Archive for April, 2008
Is social bookmarking the same as blogging?
Aoiffe337 asked:
Could someone please explain what social bookmarking is? How is it similar to and different from blogging and a wiki?
Adelard
Could someone please explain what social bookmarking is? How is it similar to and different from blogging and a wiki?
Adelard
Social Bookmarking in Your Social Media Strategy
Article Submissions to Social Bookmarking Websites can Book you some Backlinks
Social bookmarking is a significant part of any social media strategy. Its methodology requires submitting an article with strikingly fresh content in a short span of time, a wide network of friends and associates, and immediate follow-up. Investing the time to submit articles to social bookmarking websites can give you a sharp spike in website traffic and some backlinks in the process.
Social bookmarking is one part of a social media strategy that can build your website traffic and optimise your website for search engines by providing a rich resource for backlinks. Submitting articles to social bookmarking websites as well as article submission websites provides your website with backlinks. A strategic goal of article submissions to article directories and social bookmarking websites is to not only gain a backlink from the website you submitted the article to, but to also gain backlinks from other websites that refer back to your original article. Reprints of your articles that lead back to your original post are not the duplicate content that search engines discourage. If you submit duplicate articles with a link to your website on multiple websites simultaneously in a short period of time without a logical linking chain, then the search engines may penalize the articles as duplicate content.
To submit articles to social bookmarking websites and article submission websites to gain backlinks, you must be the original source of the article, and your articles should have content that is within the scope of your website. The search engines will attempt to map out the original source of reprinted articles and give credit to the originating source. The article reprints will not be penalized, but the originating source of the article will carry the heaviest weight when the search engines evaluate websites for the search engine result pages.
Backlinks, however, are not the only reward of submitting articles to social bookmarking websites and article directories. Direct traffic from interested visitors that become lifetime customers is the ultimate reward. Investing time in social bookmarking can widen your audience, provide you with backlinks, and give you the opportunity to gain a strong readership following.
Networking is a crucial element to successful social bookmarking strategies. Before you begin networking, build up a credible profile for yourself. Your social bookmarking profile can be your actual self or a persona for your website. You or your persona can then bookmark articles on your website, create tags, and join groups.
You can begin networking with friends and business relationships you may have already forged. Once you have a profile and a network of contacts, you can begin building new social bookmarking relationships that offer the opportunity for reciprocal voting. Your networked relationship can also promote the article you bookmarked by contributing comments. Social bookmarking websites are fast-paced, and articles that aren”t followed up or don’t garner votes or comments will quickly become obsolete. Articles that don’t have intriguing headlines won’t be read.
Follow-up is necessary for successful social bookmarking. Asking your network for votes and comments in response to your bookmarked article, and taking the time to expand on reader comments, can give a push to your article’s popularity and increase your chances of gathering backlinks and website traffic. Readers are more inclined to click on an article that has already been proven to show interest.
Social bookmarking requires an almost instantaneous follow-up that submission to article submission directories don’t – however the time invested in that follow-up can provide an almost instantaneous increase in web traffic and backlinks. Social bookmarking strategies for website optimisation require a persona, networking, captivating content, and follow-up. With those four requirements in place, your social bookmarking strategies can captivate readers to visit your website, then you can follow-up on building your customer relationships.
By: Jacqui Q
About the Author:
Social bookmarking is a significant part of any social media strategy. Its methodology requires submitting an article with strikingly fresh content in a short span of time, a wide network of friends and associates, and immediate follow-up. Investing the time to submit articles to social bookmarking websites can give you a sharp spike in website traffic and some backlinks in the process.
Social bookmarking is one part of a social media strategy that can build your website traffic and optimise your website for search engines by providing a rich resource for backlinks. Submitting articles to social bookmarking websites as well as article submission websites provides your website with backlinks. A strategic goal of article submissions to article directories and social bookmarking websites is to not only gain a backlink from the website you submitted the article to, but to also gain backlinks from other websites that refer back to your original article. Reprints of your articles that lead back to your original post are not the duplicate content that search engines discourage. If you submit duplicate articles with a link to your website on multiple websites simultaneously in a short period of time without a logical linking chain, then the search engines may penalize the articles as duplicate content.
