Do Page Views Matter? (ranking factor?)
-
Hi,
I actually asked it a year and a half ago (with a slight variation) but didn't get any real response and things do change over time.
On my eCommerce website I have the main category pages with client side filtering and sorting. As a result, the number of page views is lower than can be expected.
Do you think having more page views is still a ranking factor? and if so is it more important than user experience?
Thanks
-
Well said - engagement > page views. Google's smart enough to understand that on more complex sites and with more complex technology/JS/etc, those aren't always perfect corollaries for one another.
-
I think there are elements of both iSTORM's and David's responses that are accurate. Page views in and of themselves are almost certainly not a raw ranking factor, but it could well be that engagement metrics that correlate well with page views (in many cases, at least) do have a direct or indirect positive impact on rankings.
I try not to guess at precisely the elements Google is or isn't using to influence the algorithmic rankings (based on what I read about their move to deep learning, it probably doesn't matter much anyway since the algo is becoming derivatives of thousands of metrics' interplays), but instead worry about the things that will cause the results and user experiences Google wants to reward. That was a lot of what this post was about: http://moz.com/blog/seo-correlation-causation.
-
I agree with Ryan that it's more the engagement which is important than the pageviews.
If you have client side filtering & ordering - you could use event tracking in Analytics to get better idea of what visitors are actually doing on your page. Each time a user changes the view, you track an event in Analytics. When you have a high bounce rate on your site, this will also give you a better idea of the actual time spent on a page (remember that there is no measurement of visit duration when a user visits only 1 page and no events are tracked - see also: http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/29/understanding-google-analytics-time-calculations/).
-
I agree with this to a certain degree. Page views and user behavior tell Google everything they need to know. No one at Google is manually looking at your site unless you are doing something horribly wrong.
A large amount of page views could signal to the Google bot that the site is popular. Page views combined with long on-site time and low exit rates can tell the bot that the page is not only popular, but also very well put together. (engaging)
-
Rand recently did a whiteboard (beard?) Friday on this ~loosely~ under the broader scope of "Engagement" and I think you have to stick with keeping page views lumped into the overall scope of engagement, i.e., saying X page views per session = Y ranking boost is likely something no one can define precisely.
However, creating an on-site engagement score is something that is loosely feasible. For example you could look at time on site and a divide it by your GWT average time spent downloading a page to give yourself a rating engagement rating that. Lower the download time and you raise your score if the time on site stays the same. Increase time on site and the score goes up as well.
Does the number of page view equate into engagement? Maybe, although a site setup for getting lots of page views (pop culture sites with click lists, news articles, etc.) is going to have more than sites that do the bulk of their business via the home page. Perhaps a page view engagement metric you could create would be derived from your organic bounce rate: http://moz.com/blog/solving-the-pogo-stick-problem-whiteboard-friday
Hopefully this gives you a little direction in what to improve.
-
Pageviews specifically...no. Popularity...yes. User experience is far more important though and Google's approach is based on sites giving users great experience and relevant content.
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
-
Is there a way to tell if you were doing everything perfectly on the SEO front what your average SERP position and page views could be?
If you had optimised everything 100% on your website (keywords, links, everything), is there some tool or some way to figure out what your average SERP position could be and what volume of traffic you could be getting?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnnaKot0 -
Can Google Bot View Links on a Wix Page?
Hi, The way Wix is configured you can't see any of the on-page links within the source code. Does anyone know if Google Bots still count the links on this page? Here is the page in question: https://www.ncresourcecenter.org/business-directory If you do think Google counts these links, can you please send me URL fetcher to prove that the links are crawlable? Thank you SO much for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
Bing Ranking Factors
Question... I have a few clients that rank well for Google (first page) but are not ranking as well on Bing (page 5). Any suggestions on what to do to increase Bing ranking? I understand that Google and Bing use different algorithms, but just curious how you can increase ranking. Appreciate your input. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
301'd an important, ranking page to the wrong new page, any recourse?
