Many sites around the web have taken a hit with their traffic numbers because of Google’s recent Panda and Penguin updates, and it would be hard to argue that this is in any way positive. But, if we put these causes for traffic loss aside, there is another factor that is of concern to SEOs and webmasters. Even if sites haven’t seen their traffic dip because of algorithm changes, Google’s recent drive to personalize search results has made it nigh on impossible to predict with any certainty what a particular user’s SERP is going to look like. All the SEO in the world isn’t going to help with driving traffic to a site if Google decides, based on their browsing, search, and social media data, that a particular user, in spite of entering apparently relevant search terms, is actually looking for something unrelated to your site.
However, in theory at least, personalization of SERP results is reducing traffic only by reducing false positives. By taking note of web history, search history, and social media signals, Google is attempting to reduce the ambiguity of search keywords and refer only those visitors who are actually going to be interested in the content of a particular site. This means that even though overall traffic is reduced, conversions rates will remain steady, or even rise as a percentage of visits.
So, what can site owners do to ensure that their site is producing the right signals to attract relevant traffic rather than false positives? On-page SEO is the obvious first strategy. Making sure that a site’s keyword profile is targeted to pick up relevant traffic is as crucial as it always was. Site owners should resist the temptation to try to rank for only vaguely relevant long-tail keywords. If you site is selling diamonds it may be tempting to try to catch some traffic from trending searches like the Queen of England’s Diamond Jubilee. The consequences of that may be higher traffic, but most of that will be from users who will immediately bounce. As in all things, quality is better than quantity.
Creating a site with fresh, relevant, rich content will both help with SEO and encourage sharing on social networks, and although we know that social signals are not more important than incoming links, they are a significant factor in building personalized search results.
The take home message is that higher traffic is not always the metric that webmasters should be most concerned about. Less traffic with higher conversion rates is actually a positive outcome.
