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Has Anyone Tested This?

by Zeus66
4 replies
You never know what Google really looks at the most when determining rankings, but I wonder if anyone has tried testing one variable in particular: traffic.

What I mean is taking a new page of content that is on-page SEO'ed, but has no backlinks yet from anywhere, and just pushing traffic directly to it from non-search engine sources. I wonder if just the influx of traffic from those other sources would be enough to improve your ranking at Google for your main keyword. It's my understanding that Google does look pretty closely at traffic patterns and sources. That "understanding" may be wrong, but I've read it and thought maybe someone here had tested it and would be willing to share the results.

It's not really SEO, per se, but it would be interesting to learn if getting lots of traffic to a new page - in the absence of lots of backlinks (or really any backlinks) - can in and of itself move a page up in the SERPs.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Thanks,
John
#google #ranking #tested #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author T.J.
    I'm not sure that just sending traffic itself would be one of the factors that would contribute to SEO... Although it could be (considering there are around 200 factors)..

    On a related note I think more so maybe the bounce rate of visitors that stay on your page 'might' have more of an impact (seen this on a few other forums as well).

    After all if your people are just leaving your site after a few seconds then it might not be that relavant (or Helpful) after all.
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  • Profile picture of the author LMC
    John...

    I have tested this.

    My results basically said that Google reads it as a fad, you will increase in the ranks, but very temporarily, you need to justify the traffic with backlinks and bounce rate.

    If you don't justify, you will drop.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rob141
    I doubt it could move you up the rankings as it would be easy to game by buying loads of cheap traffic from traffic exchanges, traffic packages etc.

    Not tested it though.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
    I've tried a few things and have made some assumptions but nothing conclusive, I'm almost certain that inner linking, bounce rate, time on page and repeat visits are making a difference. I have now ranked #1 for a few low competition sites with no backlinks. Obviously can't be sure that they would have ranked anyway but on one of them I did the .com and .net just to test, same keyword etc. The better one of the two (had repeat visitors etc) ranked #1 for .net, and the .com with reasonablly crappy content ranked in the high hundreds. Funny though, a year later it went to #2 for no apparent reason other than I think EMD's must have got a boost last year. It now fluctuates around the first page. The .net still holds #1 after a couple years and gives me around 7k visits a month.

    Lee
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