Is SEO your main source of traffic?

I know that SEO is a good way of getting free traffic to your blog or website. But is it your main source of traffic? A lot of the traffic I get is mainly from social media sites. How about y'all is SEO your main source of traffic?

 

I do not recommend you use SEO as a primary source of traffic. Social media sites like YouTube are the best place to start as they get you traffic fast if done correctly.

Also YouTube videos rank fast in Google. The traffic you get from YouTube videos help your site to rank higher when it pertains to bounce rate.

 

That's because your SEO is not working yet. Social media is important too. Why not use both? SEO is a tricky one though. You can get traffic from social media from first day itself but you have to do a lot of effort in SEO and wait till your keywords ranks in Google to get the traffic via SEO

 

I think social media is the best source for increasing traffic in a website. but seo is also important

 

source of traffic may be social media or any referral media. seo also makes site good.

 

SEO shouldn't be the main source of traffic.
Invest (not heavily) in Search Engine Marketing & Social Media Marketing to promote our content and get traffic to your site.
Youtube is hugely popular, should take advantage of it.
SEO is there to increase or maintain the rankings on the search engines and to generate back links for natural traffic.

 

In my main project, the primary traffic is coming from SEO, that are organic searches (75% of terms come from Google Search). Then the secondary source is Social Media (that is Facebook post, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+). I think this channel is still one of the most important sources for getting traffic and make your website get higher rank in Search engine.

 

No, not at all. SEO shouldn't be your primary source at all. If it's your primary source, you should stop depending on it immediately, as you're just a one change away from some Google update. If not today, then tomorrow it will destroy you and your all efforts.

I still remember lots of websites, which are still credible, but a few years back they used to have high rankings in the search engines. Now, I think I can't even find them in the top 10 pages.

It's better to find other sources, like social media, guest blogging, video marketing, and etc.

 

According to my opinion social media is really helpful for boost the website traffic where SEO is helpful for generating unique back links as well as website traffic.

 

First of all analyze the Keywords & complete Onpage SEO, then after you can start Social Media Marketing content promotion with Long tail keywords

 

Because they were reckless, at the time, seo was easy for rankings, however, once you get hit
then you most likely willing never recover unless you are will undo months/years of trash work on your site...

SEO is not an evil monster, google just wants you to follow their guidelines, however, at the time, google
did not put out warnings "clean up your site, or get hit" google just cleaned up the internet, and tons of
money making sites get hit, otherwise, if you follow best practices of seo, then you are less likely to get hit...

SEO is long term stagtagy, however, if you start out using crap content, shady links, then your long term
success will turn into short term success when google catches up to your site. I know most think google
is just simply unfair when it comes to SEO, and it is not because google is unfare, it is because people
tend to think they should not have to earn their way to the top; They want to be at the top of the food chain overnight.

If you choose the right niche, follow google guidelines, then you could have
a site making money within 6mo-1-2 years, however, people do not want to wait...

Its not rocket science as people think it is...

however, I do agree, seo done properly should be secondary,
and if you have other methods to bring traffic, then use that....

social media is good, however, if you do not have mass following
to market too, then I doubt social media will be that effective, other
then to show google you are active on the internet; after all, are you
looking for traffic related to your niche, or random, unrelated traffic?

 

I agree with you, but problem is even if you're following all the rules, Google update will still hit you. And, Google have already done that. For example, I used to see Askmen's every article on the top pages of Google; now it's almost impossible to find them. Besides, they're the top company with offices in different regions - Europe, America, Middle East, and etc.

Furthermore, the millionaires like Frank Kern and etc. have all the resources to invest in creating some amazing website, and they can hire a professional SEO team too for dominating the no.1 ranking, but they don't do that. Since, they know that it's all about Google's mood (algorithm); just one hit can water down all their efforts. And, that's why, they rely on 'paid advertising' business model.

Even the giant publishing companies with lots of writers and publishers aren't successful in getting the no.1 ranking consistently, and perhaps that's why they are totally relying on social media. You can see active social media pages with millions of followers, but you can't see them on Google's first pages. And, they're following all the rules and regulations of Google, and they already have a team.

