The Visitor’s Impact on Search Ranking
February 3, 2011
This is a guest article by Amit from SEO-Gavish at
The influence of the visitor
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the visitor’s contribution to the SEO process.
The opinions are different: some are claiming that the influence of each visitor is very high and Google is counting every visitor that left his credentials or made any other interaction during his site browsing.
Others are saying a visitor’s influence is minor and there is no way that Google will count visitors’ behavior during site ranking.
So which is the right one?
I would like to make some order in this matter and explain how the traffic affects the site ranking. I would like to emphasis a few points:
It’s not about the amount of traffic, but about its quality and about the visitor’s experience during the browsing of the site. In the past we used to think that the amount of visitors is crucial.
Let’s start with the basic SEO technique: Inbound Link Building
Every SEO person uses this technique in order to get higher Google ranking. The question is "What influence the visitor has to the link?"
Every time you are creating a link you need to think will this link contribute to the visitor and he will be able to use it or is it located on a page that no one is visiting. The purpose of the links is that visitors could follow them to our site. The problem is that today links are created mostly for the Google spider and without any though about the visitor.
Conclusion: It’s worth the effort to create useful links which will be followed by the visitors, a "live" link.
Till now we discussed the link building strategy, let’s continue.
The visitor is searching for the results in Google and gets a list of results. Your site is not the only one in the list, so the visitor will check other sites as well.
The visitor stages of behavior:
First, the visitor is looking at the list and decides which result he wants to click on and review. At this stage the visitor is directly influencing the ranking. If your site is located at the first page or in the first place, but visitor is not clicking on it, Google will understand that the site is not liked by visitors. (In some cases changing the description of the site will solve the problem).
Next stage will be viewing the site. So time of site viewing is an additional parameter of visitor influence. If the visitor is leaving your site during seconds, Google will understand that your site is not relevant or problematic. It is important to understand the next action of the visitor after leaving your site. Did he searched for the same value again and found more relevant site which he viewed longer? Or did he close his browser?
Reasons that may cause the visitor to leave your site quickly:
1. The visitor didn’t find what he looked for – your site is not relevant for the search request
2. The content of the site is not written well, unprofessional or not readable.
3. The site is designed badly and the graphics are poor. These days, the visitor is looking for an impressive site.
4. Menu and sidebars, site hierarchy and content are not clear enough. You must make the effort and plan a site that will be user friendly and clear enough so the visitor will enjoy using it without any effort.
5. Site upload speed is too slow. As our connection speed grows higher, the visitor’s patience becomes lower. The visitor will not wait for the site to be shown; he will look for other sites.
The influence of toolbars and connecting to Google sites accounts
Anyone who is familiar with the Alexa scale knows that it gathers the surfing information of Alexa users and ranks the sites based on that. Google is gathering information from any user logged on in Gmail or other Google account. Surfing the web using the Google toolbar is a highly effective information source. Google Chrome, although it is a relatively new browser, is used as an information source as well.
A few additional myths about the influence of human activity:
“A web site that is connected to Google Analytics will be ranked higher if the requests for additional information are created in it." I disagree with this statement, as this value can be easily falsely created, that’s the reason I find it hard to believe that it affects Google ranking. There is a difference between the request for additional information and actual sale in the web site.
An additional opinion I have heard recently is that amount of "LIKEs" the site is getting is influencing its ranking. This value can easily be a fraud, moreover, Google can’t read the "LIKE" source code.
These are a few examples of the human activity influence on the site ranking. It is important to understand that one of the aspects of SEO work is to make sure that the site will be relevant and user friendly, so that the visitor will find the information he was looking for and the site appearance will be welcoming.
Once your website looks great and has interesting, professional and relevant content, you will earn the visitor’s confidence he will come to your site again and he will not search for this information in a different website.
Good luck
Thank you, Amit, for sending us this article. You’ve made valid observations about the visitor’s affect on search rankings.
Article Marketing Part 3: The Best Places to Syndicate Your Articles
December 16, 2010
Now it’s time to syndicate your article on the Internet.
You will learn which article marketing directory works best for you, but here’s a rundown of some of my favorites. Except for Zimbio, they give direct links.
Your Blog – The first place you should put your article is on your blog itself. Wait a few days before you submit it to any other site, to give the search engines time to index it.
