Google says Web Site Traffic Is Not A Ranking Factor

Google says Web Site Traffic Is Not A Ranking Factor....it's all about relevancy now which we all know

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-web-traffic-is-not-a-ranking-factor-28115.html

Thoughts?

It has been like that for a while now.

It's more about the links than ever

You can say people who get traffic have links... which makes them stronger...

but, there are a lot of sites which don't really target any keyword but have awesome links coz the content is of value.

If a site is getting traffic to a post:
Download Wolf of wall street (which is not legit) then you should not really get a link on that. Its a toxic site ranking for the sake of it.

You should judge the referring domains of a site, and relevancy of the articles to your website. That way its all good and that is why PBNs work so good

well what i actually believe, the ranking factor is based on user experience.

Like a user came to your site, how longer the session stayed.. how was bounce rate... and user did go to any other site after you with same query?

AlexxDD said:

well what i actually believe, the ranking factor is based on user experience.

Like a user came to your site, how longer the session stayed.. how was bounce rate... and user did go to any other site after you with same query?

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Yup user experience is one of the ranking factors I do agree with that!

Can we trust Google?

tubeboost said:

Can we trust Google?

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Absolutely not thats why we always do the opposite

tubeboost said:

Can we trust Google?

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Hell no!

Of course the traffic is not a ranking factor, becasue things work the other way around. You rank high, you get traffic. It would be silly if they interchanged the cause and effect.

WebMinati said:

It's more about the links than ever

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Says the person who sells expensive links. SEO is a complex game in 2019. Links are just a small fraction of the big picture.

Is websites traffic depends upon quality backlinks?

Kikerinka said:

Of course the traffic is not a ranking factor, becasue things work the other way around. You rank high, you get traffic. It would be silly if they interchanged the cause and effect.

Says the person who sells expensive links. SEO is a complex game in 2019. Links are just a small fraction of the big picture.

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Would love a guide from you with examples on what you think is the most important thing in SEO 2019 then I will stop replying to the forum if you prove me wrong. Sorry, that it looked like i am promoting my links, that was not the intention! I love to answer stuff on this forum btw

If traffic was a ranking factor it would be way too easy to spoof.

tubeboost said:

Can we trust Google?

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No, i do not trust google. i always go the opposite way in ranking up

I would say that traffic doesn’t have any effect and that it boils down to links and other factors talked about here endlessly.

However, I came across Something interesting about 2 years ago when i started doing ad arbitrage with paid traffic (pop & domain traffic) that actually makes me think twice on the subject.

I arbitrage traffic with ad networks, and what I saw in the very first month of doing this, on domain that was not built whatsoever for organic traffic actually received around 3600 organic visitors from November 2017-December 2017, makes me question it.

The niche was relationship advice and again not a damn thing about it was unique. Think at the time I launched It it had 50 pages of content with no interlinking between pages or outbound links. Nothing you’d do for SEO purposes was done here. No social signals or anything, purely pop and zero click traffic.

Now, could it just have been a fluke? Sure. Have I ever gotten that many organic search visitors per month since? Don’t think so, would have to check tho. I’d say typcially 500-1000 organic visitors on month 1 of launching a brand new fresh domain is normal tho (on a site receiving real traffic)

I believe it’s more than likely tied to user experience metrics than anything, but one still has to wonder.

I know that I can manipulate GMB rankings with locally based traffic, so why not the SERPs too?

And I know sites that I don’t run arbitrage on, and hence no traffic, takes forever to get any movement on. Like the search engines don’t/won’t trust it without knowing people dig the shit I’ve got for them.

Screenshot of GA of the referenced site attached below.

tubeboost said:

Can we trust Google?

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Nope, Never. Just Send More Traffic To Your Sites, Traffic Converts Sales And Sales Improved The Ranking.

definitely user experience in the website should be a factor.

It not just relevancy now it more like if u are in "Google Ecosystem" or not. Convert ur web to AMP and give em to google or be left behind.

Google just want all ur base and space. Thats how I see it. Pretty shitty thing for a web markup to rule it all.

WebMinati said:

Would love a guide from you with examples on what you think is the most important thing in SEO 2019 then I will stop replying to the forum if you prove me wrong. Sorry, that it looked like i am promoting my links, that was not the intention! I love to answer stuff on this forum btw

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Sorry if I sounded offensive, I didn't mean to.
I do not have a guide, and do not even consider myself an expert.

Just working with many sites, watching different factors, trying to get some clues... I feel that's the current algorithm is very complex. It's not only about whether you have A, B, C, ... (let's say outreach links, great on page, great content, ...), but also about whether these A, B, C etc match up logically, whether it all makes sense in terms of internet-user behavior.

For example, I have one big old niche website which has good metrics. I receive plenty of paid guests posts/niche edits requests for $100+ on this site. Deny 4/5 of them, but when I approve one, I always watch the website that paid for it (assuming that when they have money to buy such an expensive links from me, they likely run a bigger outreach campaign).

In months to come, some of these sites will improve their organic traffic and ranking in a significant way. But others will make no improvement whatsoever...
If the algorithm was as simple as: You get quality links, you will improve your rankings, then all these websites will improve.

But that's not the case, since it's not as simple as that

tubeboost said:

Can we trust Google?

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Of course not. Google reps will always tell you what is "politically correct" (aka corporate bs). But in this case, I kind of believe them. Even though google analytics is widely used, is far from being used by every website, so they can't just rely on data they don't have.

- Speed
- CTR %
- Bounce rate
- h1, h2
- relevance
- backlinks
- etc