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.
----------------------------------------------------
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:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com
For the latest Internet Marketing Strategies Go here:
http://www.marketingtoolguide.com
2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed
if this resource box stays attached.
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