Ezine Articles – Articles published on Ezine are well respected and may actually rank in and of themselves. This article marketing service has strict guidelines and I strongly suggest you read them prior to submitting an article for approval. If you have first published the article on your blog, use the Ezine plugin (available from their site) to submit it; this avoids rejection because of duplicated content.
Go Articles – If you’re having problems getting articles approved on Ezine, you may want to use Go Articles instead. Their guidelines are not as strict and it’s easier to get articles published. Sometimes articles from this site will rank in search results.
Zimbio – If you’ve got a blog, set up an account on Zimbio and then register your blog so it will feed to Zimbio. I like to make my own “Wikizine” on the site and specify that my blog articles publish to it. Although the links are filtered through the site’s URL, articles can send traffic and rank on Google search results.
Squidoo – I have a soft spot for Squidoo. At one time articles from here would rank right at the top. There was a smackdown when spammers started misusing the site, and now the articles don’t rank as easily, but they still provide links and often some good traffic to your site. Squidoo lenses, as they are called, are fun to create too. For best results be sure to make at least five modules and add pictures.
Update: This Squidoo lens showed up on the first page of Google a couple of days after it was published. This gives the business 3 listings on the first page – always a plus!
Check out this list of the Top 50 Article Directories – gives traffic, pagerank, and whether the directory employs the nofollow tag.
I’d love to know which article syndication sites you prefer to use and that give you the best results.
Article Marketing Part 2: Keywords, Links, and Your Resource Box
December 16, 2010
When you write an article, it’s tempting to add your keywords in as often as possible. However, it’s important to NOT cram keywords into it, or your article will look like spam content and may also be rejected by the article syndication service.
The algorithms used in today’s search engines are quite sophisticated and can easily figure out what your article is about without you hammering it home. You’ll also alienate your readers if your article reads like it’s meant for search engines instead of human beings.
The two places where you must have your target keyword phrase are in your title and your link. It’s very important to do this the right way:
- If at all possible, put your keyword at the beginning of your article’s title. For example, “Article Marketing – 3 Days to Success” instead of “3 Days to Successful Article Marketing.”
- Make your link, whether in your resource box for article syndication sites or in the article itself, your exact keyword phrase: “Read SEO Diva to learn about article marketing and how to…“
- Don’t neglect to use your keyword phrase in the tags for the article.
It should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: make the article relevant to your keywords. I’ve come across articles that are about one thing, such as housebreaking a dog, and then in the resource box the linked keyword phrase is for something like Acai diet products. There’s no relevancy there, and it’s doubtful the link would add anything to the website’s ranking.
Using the Resource Box to Your Advantage
When you submit your article to a syndication site, you are often not allowed to put self-serving links within the article itself. Instead, you’re allowed two links in the resource box at the end of the article.
To make the most of it, write two or more sentences in a custom resource box for each article you submit. Ezine Articles recommends it be around 15% of your article’s word count.
One sentence should be a call to action along with your keyword linked to the most relevant page on your site (not your home page in most cases). For example, when you click on the article marketing link shown in #2 above, you’ll see that the link does not go to my home page but to an interior page of this site.
The second link should be an actual URL; using my example, it would be http://www.seodiva.net/article-marketing-3-days/. The reason is that when others republish your article, sometimes your link will be stripped out. However, by including your URL you have a better chance of 1) getting credit for the article and 2) for the reader to go to your site for more information.
You should also include the name of your business or site in the resource box, again for credit for the article as well as information for the reader.
Don’t forget to complete your author bio. Write a little about yourself, add your business name, a link to your site, and your social networking links.
When Others Publish Your Article
When other websites publish your article, they are supposed to keep the resource box and all links intact. Some do, but others strip out the links. By including your actual URL and business/site name, you are ensuring that the reader knows where the article came from.
Some unscrupulous people will exclude the resource box entirely, but since they are using duplicate content they aren’t getting credit for it from the search engines. Yes, it’s a ripoff, but your time is usually better spent writing more articles than tracking these people down and demanding they remove it.
Next: Article Marketing Part 3: Best Places to Syndicate Your Articles
Part 1: Article Marketing – 3 Days to Success
Tags: article marketing, article syndication, keywords, link building, links, SEO tips
