How much do branded search organic traffic & direct traffic impact the ranking for their non-branded topic/keyword?
-
Hi Moz community,
We can see many websites with a reputation will have more number of visitors landing with these two types of traffic mostly (>90%): organic traffic of brand queries and direct traffic.
Will these visits help and impact the ranking of these websites for the keywords/topics they been employing?
Ex: Moz will have many such visitors. Will this really impact the ranking of Moz for non-brand queries they try to rank for, like "SEO Software". If so, will this have a huge impact or it's just a minor ranking factor. Because we have this with our website and we don't see such boost in rankings compared to our competitors with less direct traffic; where as I been looking at some SEO articles that direct traffic is one of the most important ranking factors.
Thanks
-
Traffic is an important indicator along with onsite behavior once they are there. The more people visiting your site the better it should be for your search engine rankings as long as they are engaging with the site. Try to generally keep your bounce rate as low as possible and try to make the site as sticky as possible.
Best Regards
-
SEMrush did a study according to which direct traffic is the most important ranking factor.
Take it with a grain of salt, but there is some truth to it. No one knows how Google's algorithm works but it can't ignore direct visits otherwise Instagram wouldn't rank for anything. And it ranks first for some very high volume keywords: https://i.imgur.com/Ctby9TN.pngLink to the study: https://www.semrush.com/ranking-factors/
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
-
Does using non-https links (not pages) impact or penalise the website rankings?
Hi community, We have couple of pages where we we have given non-https (http) hyperlinks by mistake. They will redirect to http links anyway. Does using these http links on page hurt any rankings? Thansk
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google ranking impact: Returning visitor vs New visitor
Hi all, If a website's traffic increase in "New visitors"; will this impact rankings? Do the website overall traffic affect rankings? How much this is related with ranking improvement for main keywords? Just because thousands of visits increased for website, will it count as a strong ranking improvement signal? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
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 -
Keyword stuffing in
Having a discussion with my boss over whether the following page is over-saturated (stuffed) with keywords in the element: http://www.godreamvacations.com/BarceloHotels -- We implemented the description and keyword tag text back in 2010 when the boss gave me the text. Anyone have any good responses to the bosses' response (below)? "These are the ones (pages) that are actually working wonderfully well on Bing. At the time, I researched the optimal number of characters and tried to really follow all that was suggested by SEO experts. As far as the keywords, I would say you could remove the ones without the “s”, for example, take out “Barcelo Hotel” and leave “Barcelo Hotels” I think this is all relevant to what is found on the page. I don’t know what they would expect us to do differently than this. Do you? What is your MOZ currently saying is the optimal number of characters for a Title?" Any responses would be appreciated. Am I wrong in saying it's "stuffed" and looks spammy? What would you tell your boss?
Algorithm Updates | | godreamvacations0 -
Losing rank to Scholarly Articles and Keyword Description Stuffing
I began reviewing the rankings this week and noticed that many of our #1,#2, etc rankings had been bummed down as a whole. After reviewing many of the search terms it seems Google has begun to rank a group named Scholarly Articles in the #1 position. Has anyone else noticed this change? Secondly, many of the rankings we have lost are due to some competitors stuffing their descriptions with keywords. #1 Rank Description Failure Analysis; Scanning Electron Microscopy & EDS Analysis. Paint Chip Analysis and Evaluation; Paint Tests Physical Testing of Paints. #1 Rank Description NACE certified coatings inspector, paint inspector, coating inspector, coatings inspector, lining, failure analysis, survey, corrosion, rust, evaluation, testing, expert Is this a possible glitch occurring with the new humming bird release and has anyone else noticed an issue like this? It dropped our #1 ranks from 37 to 23 overnight. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | ChazSztroin0 -
Significant Drop in Rankings without Explanation
My company has experienced a significant drop in rankings in the last month or so. How significant? Across our top 11 keywords, we've dropped an average of 6 positions. Some have dropped less (1 or 2) and some have dropped way more (38). We work really hard to provide great content on our site and have been building out our link profile with guest blogging on relevant sites (dailyshotofcoffee.com, for example). No major changes have been made to the URL structure or content on the pages that are ranking for our key terms, so I am not sure where the drop is coming from. For example: One of our key terms is "espresso machine" and we went from #9 to #22 in the last few weeks. We have not made any changes to the main content on the page that is ranking since September. Our on-site page report for this page has us nailing all of the critical factors, most of the high importance factors (not exact keyword in page titles - we use "espresso machines" as that is one of our other terms - or "avoid keyword stuffing" - unfortunately, our products are also named with "espresso machine" and i can't very well not follow those links or remove the term from their names), all of the moderate importance factors, and most of the low importance factors. It has been reporting this way since September. Most of our key terms are this way (haven't had content changed in the last several weeks to months and have great on-page grades). We don't engage in spammy link building (though I did some work this fall on cleaning up bad links a previous SEO company had built out). I'm just really taken aback by the sudden drop in rankings across the board. Any insight or advice anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | Marketing.SCG1 -
Google Places/Points of Interest Rankings?
Does anyone have an idea on how Google ranks or determines the 'Points of Interests' that come up when searching about places/cities?
Algorithm Updates | | CarlLarson0 -
Google dance/over optimized/paranoid?
Hi guys, hope your all OK and thanks in advance for taking a nosey at this. OK where to start - my rankings for the last 12 months have progressively improved every week, usually of the 300 KWs i track the last few months has seen approx 70 up/70down per week, but the improvements usually outweigh the declines. This week I saw a sudden drop though - 35 improvements and 112 declines. The strange thing was though, the improvements came on the more competitive KWs, and the less competitive words I haven't done much or any back linking for dropped. Seems silly me asking this question when I run that through my head ofcouse KWs you don;t work on will drop like flies? It should be plainly obvious those words would drop off but all have been improving on there own slowly over the last 6/7 months. Now if this was a penalty (nothing showing in webmaster tools) I would have expected it to come through on my KWs I have over done the backlinking for, but these are the 1's that improved. So is it just the Google Dance? I normally see some words such as the big 1 we target DJ Equipment go from position 13 - 24 can change hourly sometimes! Could it just be quite a few have dropped all at once and will pop back up this week? Also if anyone could give us any pointers in general on where you think we should be taking our SEO it would be much appreciated. I know we have been a little lazy with our backlinking and could do with some much better/ industry related websites linking to us, and there are title tags/metas on product page that need sorting.. aside these couple of issue's? DJs Only
Algorithm Updates | | allan-chris0