To submit articles to social bookmarking websites and article submission websites to gain backlinks, you must be the original source of the article, and your articles should have content that is within the scope of your website. The search engines will attempt to map out the original source of reprinted articles and give credit to the originating source. The article reprints will not be penalized, but the originating source of the article will carry the heaviest weight when the search engines evaluate websites for the search engine result pages.
Backlinks, however, are not the only reward of submitting articles to social bookmarking websites and article directories. Direct traffic from interested visitors that become lifetime customers is the ultimate reward. Investing time in social bookmarking can widen your audience, provide you with backlinks, and give you the opportunity to gain a strong readership following.
Networking is a crucial element to successful social bookmarking strategies. Before you begin networking, build up a credible profile for yourself. Your social bookmarking profile can be your actual self or a persona for your website. You or your persona can then bookmark articles on your website, create tags, and join groups.
You can begin networking with friends and business relationships you may have already forged. Once you have a profile and a network of contacts, you can begin building new social bookmarking relationships that offer the opportunity for reciprocal voting. Your networked relationship can also promote the article you bookmarked by contributing comments. Social bookmarking websites are fast-paced, and articles that aren”t followed up or don’t garner votes or comments will quickly become obsolete. Articles that don’t have intriguing headlines won’t be read.
Follow-up is necessary for successful social bookmarking. Asking your network for votes and comments in response to your bookmarked article, and taking the time to expand on reader comments, can give a push to your article’s popularity and increase your chances of gathering backlinks and website traffic. Readers are more inclined to click on an article that has already been proven to show interest.
Social bookmarking requires an almost instantaneous follow-up that submission to article submission directories don’t – however the time invested in that follow-up can provide an almost instantaneous increase in web traffic and backlinks. Social bookmarking strategies for website optimisation require a persona, networking, captivating content, and follow-up. With those four requirements in place, your social bookmarking strategies can captivate readers to visit your website, then you can follow-up on building your customer relationships.
By: Jacqui Q
About the Author:
Jacqui Q is the link building specialist of Link Popularity, the company
offers competitive price for
social bookmarking, directory submission, and article marketing services.
Elsu
any good idea about a domain name for social bookmarking like digg.com?
Omer N asked:
I want to make a site like digg and looking for a good name for it can anyone have any idea about the name?
Alecio
I want to make a site like digg and looking for a good name for it can anyone have any idea about the name?
Alecio
Social News/Bookmarking Site?
Lyna asked:
I am planning to open a social news/bookmarking site, what do you think, how should i start my low budget marketing
Ewan
I am planning to open a social news/bookmarking site, what do you think, how should i start my low budget marketing
Ewan
Has anyone used the software Bookmarking Demon? Worth the money?
troichick asked:
It’s supposed to help you bookmark your sites to all the major social bookmarking sites. It costs $97 though. Worth it?
Arran
It’s supposed to help you bookmark your sites to all the major social bookmarking sites. It costs $97 though. Worth it?
Arran
Social Bookmarking Services: Leveraging Social Bookmarking Sites for Traffic and Back Links
Social Bookmarking websites rely on the democratic nature of the web to structure information in such a way that is easily digestible and requires less effort than before. Such sites, including reddit.com, netscape.com and digg.com allow their massive user base to vote on web pages and as those web pages gain more votes, their position in the site increases. As a marketing tool, the power of such websites is threefold. On one level you gain direct traffic from the sites that are linking to you, on another level you gain brand exposure and acknowledgement that you are an accredited website, while on the third level you increase your websites position in the search engines through the links that you attain from the social bookmarking and other sites that may link to your webpage after seeing it there. The linking part is the most important bi-product of social bookmarking services; the other advantages are just ancillary.
A social bookmarking company will work with you to identify the most important pages on your website, then they will gain links for those pages from social bookmarking websites. They will ensure that your content gets submitted with appropriate anchor text to your website, and inside the correct category of the social bookmarking site, ensuring that you gain maximum exposure and optimum benefit from the links that they attain. A social bookmarking service provider will also maintain a list of social bookmarking sites through which to submit your website, and they will most likely update this regularly to ensure that your website and internal pages are always being submitted to the sites that pass the most link equity and that have large enough user bases to add value to your website.
