Social Media vs Search Engines. Which is Better for Blog Traffic?

In today's online marketing world people are always talking about search engines and social media. They make comparisons between the two all the time. Which is the better one to get traffic to your blog — social media or search engine? While people are talking about which is better in the long run most bloggers believe in search engines to get traffic to their blogs. Some rare ones like to drive traffic from different social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and many more. I believe that to get good traffic we need both search engines and social media; you can't ignore either of them.

In this post I will discuss some points to show how the social media is somewhat better than search engines to get a better and targeted audience to your blog. Social media helps you grow your blog much faster; you only need to be active on your social media changes and try to engage them on a daily basis.

If you are listed on different social media channels but are not active in them and are not engaging your customers, then don't expect a good amount of traffic from the social media to your blog. Here I will discuss some points which will help to create your social media campaign in a better manner and help you to engage more with visitors on your blog.

Unable to Create list of Good Blog visitors

Visitors are the most important part of your blog success. Without quality visitors to your blog you will be unable to achieve the business goal of your blog. So, to get quality visitors bloggers are working day and night. Moreover, if you are not active on different social media channels then you are losing potential customers from these channels.

All of us are aware that search engines are the best place to get organic traffic to your blog. But do you know that traffic which is coming from search engines is very difficult to convert and they are not loyal visitors to your blog. Because they are using search engines to land on your blog, they read the topic which they like most and then leave your blog and never visit it again. They return only if you have impressed them in their first visit.

But when you are using social media to get traffic to your blog then there is very little chance that visitors will move away from your blogs for once they like your Facebook posts or have followed you on Twitter, then they automatically receive your update for an infinite amount of time. Indirectly you are getting large amount of loyal visitors to your site. So, if you are not using social media then you are losing your potential visitors to your blog.

Unable to share your work

Social media is the best place to make your content go viral on social platforms. So when you are sharing some content on social media there are chances that people like, follow, add you in circles. So like or retweet done by friends or anyone who likes your content is watched by their friends and followers and indirectly your content reaches them and increases chances of followers and visitors coming to your blog. Moreover, by not spending time on social media and engaging them online you are losing potential visitors to your blog.

Unpredictable Traffic

Traffic which you are getting from search engines never remains constant. It keeps on changing. Some days you are getting very high traffic and on other days you have a sudden slump in traffic. There are many reasons for inconsistent traffic like Algorithm changes, changing position of keywords and many others that affect your search engine traffic.

A large number of bloggers are using the social media to get traffic to their blogs and they do get a good number of visitors. If we talk in general, blog traffic only comes from two resources. One is the search engine and the other is the social media. Bloggers use both techniques to get traffic. People only use search engines when they need to search something.

But if you think about social media today's generation are 24/7 active on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc, because social media offer them a wide range of options and features which keep them engaged. So, if you are more active on the social media, you can get a constant flow of visitors.

How people behave

We all know that search engines give more weightage to content. So, SEO experts are telling us to concentrate more on content. They suggest we create genuine and quality content which will attract backlinks to your blog. They believe that content is published by many other people and from them they are getting the benefit of links.

But I think it’s not working any more as some blog owners will like your content but will not post your content. Some of them are using your article as a reference piece and creating their own new article, a few of them are publishing your article but they are not providing proper back links. There is very little chance that a blogger will publish your content in a proper manner.

But when you talk about social media almost all bloggers like to share, tweet and retweet your content on the social media. The main reason for sharing other's content in your own profile is to add positive values to your profile and audience. By sharing, following and tweeting your content on the social media there is a chance of making your content go viral on the social media and it will naturally attract backlinks to your blog and a chance of getting more visitors as well.

Authoritative sites

It’s really very difficult to beat the big players like Wikipedia, Huffington Post, Mashable and many other sites and blogs which are already doing very well in SERP. To compete with them is really very tough. These big players are everywhere on the web and in every niche. They have more skills than normal blog writers and the resources they are providing are very valuable content to users. So people trust them more than ordinary bloggers. They are in the top ranks for almost every keyword and if you got ranked on some keywords for your particular post, then those results are not going to stay the same for a long time.

If you look at the other side of the coin you will realize that the social media is far better than a search engine. In the social media big players are not there to get ranking on keywords; we just need to concentrate on sharing quality content and keeping our audience engaged. If your content is good and it goes viral you have a chance of getting more visitors to your blog. The main thing to keep in mind to get better results is that you need to be active on your social media profile.

Summing up:

Nowadays people are more active on the social media than on search engines. So, instead of spending time to get better results in your blog growth be active on the social media and you'll get good traffic. If you have some more points to discuss related to Search Engine vs. Social Media traffic, feel free to discuss in the comment section.

Stephen Moyers is a tech blogger and traveler who is currently working with Los Angeles based Digital Marketing Agency SPINX Digital.