Social v/s Organic Traffic- Which one is better?

If you own a blog or website online, I am sure you may come across this question many times.

Social Media v/s Organic Traffic: Which one is better?

If you are looking for the same answer, this post is for you. In this article, I will share the complete detailed information on Organic and Social Media Traffic to your blog.

So, What are we waiting for? Let’s start the article below.

What is Social Media and Organic Traffic

Before moving forward with the article, let us first understand the meaning of Social Media and Organic Traffic.

Social Media traffic is the traffic received from Social Media Networking sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.

Whereas Organic traffic is the traffic received from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo Search, etc.

You can easily check the source of traffics for your site using Google Analytics. All you need to do is create a Google Analytics account and add your site to it.

Next, add a tracking code of Google Analytics code to your website and thereby track your traffic sources from its dashboard.

It will look something like this.

Now, for better understanding, I have divided this article into four parts.

1. Merits of getting Organic Traffic
2. Demerits of getting Organic Traffic
3. Merits of getting Social Media Traffic
4. Demerits of getting Social Media Traffic

At end, I will conclude this article sharing the best and ideal source of traffic for any blog.

So, What are we waiting for? Let us start discussing this below.

Merits of getting Organic Traffic

As mentioned earlier in this article, Organic Traffic is the traffic received directly from the search engines.

Here, it doesn’t matter from which search engines are you receiving the traffic. It can be either Google, Yahoo, or Bing search engine as well.

All the traffic from search engines will be called as Organic Traffic.

Now, the biggest benefit of getting the Organic traffic is – They are real.

Yes, organic traffic is real. This is because it gets raised when a user with strong intent performs an action in search engines.

Always remember, without a strong intent, no user will visit your website using the search engine.

For example, let’s say you want to cook ‘Pizza’ for your kids. What will you do? You will go to Google and type ‘recipe to cook pizza at home’ Right?

Here, you have the intention to learn how to cook pizza? Without this intention, you could not have performed the search action on Google.

Besides real traffic, Organic traffic is also available for free. Yes, it is free for both – the User (performing search action) and the Website’s Owner ( receiving traffic from search engines).

Below, I have listed out a few more benefits of getting organic traffic to your blog.

1. Do you know? On average, Google performs 40000 searches queries every second. Hence, Organic Traffic gives you an opportunity to get a share of the greatest assets called ‘Google Search Engine’.
2. Traffic from Search Engines is not irregular. Google will keep sending you regular traffic and more engaged users or customers.
3. In the long term, organic traffic is good for any website.
4. It will increase your brand reputation. If your site appears for a more number of times on the first page, it will build good credibility for your brand.

Now, after the merits of ‘Organic Traffic’, let’s discuss the demerits of the same below.

Demerits of Organic Traffic

The biggest demerits of getting organic traffic are – It is very difficult to get it especially for a new website or blog.

Yes, if you under the assumption that you will start a blog and Google will automatically start showing it on the first page then you are wrong.

According to IntenetLiveStats, there are more than 1.7 million websites available online.

Now, it is not possible for Google to show all these websites on the first page of the search results.

Hence, you need to optimize your website or blog for various search engines. This optimization is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

But, Search Engine Optimization is a time consuming and difficult task. And, only the top 10 websites are shown on the first page per search query on the search engine.

So, just sit back and think, how difficult is it to get organic traffic to your site?

Next, besides difficultly, below are the various demerits of getting organic traffic to your site.

1. Though the traffic shared by Search Engines is regular but it keeps on fluctuating based on a particular event. For example, the traffic for ‘Gift Websites’ increased tremendously during the festival seasons as compared to the normal period.
2. The future is unpredictable. This is because of un-know updates made by Google at regular intervals. Traffic to your website may increase or decrease after such updates in the search engine algorithm.

So finally, we know the merits and demerits of getting Organic Traffic. Now, let’s have a look at Social Media Traffic below.