When working with a social bookmarking provider, it is imperative that the company employs only manual techniques in promoting your website. Should you work with a provider that uses software as part of their process of promoting your site, then not only will your links be removed from the sites, your domain will also be banned; meaning that your chances of being able to leverage bookmarking sites will be removed indefinitely: giving your competitors a clear competitive advantage going into the future. Professional bookmarking companies will have registered and trusted accounts on bookmarking sites, and will not attempt to provide multiple votes from the same IP address in an attempt to game the algorithm of the sites.
When looking for a bookmarking service you should look for a company that has experience in either search engine optimization or submission services and find out if they have evolved their offerings to allow their clients to gain a competitive advantage through leveraging social bookmarking sites. Because social bookmarking is such a new and fast moving space; companies specializing specifically in social bookmarking sites have yet to gain any traction in the marketplace. Those that have thus far have attempted to use software to increase margins, however have done so at the detriment of their offerings.
By: Guna seelan
About the Author:
A social bookmarking company will work with you to identify the most important pages on your website, then they will gain links for those pages from social bookmarking websites. They will ensure that your content gets submitted with appropriate anchor text to your website, and inside the correct category of the social bookmarking site, ensuring that you gain maximum exposure and optimum benefit from the links that they attain. A social bookmarking service provider will also maintain a list of social bookmarking sites through which to submit your website, and they will most likely update this regularly to ensure that your website and internal pages are always being submitted to the sites that pass the most link equity and that have large enough user bases to add value to your website.
When working with a social bookmarking provider, it is imperative that the company employs only manual techniques in promoting your website. Should you work with a provider that uses software as part of their process of promoting your site, then not only will your links be removed from the sites, your domain will also be banned; meaning that your chances of being able to leverage bookmarking sites will be removed indefinitely: giving your competitors a clear competitive advantage going into the future. Professional bookmarking companies will have registered and trusted accounts on bookmarking sites, and will not attempt to provide multiple votes from the same IP address in an attempt to game the algorithm of the sites.
When looking for a bookmarking service you should look for a company that has experience in either search engine optimization or submission services and find out if they have evolved their offerings to allow their clients to gain a competitive advantage through leveraging social bookmarking sites. Because social bookmarking is such a new and fast moving space; companies specializing specifically in social bookmarking sites have yet to gain any traction in the marketplace. Those that have thus far have attempted to use software to increase margins, however have done so at the detriment of their offerings.
By: Guna seelan
About the Author:
Internet investigator Guna Seelan offer spam free manual social bookmarking service to high PR sites and provide you one way links at the lowest rates with screenshot confirmation. More works by the writer on the subject of social bookmarking can be found on www.submitinme.com.
Fingal
How to Use Social Bookmarking Sites to Your Advantage
I’ve been getting really excited lately about the whole social bookmarking trend in internet marketing. This is because I’m on a traffic kick, testing out new things to bring my website more traffic – something all webmasters want to do.
Social bookmarking is one of the top techniques that you can use to promote your website and build more traffic. If you’re not involved, it’s time to get with the program!
Social bookmarking started for me when I joined a few of the top social bookmarking sites. You may think this is all you need to do to get involved, but trust me – there is more to social bookmarking than simply joining the social bookmarking circles!
The first thing to do is visit a few of the top social bookmarking sites: Digg, del.ici.ous, Furl, and Yahoo, just for example. You can do a Google search for these to find them if you’ve never been there before.
Then, sign up for a free account with each of these. When signing up for an account, you will have the opportunity to select buttons that you can add to the end of each of your blog posts. This will allow readers of your blog to “Digg” your post over at the Digg social bookmarking site.
When someone clicks on your Digg button, it will bring them to the Digg site, where they would login with their account username and password. The blog post or article would then appear as a URL, and the person who clicked “Digg” will have the opportunity to post a comment about your post.
This can do nothing but good things for your website. If everyone gives your post a Digg, think of all the links in Digg you will have pointing back to your site. This will certainly increase your traffic when someone goes onto Digg looking for a post on a topic that interests them.
