If you have noticed a decline in your website traffic referred by search engines, this may be a reason why. A recent report from BuzzFeed tracked the website traffic of 200 major publishers attracting a collective 300 million website referrals per year. Since August 2012, the amount of traffic that Google has referred to these sites has dropped more than 30%. Traffic from all search engines combined has dropped 20%.
At the same time, referrals to websites from social media like Facebook has grown 25%. For these publisher websites such as the Huffington Post, Time, and Us Weekly, social media has been inching out search engines for number of referrals for a long time. In recent measurements, Facebook sent 1.5x more traffic to these websites than Google.
What does this mean for your agency or practice? (1) Google is still a major player, not to be ignored. But unpaid search results from Google can no longer be the sum of your digital marketing strategy. (2) Developing an aggressive presence on Facebook has potential to get you more traffic than Google can currently deliver. Expect your Facebook page to outshine your own website. (3) Social media in general is on the rise while search engines are on the decline. Consider developing an active presence on multiple social platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Google Plus. (4) Focus more on producing share-worthy content for humans and less on producing keyword-loaded content for search engines.
Brazzell Marketing Agency now offers comprehensive social media marketing help plus search engine help all rolled into one convenient package:Â http://