Should you happen to ask owners of websites whether they prefer traffic into their sites from social media or search engines the most probable answer would be traffic from search engines. All website owners are aware of the potential a website can enjoy when search engine traffic is being attracted to it. However does this mean that there are no advantages to a website from traffic arising from social media?
Varied metric measures and values have been used in recent tests applied on selected blog sites to estimate the traffic derived both from SEO and SMO to a site. Initially the results were very close at eighty one percent and eighty percent indicating that both methods were neck to neck in attracting traffic to a site. When the testing variables were changed and other metrics was applied SEO appeared to be in the lead.
The four variables that were evaluated for these tests were visitors returning, page views per visitor, time taken on the site, and the bounce rate. They were applied equally to the blogs being tested. The variable measuring visitors who are returning are actually an indication of the loyalty of the readers. The results were indicating that the SMO was attracting more initial visitors who pause to read but move ahead and do not return. Whereas the SEO return rate of visitors was up 4 more percent than the SEO. This is only a solitary measure and cannot be considered as fully conclusive.
The results that were obtained were favoring SEO in terms of that part of the competition. When it came to page views per visitor the sites tallied with 2.00 for SEO and 1.3 for SMO. Which is another point in favor of SEO. Let’s now consider the time spent on the site variable. This too went the SEO way with an average of close to two minutes spent by visitors on an SEO in comparison to only close to a single minute spent by an SMO visitor to a site.
Having looked at three variables and just one more to be finalized it sure looks like SEO is about to give SMO a knock out blow. The next variable had to do with the bounce rate. This variable looked at the number of visitors who looked at only a single page and then moved on. When the bounce rate is higher it would mean that the visitors left the website after looking at a single page. On the bounce rate variable SEO came up with eighty three percent whereas SMO resulted in a bounce rate of eighty four percent.
The referee just lifted the hand of SEO and declared him the winner. The race you can see is till pretty close and over a series of tests one cannot still say that these results will hold. The best take would be that these two should work in tandem to draw traffic to a site and used as complementary tools.
Written by Atniz
Topics: Internet Marketing