This is where I initially went wrong in my social bookmarking efforts. You don’t want to stop after just joining these social bookmarking sites and leaving a button on your blog posts for everyone else to find and click. You want to get actively involved in the social bookmarking process by becoming an active member of these sites.
What I mean by being “active” is that you want to visit these sites, and find topics of interest to you, or topics that relate to your online business. Once you find other posts on your topic of interest, then you have the opportunity to bookmark, or “favourite” those posts, and add a comment.
Doing this can really increase your traffic, as evidenced by my own increasing website stats just by doing this one thing alone. If you “favourite” other people’s sites and they “favourite” your site and you each comment on other’s posts, then you will soon have a network of links pointing back to your site.
This important piece of the social bookmarking puzzle is something I didn’t even realize myself until I got involved with my latest social bookmarking site called “Squidoo”. Apparently, Google just loves Squidoo at the moment, so I jumped on the bandwagon along with others I know joining the site.
The great thing about Squidoo and sites like MySpace is that you can create a “lens” which is just like a mini web page, or landing page that gives visitors to that lens a quick overview of what you have to offer. This will hopefully entice them to click your links and bring you more traffic.
I’ve made darn sure this time that after creating my lens I did not just leave it at that. I have visited other lenses on my topic of interest, added those lenses to my “favourites” list, and sent comments to others in hopes that others will visit my links as well. So far, this has increased my traffic very quickly and I may even reach a personal goal thanks to this technique alone!
Next, I am going to try creating more than one lens and link one to the other, which will hopefully entice visitors to read one of my lenses, and then click on to the other, increasing my traffic even more!
The thing to watch out for when using social bookmarking sites is that you don’t want to be a spammer who is out there just to get your links seen and clicked. As with anything in internet marketing, like forum posts, no one likes someone who is just there to advertise themselves. You want to offer valuable information, and make a valuable contribution by offering good advice, and great content.
By: Liane Bate
About the Author:
Social bookmarking is one of the top techniques that you can use to promote your website and build more traffic. If you’re not involved, it’s time to get with the program!
Social bookmarking started for me when I joined a few of the top social bookmarking sites. You may think this is all you need to do to get involved, but trust me – there is more to social bookmarking than simply joining the social bookmarking circles!
The first thing to do is visit a few of the top social bookmarking sites: Digg, del.ici.ous, Furl, and Yahoo, just for example. You can do a Google search for these to find them if you’ve never been there before.
Then, sign up for a free account with each of these. When signing up for an account, you will have the opportunity to select buttons that you can add to the end of each of your blog posts. This will allow readers of your blog to “Digg” your post over at the Digg social bookmarking site.
When someone clicks on your Digg button, it will bring them to the Digg site, where they would login with their account username and password. The blog post or article would then appear as a URL, and the person who clicked “Digg” will have the opportunity to post a comment about your post.
This can do nothing but good things for your website. If everyone gives your post a Digg, think of all the links in Digg you will have pointing back to your site. This will certainly increase your traffic when someone goes onto Digg looking for a post on a topic that interests them.
This is where I initially went wrong in my social bookmarking efforts. You don’t want to stop after just joining these social bookmarking sites and leaving a button on your blog posts for everyone else to find and click. You want to get actively involved in the social bookmarking process by becoming an active member of these sites.
What I mean by being “active” is that you want to visit these sites, and find topics of interest to you, or topics that relate to your online business. Once you find other posts on your topic of interest, then you have the opportunity to bookmark, or “favourite” those posts, and add a comment.
Doing this can really increase your traffic, as evidenced by my own increasing website stats just by doing this one thing alone. If you “favourite” other people’s sites and they “favourite” your site and you each comment on other’s posts, then you will soon have a network of links pointing back to your site.
This important piece of the social bookmarking puzzle is something I didn’t even realize myself until I got involved with my latest social bookmarking site called “Squidoo”. Apparently, Google just loves Squidoo at the moment, so I jumped on the bandwagon along with others I know joining the site.