As mentioned earlier, social media traffic is the traffic received from social networking sites like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook.

In simple words, it can be also defined as traffic from other than search engines excluding direct and referral traffic.

So, What are we waiting for? Let’s discuss the Social Media traffic below.

Merits of Social Media Traffic

The biggest benefit of Social Media traffic is – You can get social traffic immediately. In fact, from the very first day of the starting of the website.

All you need to do is simply share your website URL on your social accounts.

That’s it. Now, your friends and followers may click on your given link and visit your website.

This kind of traffic is called as Social Traffic.

Besides this biggest benefit, there are many other benefits of Social Media traffic also. Some of them are mentioned below for your reference.

1. Social Networking sites provide you a large audience base for promoting your content. Almost 49% of the world population is using Social Media today.
2. It is available for free and easy. All you need to do is just share the link of your blog post on social accounts.
3. Social Media sharing is one of the ranking signals for search engines. Hence, it will improve the ranking of your blog post in the search result.

Do you know? According to one study by Forbes, 78% of consumers’ purchases are impacted by companies’ social media posts.

Demerits of Social Media Traffic

After the benefits of social media traffic, let’s have a look over its drawbacks below.

The biggest drawback of social media traffic is – It will not provide Passive traffic to your website.

Yes, the traffic will get generated only if you share your blog post on social media accounts.

In case, you stop sharing the blog posts, the social media traffic will also get stopped automatically.

Unlike, Search Engines, it will not keep sending traffic regularly to your website.

Next, other drawbacks of Social Media traffic are mentioned below.

1. You need to constantly create new blog posts, share on your wall, and keep your audience engaged.
2. You need to be good at Graphic Designing to create an appealing social post.
3. It is limited to social media sites only. Your followers and post can’t be transferred from one social site to another.
4. Highly dependent on social sites. If in case any of these social sites get closed, it will create a huge loss to you. For example, when Google + got closed down permanently, I lost all my followers and traffic as well.

So, finally, you know the merits and demerits of both – Social Media and Organic Traffic.

Now, a question may arise? Which one is better – Social Media Traffic or Organic Traffic?

To get this answer, please read below.

Perfect Trade-Off between Social and Organic Traffic

If someone asks me, from Social Media and Organic Traffic, Which one is better?

My answer will be – Both Social and Organic Traffic are better. One needs to maintain a perfect trade-off between these two sources of traffic.

The logic behind this is very simple. What if one Social Media site gets closed down permanently or vice-versa?

In such case, the another source of traffic will compensate for it. Right?

The permanent closure of Google plus is a great example of this situation.

Now, just imagine. If your website solely depends on Google plus traffic, What will do in such a case?

Nothing. Right? With the closure of Google plus, your website will also get closed down.

So, better, you should maintain a perfect trade-off between Social Media and Organic Traffic.

Select Social Media or Organic Traffic

But, What if you have to select any one of them. In this situation, What will you do?

If any such situation raised against me, I will go with Organic Traffic.

Again the logic is simple. The users coming through Search Engines have strong Intent.

Moreover, no separate optimization is required for various search engines. It means if your site is well optimized for Google Search Engine than more or less it is also optimized for search engines as well.

Once Indexed, it will be available on all search engines.

Now, if Google Search Engine is closed down permanently than people will find you easily through other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.

But, this is not possible in Social Networking sites. If Google plus is closed down, you can’t transfer the followers and posts from Google plus to any other social networking site.

Yes, your followers and posts are limited to particular social site only.

Over to you

In the above article, I have shared both – Merits and Demerits of Social Media and Organic Traffic.

For better performance and results, I strongly suggest maintaining a perfect trade-off between Social and Organic traffic.

At last, feel free to contact me in case you did not understand any part of the above article or need more clarity on it.

Next, if you think, we have missed out on any important point to be discussed here, please feel free to share the same in below comment box. We will be happy to include your suggestions in our list.