Does increasing traffic increase rankings? Need help with argument!!!

[birdfood]

Just got into an argument with a business partner on the topic that in an increase in traffic will increase google page rankings.

He beleives that spending big bucks on googles PPC will bring in a lot of traffic (agree) and that this traffic will increase page rank (disagree) and once PPC stops, there will still be traffic benefits (disagree).

Sure, a lot of traffic indicates that a site is relevant to the key words used which will increase ranking for those key words BUT not if that traffic comes from a paid source such as google PPC.

Basicaly to have a long term increas in rankings (this is where I could be wrong) you need relevant content, good website structure/SEO and relevant links.

I'd really appreciate help with this arguement. What points/reasons can I use to show my partner he is wrong????

If I'm the one wrong, give it to me straight, don't pull your punches

[Wide]

Well, yes and no.

A website with a lot of traffic will increase the chance of someone creating a post/article about your site and bring in an incoming link, that is a way to increase your PR. The traffic can be PPC, article marketing etc.

[patey88]

Early on, when I was struggling to build traffic to a new site, I noticed that after I set up adwords for a few keywords, I also seemed to get more organic traffic for those same keywords. Twice, I experimentally stopped adwords and saw organic traffic go down, then go back up when I turned the adgroups back on. I talked about it at the time with a friend, and he was disbelieving.

I tried to find something else to account for the correlation, and I noticed that because there are sites that pick up ads as content, I ended up with hundreds of references to my site that show up in google if I search for my site URL as a string in quotes. These aren't backlinks (although some are) but I think maybe they've helped increase my rank in SERPs.

Because I haven't done much intentional backlink building, these references actually make up 80% of the results I get when I search for my URL. Maybe this is why running ads seems to have an organic impact for me. Of course, since these references are permanent, that doesn't account for organic traffic lessening when I stop running ads.

[birdfood]

Originally Posted by Wide

Well, yes and no.

A website with a lot of traffic will increase the chance of someone creating a post/article about your site and bring in an incoming link, that is a way to increase your PR. The traffic can be PPC, article marketing etc.

Thanks for your reply Wide. Sure, if the paid traffic does link to the site, this will benefit ranking. This arguement is about increase in traffic alone and assumes that the visitors will click into the site, buy or not buy and click out again. No linking.

Originally Posted by patey88

Early on, when I was struggling to build traffic to a new site, I noticed that after I set up adwords for a few keywords, I also seemed to get more organic traffic for those same keywords. Twice, I experimentally stopped adwords and saw organic traffic go down, then go back up when I turned the adgroups back on. I talked about it at the time with a friend, and he was disbelieving.

I tried to find something else to account for the correlation, and I noticed that because there are sites that pick up ads as content, I ended up with hundreds of references to my site that show up in google if I search for my site URL as a string in quotes. These aren't backlinks (although some are) but I think maybe they've helped increase my rank in SERPs.

Because I haven't done much intentional backlink building, these references actually make up 80% of the results I get when I search for my URL. Maybe this is why running ads seems to have an organic impact for me. Of course, since these references are permanent, that doesn't account for organic traffic lessening when I stop running ads.

Hi Patey, thanks for your comment. Your organic traffic went down after you stopped adwords. Did your ranking also go up with adwords and down again when you stopped?

[Andyhenry]

Test this for yourself. It's easy for people to make assumptions about these things and jump to the wrong conclusions - the only way you'll get the answer that you know to be true for you is to test it.

It doesn't matter if it did increase traffic for someone else - that means nothing and you'll end up with lots of people speculating - which doesn't help you.

[frqhuss]

I don't think that the traffic will play a part to increase pr of site because traffic can be generated from any where like ppc,video marketing & posting ads these things will bring loads of visitors to your site but less chances of high pr...

[patey88]

Originally Posted by birdfood

Hi Patey, thanks for your comment. Your organic traffic went down after you stopped adwords. Did your ranking also go up with adwords and down again when you stopped?

Sorry, I don't know because I wasn't tracking rankings then. I also have to admit that all the quantities involved were too small to be significant. If I were testing it today I'd want to gather data over periods at least a week long for each scenario, but at the time I was stopping and starting adwords for just a few days here and there. And I was looking at single-digit visit numbers for these keywords, too.

Now, going back and comparing adwords data to analytics data, I can't draw any conclusions at all. I had a gut feeling then that PPC was making a difference, but now I'm uncertain.

[jaratvit]

No - technically, traffic has no effect on Your sites Ranking (being it the position in the SERPs, or the PageRank)