Google is no doubt an important source of traffic. Many websites and blogs depend on Google to get their staple diet of traffic and consequently, business, and there is nothing wrong in that. But should you solely depend on Google for all your traffic? You shouldn’t.
What if something happened and Google stops sending traffic your way even when you have done nothing to offend the search engine? It has happened to many people. What if Google stopped existing tomorrow? A wonderful thing about the Internet is that it is not controlled by a single company or individual, and by solely depending on Google for your traffic you unwittingly give the power in Google’s hand to decide whether you can do business online or not.
You should focus on other traffic sources too. Brian has written about generating traffic from social media websites and it is a great read. Personally, I feel traffic from search engines is extremely important because if I look for a web designer or content writer I won’t go to Digg or MySpace; I’ll go to Google and Yahoo! or some other trusted search engine.
That said, targeted traffic from social media and networking websites can be more useful because you get greater exposure. It creates lots of buzz. It helps you inflate your RSS subscribers count that you can use to promote various services.
