Does incoming traffic level affect SEO?

[web-content-king]

Does the number of hits a site gets factor into the search engine algorithm?

I had read something to the effect that it does, but now I don't hear the concept mentioned anywhere.

Right now I'm on a free trial with metricsdirect, which has brought tons of traffic but no conversions whatsoever even after thousands of pageviews (i have a specialized b2b site while metricsdirect really is for b2c it seems). I am thinking of stopping the free trial early b/c it is just clogging up my server logs and using up bandwidth. The only reason not to terminate would be that the traffic (which are almost all bounces) will up the PR.

I know that (duh) good SEO will affect incoming traffic for the better. Unfortunately, when I search on incoming traffic and seo that's all I get.

[cbp]

Does the number of hits a site gets factor into the search engine algorithm?

No.

CBP

[bhartzer]

No, it doesn't directly have any effect. If that were the case, then we all would have robots set up to automatically visit our websites which would then cause us to get better rankings.

However, keep in mind that when you do rank well for certain keyword phrases, a lot of sites will suddenly start linking to you which will have an effect on your rankings.

[web-content-king]

Thanks, that's what I thought.

I don't know where I heard that theory--it's pretty strange, isn't it?