There is one company in Malaysia, (I don't remember the name right now), which is the best example of how Google can be cruel even to the professionals.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm the victim of Google - I'm already getting consistent traffic from past many years, but just like professionals, I'm not putting all the eggs in one basket. And, perhaps, that's why, I'm confident that even if Google hits me, I can be secured.

 

Do you own askmen? If not, then how you do know what they were doing? It is true that google can target sites that are following the
rules, and if this is the case, continue following the rules while you continue to investigate what happened. I have heard times when
people claimed they made changes in their site code, and then they saw a massive traffic loss.

I have never heard of askmen, nor do I know their seo practices, however, I can speculate from past history, sites similar
to this was very heavy in bad seo, ie: askmen this, askmen that, etc, in other words, keyword over-optimization; Not only
that these health sites would also submit articles all over the internet, and to any article directory they could find, and as you know
google has hit article directories, not only for low quality, but they are just not relevant either, and s%$t runs down hill, as anyone
that has content on these directories that link back too them would also affect those sites as well; today, it is not recommended
to send your content all over the world, as your best content should remain on your site for best results. also. You also said that
askmen was involved in SEO, so I assume link building? This means their link profile could be saturated with 1000s or even
millions of backlinks that will serve them zero purpose, ie: bad neighbor hoods. Has Askmen ever cleaned up their link profile?
this could be very good reason why cant find them everywhere as you claimed you could in the past....

as I have said, all this is just speculation...
google is not out to punish sites just because...
normally there is a good reason on why...

yes, social media is not used for ranking purposes, in fact, most sites such as twitter
have it set this way so that you can not benefit in SEO, other then direct traffic....

I have have heard many cases, as to when the site owner fixes their site errors,
content, link profile, then their rankings start improving again....

in askmens case, I am not a fly on the wall, so I dont know....

 

Man, I agree... I'm not saying that everyone is the victim. In fact, it didn't hit me yet, but I'm careful. Besides, submitting articles all over the internet never ever destroy your rankings. And, the best example we have are the "News Websites"; their content is available all over the internet, but they're still on the top positions. Other than that, if you check StevePavlina blog, Steve in fact allowed people to use his articles and publish them on their own websites/blog (as far as I've read his terms), but even after that, his articles are still on the top position.

That's what I'm trying to say, when it comes to SEO, the rules are quite weird. If some rules aren't working for the one person, then it doesn't mean they won't work for the other. We've very, in fact immensely, diverse examples...

 

The best approach is to diversify the sources of your traffic. This will mitigate any risks associated with losing any of your source. For instance, if you happen to rely on Google for traffic and you end up being penalized by Google for whatever reason, at least you still have other sources of traffic like Social Media sites. But most certainly, traffic from the search engines are the best because they are highly targeted which means you can better convert them into paying customers etc.

 

Assuming that SEO is the main source of traffic would not be completely correct. However, it plays a very important role in generating traffic. With the help of link building, link outreach, infographics and other related techniques it is possible to build a strong brand and credibility of the website. SEO also helps you to rank better on the search engines. Once you rank well on the search engines and the credibility of the website increases traffic gradually starts coming onto your website.

 

hei both SEO & SMM is important for traffic

 

I think it depends what kind of project you are aiming for. Is it a niche site of authority sites. The only way I primarily go for SEO is a niche/sniper site. YouTube and any SMM is a great way to start building an actual community for an authority site.

 

Don't agree with you about this. I'm doing white SEO, and doing this for my long time strategy so this is my main source. I have not been get affected anything by Google when they update yet.

More, if you do guest blogging or video marketing...and maybe some other sources then they're all used to support your SEO campaigns and get traffic.
Social media is also a good way and I'm doing on this too.

 

I don't write my content for Search Engines. I give priority to my readers and write in a way that they will stick to my blog once they read an article from me. So, I'm not really optimizing my contents for Search Engines and my main source of traffic is from Social Media.

It's a great way to reach out for more targeted audience and those people will probably turn into your loyal readers for sure.