Google’s SearchLiaison tweeted encouraging diversification of traffic sources, being clear about why it was recommending it. Days later, someone followed up to ask if traffic diversity is a ranking factor, prompting SearchLiaison to reiterate that it is not.
What was said
The question of whether traffic diversity was a ranking factor was taken from a previous tweet in a discussion about whether a site owner should focus on off-site promotion.
Here is the question from the original discussion that was he tweeted:
“Can you tell me if I’m doing well focusing on my site and content, writing new articles to be found through search, or if I should be focusing on some off-site effort related to building a public? It’s frustrating to see the traffic go down the harder I try.”
SearchLiaison broke the question down into component parts and answered each one. When it came to the part about offsite promotion, SearchLiaison (that’s Danny Sullivan), shared his decades of experience as a reporter and editor covering technology and search marketing.
I’ll break down his answer to make it clearer what he meant
This is the part of the tweet which talks about off-site activities:
“On the issue of off-site effort, I think from what I know from before working at Google Search, as well as my time on the search ranking team, is that one of the ways to succeed with Google Search is to think outside the box.”
What he’s saying here is simple, don’t limit your thinking about what to do with your site to thinking about how to make it attractive to Google.
He then goes on to explain that sites that are ranked are usually sites created to attract people.
SearchLiaison continued:
“Great sites with content that people like get traffic in many ways. People go straight to them. They come through email referrals. They arrive via links from other sites. They get mentions on social media.”
What it says there is that you’ll know you’re appealing to people if people are talking about your site on social media, if people are referencing the site on social media, and if other sites are citing it with links.
Other ways you know a site is doing well is when people engage in the comments section, send emails asking follow-up questions, and send thank-you emails and share anecdotes of their success or satisfaction with a product or tip.
Think about it, the fast fashion site Shein at one point didn’t rank for their chosen keyword phrases, I know because I checked out of curiosity. But at the time they were virally popular and made huge amounts of sales through gamification of site interaction and engagement, propelling them to become a global brand. A similar strategy powered Zappos when they pioneered no-questions-asked returns and cheerful customer service.
SearchLiaison continued:
“It just means you’re probably building a normal site in the sense that it’s not just for Google, it’s for people. And that’s what our ranking systems are trying to reward, good content made for people “.
SearchLiaison explicitly said that building sites with diverse content is not a ranking factor.
He added this warning to his tweet:
“This doesn’t mean you have to get tons of social mentions or tons of email mentions because they’ll somehow magically rank you better on Google (they don’t, as far as I know).”
Despite the warning…
A journalist he tweeted this:
“Earlier this week, @searchliaison told people to diversify their traffic. Naturally, people started wondering if that meant traffic diversity was a ranking factor.
So I asked @iPullRank what he thought.
SearchLiaison of course responded that it explicitly said it is not a ranking factor and linked to their original tweet that I quoted above.
he he tweeted:
“I mean that’s not exactly what I said myself, but I’ll repeat everything I’ll just add the link to what I said:”
The journalist answered:
“I would say that’s asking publishers to diversify their traffic, as you’re saying the big sites do. It’s the right advice to give.”
And SearchLiaison replied:
“It’s the ‘ranking matters’ part that I was making clear wasn’t what I said myself. Yes, I think it’s generally a good thing, but it’s not the only thing or magic.”
It’s not all about ranking factors
There is a long-standing practice by some SEOs to analyze everything Google publishes for clues about how Google’s algorithm works. This happened with the guidelines of search quality evaluators. Google is unwittingly complicit because its policy is (generally) not to confirm whether or not something is a ranking factor.
This habit of searching for “ranking factors” leads to misinformation. It takes more acumen to read research papers and patents to get a general understanding of how information retrieval works, but it’s more work trying to understand something than skimming a PDF to rank articles.
The worst approach to understanding search is to make assumptions about how Google works and then examine a document to confirm those assumptions (and fall into the trap of confirmation bias).
In the end, it may be more useful to move away from Google-only optimization and focus at least as much on people optimization (which includes traffic optimization). I know it works because I’ve been doing it for years.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero
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