Site Usage Statistics and organic ranking
-
I'm not sure if anyone has tested this properly but i'm begining to suspect that google is using site usage statistics as a site quality guide and ultimately as a ranking variable. The this what i've seen so far on one of my sites (site A)
Week 1= bounce rate (83.88%), Avg time on site (0:0:57), Pages/visit (1.28)
no changes made to the site apart from the usual link building.
Week 2: Traffic drops by 30%, Keywords generating traffic drops by 39%. Bounce rate (87.25%), Avg time on site (0:0:43), pages/visit (1.21). I replaced all affiliate links on my homepage to internal pages where the chunk of the content is and did a reconsideration request.
Week 3: Traffic goes up by 30%, keywords generating traffic goes up by 65%, Bounce rate (30.41%), Avg time on site (0:3:02), Pages/visit (3.74). This is not the most scientific test but surely google must be using these variables and a ranking factor?
Anyone seen something along these lines or have thoughts on it?
-
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the comment. Its one of those things that its very hard to establish a cause and effect relationship or a correlation. What i've found is a increase in traffic not only to the home page but to the internal pages as well.
I'm keeping my eye on this to see where it all goes.
-
I don't doubt that search engines use bounces back to SERP as a ranking factor. But I'd be hesitant to attribute the statistics you're reporting as a result of that. What I think is a stronger factor, although it's tough to determine with what you've shared, is that the internal linking from the homepage to "content" pages is getting bots to those pages so they actually see the content that exists on your site. If what I suspect is true, I imagine you'd see that a good portion of the new traffic is entering on pages other than your homepage.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do you think profanity in the content can harm a site's rankings?
In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their ahem... "bedroom performance". I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources. I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank. Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic. Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity? I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | DavidCapital0 -
Site appearing and disappearing from google serps.
Hi, My website is normally on page 2-3 on google consistently. Over the past month it has been appearing and then completely disappearing from the serps. One day it will be on page 2, then the next day completely missing from the serps. When i check the index it seems to be indexed correctly when doing site:mysite.com. I don't understand why this keeps happening, any experience with this issue? It doesn't seem to be a google dance as far as I can tell. When my other sites dance they typically just go up or down a few ranks for a couple weeks until they stabilize. Not completely fall off the search engine.
Algorithm Updates | | Chris_www0 -
Duplicate Product Pages On Niche Site
I have a main site, and a niche site that has products for a particular category. For example, Clothing.com is the main site, formalclothing.com is the niche site. The niche site has about 70K product pages that have the same content (except for navigation links which are similar, but not dupliated). I have been considering shutting down the niche site, and doing a 301 to the category of the main site. Here are some more details: The niche sites ranks fairly well on Yahoo and Bing. Much better than the main site for keywords relevant to that category. The niche site was hit with Penguin, but doesn't seem to have been effected much by Panda. When I analyze a product page on the main site using copyscape, 1-2 pages of the niche site do show, but NOT that exact product page on the niche site. Questions: Given the information above, how can I gauge the impact the duplicate content is having if any? Is it a bad idea to do a canonical tag on the product pages of the niche site, citing the main site as the original source? Any other considerations aside from duplicate content or Penguin issue when deciding to 301? Would you 301 if this was your site? Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseseo0 -
How do I code SEO for a secondary site without impacting the main site?
We have a secondary site for our online magazine, how do I code the SEO so I don't steal links from the main site?
Algorithm Updates | | gacwebteam0 -
W3C Validation: How Important is This to Ranking
Hi, I'm currently working with a developer who is trying to tell me that validation errors and warnings are of little to no importance in a website's SERP. In the past, whenever I've had a site that was experiencing problems ranking for a keyword terms, this was one of the first places we'd look. Is this still a relatively important component in getting a site to rank?
Algorithm Updates | | maxcarnage2 -
Why have organic hits to my site suddenly started to fluctuate widely?
Hits to my website have been gradually growing over the last 2 years to a point where there was 1300 organics a day. Recently the hits crashed to 300 a day and stayed there for a couple of days. They then bounced back to 1300 a day for a few more days before crashing down to 300 again. This has happened a few times now. Oscillating between two points. Its like the site is crossing a threshold of something, back and forth. I have looked at different parts of my site and every part is down by approximately the same percentage. Anyone out there have any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | easymatt0 -
Will signing up for Google Places affect my national rankings
OK, Here is a question which I can't find but think people have thought about. I would like to know others opinion. I have had a site that ranks well under generic national keyword terms. (not geographically specific) Its a small website, only 10 pages. We get 85% of our business from online applications. These applications come from all over the united states.Our SERP rankings generate 70% of all our traffic. My question is this: we operate in a state where we don't do business. We are a virtual business. Should I sign up for google places? Will It hurt my national SERP rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | FidelityOne0 -
What is the difference between Bing and Google ranking factors ?
I know basic SEO factors and i understand On Page SEO title/meta/content optimzation and Off Page backlinking factors. Yet we see different ranking on both SEs so I want to know what are those? Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | NiceGuy1