I’ve been talking about search engine traffic lately, since that is what I am targeting with my niche sites these days. Grab a good search results position Google for some half-decent keywords and it’s free traffic that keeps coming and coming without having to pay for advertising.
But at the same time, do not forget to use social networks to drive traffic. Sure, you can go try to attract tons of Twitter followers (who will likely just ignore you) and try to make lots of Facebook friends (who will likely Hide you from their feeds) and so on, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.
Google and other search engines trust social networking sites more than they will likely trust your site! It’s far easier to get your post on Digg or Propeller or Mixx to rank highly in search results than it is to get a new site to rank that high.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at this report for the last six months of referral clicks for Electron Plumber:
| Referrer | Views |
|---|---|
| facebook.com/home.php? | 860 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Sear… | 685 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/Web Search… | 623 |
| facebook.com/home.php | 578 |
| facebook.com/home.php?ref=home | 531 |
| digg.com/educational/10_Ways_to_Spot_… | 518 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Google_Mone… | 397 |
| mixx.com/stories/4709637/josh_made_ca… | 365 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/th… | 330 |
| digg.com/business_finance/The_Miami_G… | 318 |
| prosperly.com/2009/make-money-posting… | 254 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/AppSecurit… | 230 |
| google.com | 213 |
| mixx.com/stories/7047354/google_adwor… | 192 |
| entrecard.com/category/browser?catego… | 192 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Mary_s_Mone… | 183 |
| digg.com/world_news/The_Los_Angeles_T… | 162 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Debt_Free_K… | 159 |
| facebook.com | 154 |
| anarchology.org/index.php?topic=2178.… | 135 |
| scam.com/showthread.php?t=118436 | 124 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Yoursearchp… | 120 |
| blogstorm.co.uk/easy-google-profit-sc… | 120 |
| forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.ph… | 108 |
| mixx.com/stories/5345691/the_los_ange… | 105 |
| facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo | 98 |
| digg.com/d1ok2C | 96 |
| mixx.com/stories/5345724/kevins_road_… | 90 |
While it’s important to note that direct referring sites account for less than 15% of the traffic we receive (the rest is direct from search engines), it’s still quite a number of visits and views.
What you should specifically look at though is the Digg and Mixx referrals in there. Why those two? Because those are really the only social networks we’ve submitted to. Well, Propeller (free links) and Reddit a little bit too, but mostly Digg and Mixx. And not every post either, probably less than half of our posts.
And those aren’t Digg superstar posts either, most have at 2 or 3 Diggs on them tops. But for certain search queries, Google ranks those links higher than our actual content, sometimes on the first page when the original story isn’t even in the top two pages.
So post those stories! Don’t be shy. Plus it’s crazy simple, takes only a couple of minutes to post a story. Even less if you use an automatic bookmarking tool like Bookmarking Demon to auto post to all the top social bookmarking sites at the same time.
Do it, do it now.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Your idea has helped me greatly. I am culture-jamming, w/ anti-news-meme poetry and submitting ‘Today’s News Poem’ to digg, propeller, reddit, stumbleupon every day, right after I’ve posted it on my site. It’s also a good way to create an electronic record of my authorship, since poems are easy to copy, but difficult to compose. Frankly I haven’t had time to try your other ideas yet, because I’m only in my first week of bringing traffic to a once-dead site. Got 500+ hits the first week, with 3 hits on the first day the blog went live.
would you actually recommend using the bookmarking demon, cuz a lot of people think it is a scam. Are there any other social bookmarking robots that are better to use?