HubSpot: website traffic is meaningless, unless it converts into leads


In a new slideshare presentation HubSpot presents some stats from the ‘Inbound marketing’ report it published earlier this year but the slideshare also contains interesting data and tips regarding SEO and Social Search.


According to HubSpot’s Mike Volpe, search is clearly going social. I quote: “SEO rank is now a meaningless metric”. Note that Mike says SEO rank, not PageRank or search engine position. That’s because Volpe wants to make clear that, as you know, search has gone beyond its traditional environment and involves a lot of real-time these days but there is more…

If you skip the first slides (unless if you don’t know what inbound marketing is), there are some interesting findings and SEO tips based upon data from Website Grader. For the record: that’s a free SEO tool HubSpot offers to get a report on the SEO status of your site and some social media data as well.


Based upon data from over 2,000,000 websites, HubSpot defined three time periods in the SEO timeline, each with their own ranking algorithms.

  1. Context
    The first period was before the year 2000 when the ranking algorithm was context, being web page content.
  2. Authority
    The second period was from 2000 to 2010 and added authority, being links.
  3. Personalization
    Period number three obviously starts this year, at least according to HubSpot. We already had context and authority and what is being added? Personalization, being social media and personal info.

As Volpe says, your rank now depends on:

    * Who is searching (personalization)
    * Where they search (think about the searches on social media)
    * What is happening (social media, real-time)

There is much more in the presentation (it’s 80 slides, commercial ones included), really good tips and some impressive stats on how blogging impacts links, traffic and…revenue.

An interesting presentation, please tell me what you think.


And, by the way, SEO Rank means that, I quote, “website traffic is meaningless,unless it converts into leads”.





J-P De Clerck is a former online publisher, experienced interactive marketer and serial blogger. He’s a 360° thinker and believes in people, peer-to-peer and the power of content. He spends his spare time writing, doing stuff with the kids and experimenting. You can connect with him via Twitter




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