The great thing about Squidoo and sites like MySpace is that you can create a “lens” which is just like a mini web page, or landing page that gives visitors to that lens a quick overview of what you have to offer. This will hopefully entice them to click your links and bring you more traffic.
I’ve made darn sure this time that after creating my lens I did not just leave it at that. I have visited other lenses on my topic of interest, added those lenses to my “favourites” list, and sent comments to others in hopes that others will visit my links as well. So far, this has increased my traffic very quickly and I may even reach a personal goal thanks to this technique alone!
Next, I am going to try creating more than one lens and link one to the other, which will hopefully entice visitors to read one of my lenses, and then click on to the other, increasing my traffic even more!
The thing to watch out for when using social bookmarking sites is that you don’t want to be a spammer who is out there just to get your links seen and clicked. As with anything in internet marketing, like forum posts, no one likes someone who is just there to advertise themselves. You want to offer valuable information, and make a valuable contribution by offering good advice, and great content.
By: Liane Bate
About the Author:
Liane Bate owns a Plug-in Profit Site web business. Find out how to Create More Traffic for your Website
Alfonso
How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors to My Site in One Day! ( Analysis of Social Bookmark Traffic)
Copyright (c) 2007 Titus Hoskins
Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketing or site.
Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?
First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.
In case you haven’t noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon… basically these sites are driven by their users – that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.
These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining.
But is this social bookmark traffic useful?
Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketing efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a sites like Digg or Stumbleupon?
As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer’s advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.
Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportunity to really study these sites.
Of course, nothing happens without a reason… I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.
But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000’s of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.
So be warned; if you’re actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.
In my case, it didn’t crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.
But still I am not one to waste an opportunity, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic.
It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.
Most of this traffic will:
* simply bounce back
* very few visitors will spend much time on your site
* very few visitors will even venture into your site
* very few will sign-up to your newsletter
* very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels
(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)
Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites, it’s very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days… until your item is moved back from the front page.
These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, never to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.
Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant, they grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.
This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.
It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.
So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.
So the question remains – is social bookmark traffic useless?
First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere.
Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it’s game over.
The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you’re offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your offer, real your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.
Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.
Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.
If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.
These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can’t hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it has never been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded – your site’s traffic rank will increase. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa’s traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web’s traffic but it’s a good measuring stick, nonetheless.
Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure… sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn’t it also be reasonable to assume more traffic means more votes. So wouldn’t getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.
One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can’t be judged with the one brush.
This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or the mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.
If I or anyone wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, you would have to create your site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into your marketing funnels. I don’t know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely, the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you’re offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users.
So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.
Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.
For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.
By: Titus Hoskins
About the Author:
Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketing or site.
Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?
First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.
In case you haven’t noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon… basically these sites are driven by their users – that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.
These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining.
But is this social bookmark traffic useful?
Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketing efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a sites like Digg or Stumbleupon?
As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer’s advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.
Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportunity to really study these sites.
Of course, nothing happens without a reason… I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.
But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000’s of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.
So be warned; if you’re actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.
In my case, it didn’t crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.
But still I am not one to waste an opportunity, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic.
It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.
Most of this traffic will:
* simply bounce back
* very few visitors will spend much time on your site
* very few visitors will even venture into your site
* very few will sign-up to your newsletter
* very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels
(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)
Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites, it’s very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days… until your item is moved back from the front page.
These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, never to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.
Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant, they grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.
This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.
It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.
So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.
So the question remains – is social bookmark traffic useless?
First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere.
Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it’s game over.
The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you’re offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your offer, real your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.
Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.
Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.
If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.
These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can’t hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it has never been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded – your site’s traffic rank will increase. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa’s traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web’s traffic but it’s a good measuring stick, nonetheless.
Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure… sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn’t it also be reasonable to assume more traffic means more votes. So wouldn’t getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.
One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can’t be judged with the one brush.
This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or the mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.
If I or anyone wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, you would have to create your site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into your marketing funnels. I don’t know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely, the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you’re offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users.
So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.
Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.
For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.
By: Titus Hoskins
About the Author:
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try:www.bizwaremagic.com For the latest Internet Marketing Strategies Go here: www.marketingtoolguide.com 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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