Is site traffic a direct ranking signal or just causation correlation?

tyealia

tyealia

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Recently i have been seeing the big seo blogs talking about traffic and its effect on ranking.

ex. https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/7013/...kings-new-research-reveals-interesting-facts/

"As in our case, it seems like obtaining links that provide a high volume of referrals and click through data impact search rankings within search engines. We cannot draw a 100% certified conclusion here but we can assume, having our own experience as a starting point that referral traffic may influence Google search rankings. More research needs to be done on this matter in the future "

Here a personal mini experiment i did a year ago..

Firstly I read the following 2 articles claiming CTR actually is a signal so I decided to try.
CTR Is a Raning Factor Case
https://indagomedia.co/ctr-ranking-factor/
Does CTR Help SEO
https://moz.com/blog/does-organic-ctr-impact-seo-rankings-new-data


Keyword (name changed for privacy)
Best Mountain Bike -

2400 unique monthly
Low competition
Current Position #5

Bought from serpclix $100 worth of traffic aka about 500 us ips to go in and click my listing and stay on site for a bit as naturally as possible. Did this for 5 days.

Day 1 Position #4
Day 2 Position #4
Day 3 Position #4
Day 4 Position #4
Day 5 Position #4
Day 6 Position #4

Day 40 position #5

The keyword had fairly low competition and a huge boost in ctr technically should have at least boosted it one position but nothing happened. Anyone had better luck with this with bigger traffic purchases?
 
The click through rating manipulation is going to be temporary unless you keep the campaigns up. I wouldn't even bother doing it (though if I did I wouldn't use any company that botted it, like Calamari points out. I'd go to Microworkers or something).

But yeah, I agree that traffic increases increase SERP exposure, especially if you're using Google Analytics and most of the users are all cookied up with Google. You'll get a temporary boost in rankings to the page that decays over the course of a week or so if the rest of the SERPs are competitive enough. If they aren't then the link you got (and other links from all the exposure) may keep you in the top spots.

But all in all, even with the "main ranking" slipping over time I tend to see an overall lift that stays forever, I guess is long-tails across the whole site. You must get a bit of authority or validity added to your site from it. I've seen this many times.

Like in the article, when they're talking about Reddit, they've messed up their test a bit by introducing other variables. Reddit's upvote system likely acts as social signals too. But I agree with the sentiment in general.
 
Interesting note on google analytics helping, my new sites im keeping away from google analytics but not webmaster tools because i dont want google having too much access to my affiliate site.

Im currently working on a plan to create a very catchy piece of content im using buzzsumo to find the most viral articles in the niche for the past year, im choosing one and going to do something similar and add to it/ make it longer and more informative, then blast it with upvotes on reddit in a sub for some good traffic to see if this traffic increase has a good effect, at a minimum i get a good link and some natural traffic.
 
In my experience, yes, a surge in traffic gives a temporary rankings boost. Have seen it time and time again.
 
I've never seen a rankings boost from traffic. Maybe I'm in the wrong niche.

One of my most visited sites was in the Google "sandbox" for years while it dominated social. I was getting 1000+ visits per day from Facebook (and a handful more from Twitter and pinterest) yet less than 20 per day from Google (and those were all from people searching my brand name after seeing my social posts).
 
Yes, a traffic increase makes Google lift you in organic search. Off the top of my head, here's a site that got some traffic from posts in Facebook groups this March:
sdlvm2G.jpg

The numbers are small here, but the higher the traffic the more you will see this. A day or two after a relative traffic spike your site will be getting organic traffic slightly higher than normally.
 
tyealia said:
ex. https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/7013/...kings-new-research-reveals-interesting-facts/

"As in our case, it seems like obtaining links that provide a high volume of referrals and click through data impact search rankings within search engines. We cannot draw a 100% certified conclusion here but we can assume, having our own experience as a starting point that referral traffic may influence Google search rankings. More research needs to be done on this matter in the future "
Click to expand...

I think you glossed over the main point of this quote.... referral traffic.

Yes, a surge in *any* traffic may result in a temporary surge in rankings followed by a return back to normal rankings. We've seen this over and over with viral content, time-sensitive content, and news items.

I think what cognitiveseo is saying here, though, is that backlinks that send real referral traffic have a heavier positive weight than those that don't. It's a way for Google to lower the positive impact of zero-traffic backlinks that have been able to fudge other high-impact ranking signals (aka PBNs).

Other than that, traffic will always be an indirect ranking signal as it affects both dwell time and bounce rate. We all already know that a *consistent* high dwell time and low bounce rate normal results in higher rankings.
 
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