Does traffic factor into rank on SE?

[halcyonlost]

Does how much traffic factor into your site being ranked well? Im stuck on page 2 of google, yahoo and MSN and I can't figure out how to get lower. I've optimized my site, have a link pop of 375 for each SE(minus googlor obvious reasons). I signed up for a direcotry listing with yahoo. What am I missing?

[vacorama]

could be a bunch of things.. The yahoo link though, might not take effect for around 3 months due to the sandbox effect. Mine didn't, then one day things really just took off. how are your html files? shoud be validated and under 10kb if you can. I do think, but with no evidence other then what i see on my site, that google keeps track of what pages visitors stay on after clicking through search results. I mean it seems like it would make a lot of sense on their part.

[halcyonlost]

What do you mean by validated? I'm about 12K(does that make a difference?). Also, does the ammount of traffic matter to search engines? EX. I get 1000 hits a day, but no link pop?

[MichaelBluejay]

I've optimized my site, have a link pop of 375 for each SE(minus googlor obvious reasons). I signed up for a direcotry listing with yahoo. What am I missing?

Absent from your laundry list of characteristics was any mention about the *quality* of your site. Does it *deserve* to be on the front page of Google? Is it significantly, demonstrably better than the pages that are already there?

[halcyonlost]

Actually my papge does belong in the top 10, but not top 3. I work for 2 solid companies that I have watched grown over the years since I was a teen(one of them is my fathers companies). My content is straight-forward and we can service any customer in our field(financing). I have worked hard on this site for over a year(not so hard on it for two. So the question remains, does hitcount have anything to do with SERP(I feel like I already know the answer, but I still must ask).

[MichaelBluejay]

Yes and no. A site that is popular will attract links from other sites, and will gradually rank higher. But to the SE's consider traffic in the ranking algorithms? Probably not, but remember nobody knows the algorithms except the SE's themselves. Given that you can't know the algorithms or change them, you're back to spending your time improving your site, not trying to figure out the SE's algorithms.