As I do a lot in this job, I was scrolling through Facebook recently. I saw a post from a friend’s business page that said, “According to my website stats, I’m a really big deal in Russia, Turkey, & China.” Knowing this friend as I do, I knew he meant it to be funny. Knowing SEO as I do, though, I also knew that when it comes to his web presence, this was no laughing matter.
You see, part of what the Google algorithm takes into account when tabulating where you rank in the organic search results is the bounce rate of your site. While it sounds silly, much of the traffic from foreign countries is from bots built to be malicious. You have the option of just letting them run, but the algorithm doesn’t filter out their visits, so each ping potentially lowers your organic ranking.
But have no fear. You do have options. You can block bad (spammy) referral sites. You can disavow harmful backlinks. You can do audits of your copy to find edits and/or topics that will attract higher-quality backlinks. While these won’t block 100% of the bad traffic coming to your site, they will definitely help. They’ll also send signals to the algorithm that you’re trying to fend off bad traffic.
Need some help? SBN Marketing offers SEO services that include traffic clean ups. Give us a shout using the button below!