank. Google will no longer see your site as relevant as other sites below you which most likely have a lower bounce rate.