Difference Between Traffic Sources

I recently had one of those "Aha!" moments, where all the data and information relating to website traffic sources in my head suddenly formed a nice pattern. Here's what I realized --

There's a substantial difference between:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) i.e. traffic generated from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc)  
• Social Media  (Twitter, Facebook, etc) / bookmarking (StumbleUpon, Digg, etc) referrals

The main criteria that differ between traffic sources are related to:

Timeliness

Traffic to your site that comes from Search Engines are more likely to be spread out evenly over a long period of time; whereas that generated from Social Media, tends to be tactical and timely. Ok, so truth be told, both social media and bookmarking sites can generate a great number of visitors, instantly.

Reach

When using Social Media or Bookmarking sites, it's somewhat a push strategy, where someone has to suggest your link, and people would end up on your site out of randomness or curiosity. Whereas, whoever ends up on your site through Search Engines, is looking for information that you are likely to have, so this is more of a pull strategy. Wouldn't that make whoever finds you through search engines slightly more likely to be of relevant audience?

Ok, so these are quite obvious findings for the most part. It just feels good to put them into perspective.

Choosing Your Company Name : Then vs Now

Experts agree, in order to choose a good company name you might want to avoid geographic names (do not restrict yourself) and generic names (you need to leave an impression); it has to be memorable, shows what your business does,  it should be easy to write, ...and the list goes on.

What was right in the past, still is so today. Yet, the approach should no longer be the same.

In the past, to choose a name for your company, you would go straight into brainstorming, choosing several options, and then registering one of the names you found available. If you're still going about the same procedure, chances are you will face some issues in the future.

Do keep the past in the past. 

Today, everything has to start on Google. Look up your competitors, search your keywords and study your findings. Only then are you ready to consider your options. Following which, one by one, you should Google the names, and then, verify that your domain name is available (this point was actually the entire reason for my post); good and short domain names are becoming very scarce, consider it in the early stages, or you will regret it.

You really don't want to register your company name, which, you had so thoroughly studied, only to find that its domain name is not available.*

*inspired by a friend/entrepreneur who ended up in this situation