Our 1,300 page site conversion from static html to Wordpress platform went flawlessly with the exception of 1 significant issue....an old, important, highly ranking page was 301 redirected to the wrong corresponding new page. The page it was redirected to is about a similar product, but not the same. This was an oversight that slipped through. It was brought to my attention when I noticed this new page was still holding the old page's rankings but the bounce rate skyrocketed (clearly because the content on the wrong new page was not relevant). Once identified, we cleaned up the redirect. My fear is that all the juice built up on the old .html page that ranked well has now permanently been passed to an irrelevant, insignificant page. -Is there any way to clean up this mistake? -Is there anything I can do to assist Google in associating the correct 'new' page with correct 'old' page after the wrong redirect was initially set-up? -Am I going to have to start from scratch with the new page in terms of trust, backlinks, etc. since google already noted the redirect? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen0 -
Is it normal to initially rank low in the SERPs, then over time gain rank?
We just released a very targeted page for a specific item about 18 hours ago. For the main keyword as well as multiple variations, we currently are ranking around # 40 to # 50 depending on what the exact query is. Is it normal to initially rank lower in the SERPs and then as the page ages, gain? Thank you for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1231 -
Not ranking in Google - why???
This will be a bit long, so please bare with me. I have a client in the auto parts industry who wants to rank their homepage for 13 different keywords. We are ranked first page for all keywords in Yahoo! Mexico and Bing Mexico, but not ranking first page at all in Google Mexico. My client's competitor, however, is clearly outranking my client in Google. When comparing both pages, my client's, while not 100% optimized, looks better optimized than their competitor's. Looking at all metrics using Moz, SEMRush, ahrefs, etc... my client's site looks MUCH better on all fronts. I know ranking a single homepage for more than 10 keywords is a difficult task. Our competitor is however, ranking for them, so it's not impossible. The keywords are not even that competitive according to Moz's analysis. I decided to create an optimized page for each keyword to try to rank these pages, but still my client wants the homepage to rank (again, if the competitor is ranking, then it's possible to do this) and I am afraid these pages I created could result in keyword cannibalization ultimately affecting the homepage's possibility to rank. My client had a previous SEO agency working for them and basically all they did was create fake blogs and have lots of keyword rich links directed to the site's homepage. I got the complete link profile from several tools and submitted a disavow requests for as many fishy links I could find, but that hasn't shown any results so far. Note: when looking at the competitor link profile, they have basically just a few links and no external links of real value whatsoever. My client is obviously very frustrated, and so am I. In my SEO experience, it shouldn't be such a difficult task to accomplish, however nothing seems to work even though everything seems to point that my client should rank higher. So now I'm running out of ideas regarding what to do with this site. Any insight you could provide would be SO helpful to me and my client. If needed I can provide my client's homepage URL and also their competitors homepage for you to review. i can also give you any extra information you need. Thanks a lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EduardoRuiz0 -
Is it OK to Delete a Page and Move Content to a Another Page without 301 re-direct
I have a page "A" that I want to completely delete and move the written content from A" to page "B". Since I am deleting "A" (not keeping page) is it OK to upload the content from "A" to page "B" and search engines will give "B" credit for the unique content? Or, since the content has already once been indexed on "A", "B" may struggle to get full credit for this new unique content, even though page "A" is deleted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Rankings and keywords
I have a site www.firewall-cs.com that I have been working on for 4 months. The first 2 months the keywords were going up and then...dropped like a rock! We didn't build the website, but it is a Wordpress site so I can make some changes. For the keywords that have "IT" in them, we haven't been able to recover. It's like Google isn't even reading the home page. The home page slider has the H1 in it and has 3. I have told this to the client. Plus there isn't a lot of content on the page. Is the H1 issue enough for the word "IT Support Orlando" to not rank? Any suggestions would help! Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClickIt0