What is more important - direct traffic or back links

[epmaniac]

hi there,

there is one question which has been bothering me for some time...

what (area) should we invest in, in our site

1) should we invest in direct direct (run commercial on tv)

2) or should we invest in getting backlinks which will bring traffic from search engines


abt point 1).... do you guys think if we invest in direct traffic,... it will automatically improve our SEO position/standing as google and other search engines value direct traffic (will take it as sign of quality) and will throw us more search engine traffic...

wht do u think we should do?

[aristotle]

(1) should we invest in direct direct (run commercial on tv)

(2) or should we invest in getting backlinks which will bring traffic from search engines

I would think that choice (1) would probably get quicker results. Also, some of the visitors might like your site so much that they would give it backlinks from their own sites.

Choice (2) seems more of a gamble, and also more difficult to execute effectively, but could pay off bigger in the long run.

The competitiveness of the market and other specific circumstances of your situation should also be considered.

[epmaniac]

does google value direct traffic?

[wheel]

does google value direct traffic?

Either not at all, or far far less than backlinks. Nobody ranks in Google solely as the result of direct traffic, but many sites rank well almost exclusively due to backlinks.

I'd suggest that your two choices are not clear cut. You need to become an expert in both before you can suggest what's the best route. I have a couple competitors that advertise heavily on TV. They don't outrank me (one doesn't really rank at all) but they do get business from the TV ads. I on the other hand don't do traditional advertising, am able to build a business just from rankings.

Learning how to rank takes some time and effort. You know ranking takes backlinks. How do you get them? What's the risk? Should you do social media or not? etc. Alternatively, how do you measure the ROI on a tv ad? what times do you run the ads at? what are the elements of a successful TV campaign? and so on.

It's not nearly as simple as one over the other. I like SEO because I can do it myself at a very low cost to get started. But perhaps TV ads perform better - I don't know.

[gldmeier]

I don't think Google credits you for your level of traffic. I never heard of that happening.
The backlinks will do better for your ranking. the offline advertising might bring in actual customers though.

[Chrispcritters]

You should do whatever gets you a positive return on investment.

[epmaniac]

isn't this a contradiction ?

if google wants us to be a brand in our niche then direct traffic that we are getting is the biggest indicator/ proof of our authenticity.....

tedster always talks about being a brand, and satisfying consumers,...then how come direct traffic is not accounted in seo score?

[Planet13]

...then how come direct traffic is not accounted in seo score?

maybe it is being tracked in different ways?

Maybe google tracks something like the number of times someone types in amazon.com or www.amazon.com or any other URL in google search?

Or the number of times a URL is mentioned without being linked? Or maybe nofollow links from very high authority sites pass some value (if not page rank).

Or maybe things like nofollow banner ads that link directly to the destination site (instead of going through a redirect) count for some sort of "authority"?

[nomis5]

Looking at the responses to the OP question, no-one so far has the slightest clue to the answer to your question. Neither do I,

If the trend continues I would suggest that good, unique and unusual content attracts both back links and traffic. It's that simple, no short cuts by homing in on one particular area.

As well, I would add that today Google may favour back links but next week traffic. Don't overheat your brain trying to second guess Google, go for the long term strategy.

[tangor]

Do both. G will see (as will Bing, et. al.) if there's a buzz in direct, because that will result in spontaneous links here and there (and whatever passes through gmail also passes through the google engine)...

That said, your INVESTMENT should be in the site and your users as that, in the long run, will pay more dividends than any tweaking of google's (or other search engine) algo.

More importantly, if this is intended to be a BUSINESS, you do what is necessary to turn units... and DIRECT generally performs better than PASSIVE.

[whatson]

If TV advertising works, then do it, it's that simple. It is by no means mutually exclusive from building backward links.
If you want to rank in the search engines then build backward links. I don't think TV advertising will help you very much with that.

[almighty monkey]

tedster always talks about being a brand, and satisfying consumers,...then how come direct traffic is not accounted in seo score?

Too many sites don't use Google Analytics for them to have a decent dataset. They'd get royally screwed in court for anti-competitive practices (yeah yeah I know) if they were caught demanding analytics be installed for rankings, so they can't be seen to be using that data for rankings.

TV Advertising won't help you much directly in the search engines, true, but a combination of offline advertising and clever link bait might enable you to have your cake and eat it. If you've got the budget for TV and the like, SEO should be less about 'Rankings' and more about optimising what your doing for the search engines. So, decent onsite SEO, developing online creative linkbait that supports the offline advertising, encouraging your visitors to engage in the the social sphere.....

I could go on. You get the drift.