Common sense says: Both. But if you could choose only one of the two then what will you settle for?
Your answer should be: loyal readership even if it is small.
You should never assume that every new visitor means a loyal reader. Otherwise, you could use Google adwords to drive endless traffic to your website.
The question is: How many visitors sent by search engines are new visitors? How many pages do they visit? How many minutes do they spend on your website? What is the bounce rate?
The answers to these questions will tell you that web traffic is ephemeral. You should be worried:
• If the percentage of new visitors is over 75%;
• If your new visitor leaves your blog without visiting any other page;
• If the average time spent by the new visitors is a few seconds;
It means that either your content is not good enough or else you are getting the wrong kind of visitor.
You should be even more worried, if the new visitors do not interact with your site content. The lack of interest indicates apathy and indifference. Once again, you need to examine your content. It is not interesting your visitors sufficiently.
However, you should be happy if your visitors:
• Leave behind Comments;
• Share your posts
• Browse several pages on every visit;
• Spend a decent time on your blog;
• Are largely returning visitors.
In other words, the visitor behaviour is a good indicator of your site’s content. It is sticky, and has value. It will over a period of time build loyal following.
This does not mean that web traffic is not important. What it means is that loyal readers are more important than traffic sent by search engines or generated through web advertising.
What you must always remember is that web traffic is not an end in itself. It is only the first step; the real value lies in converting that traffic into loyal users of your site . Then, you stand to benefit more.