Traffic is Traffic

Are Rankings Still Relevant?

Are we heading toward an age where site ranking doesn't matter? While a site appearing on page 20 of the search results will never receive the same attention as a site on page one, Google is collecting more information on search habits and patterns in an attempt to personalize results.

He explains how the voting arrow on Google and the Google Toolbar are gathering useful information about search. I like what he says here:

Search is one of the only fields of marketing that relies on an artificial number (ranking positions) to measure success. Maybe we've been relying on rankings as a crutch when we should have been looking at the bottom lines.

And it's true. I had someone say to me today that links from directories aren't that important for SEO. My counter to that was that if those links are producing traffic, then although it might or might not matter much for SEO, there is traffic - which directly affects the bottom line.

Here's another article:

The Better You Rank...the Better You Rank!

...now more than ever, it's a push for the top 10 results in the search engines. Yes, personalization and other factors can determine what the "real" top 10 is. But, generally speaking, if you can follow the practical advice that has been relevant since 2000 and apply what we're seeing as "an important factor," you'll have a greater likelihood of being found within that first page.

...

To keep the momentum, you must continue promoting. You must have momentum in your SEO and general marketing efforts. You must keep a steady flow of traffic coming to your Web site.

I agree, you have to keep working at it - good!

He refers to this article:

You Don’t Need SEO to Rank in Google

It’s not all about SEO anymore. SEO is simply the process of optimizing your site to get the most benefit out of the rankings you earn via marketing and traffic development and is not necessarily required to achieve the rankings themselves. SEO is still valuable. SEO is still important. But it doesn’t run the show.

Ok, Tony, so what does this all mean??

What I get out of all of this is that website promotion is multi-faceted. Google has done a great job of tracking how people use the web. They have the Google Toolbar and they get Webmasters to install their Google Analytics tool for free. Both provide information to Google about how people are searching - even when they don't do a search from Google. So if you had a website that just took off and was getting tons of traffic because people were going to it and you didn't even do really any SEO work, your website could rank really well in Google.

Traffic is traffic - no matter how you're getting it. It has to be real traffic, of course - don't pay people to just keep clicking on your website, that won't work. If you have something that people want or want to know and you get website traffic, then that's traffic and hopefully that traffic is converting into a good bottom line (if your website is doing its job). Traffic from offline or online sources helps. Traffic from search engines or links on directory sites also help. Just experiment and find ways to get traffic to your website and keep working at it. That is how you succeed!

-Tony

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