Are Social Bookmarking Sites Rounding Out The SEO Formula?
ByWhile I use a variety of stats packages to monitor all my sites, AWstats is one of the packages that my web host, HostGator, provides us with (they also give you Webalizer). I was waiting for a back up to finish this morning and decided to check on my stats at AWstats and was surprised at what I saw:
Notice that not only StumbleUpon, but also Digg are being categorized as links from an Internet Search. Interesting.
From looking at the rest of the stats, it appears that the StumbleUpon and Digg traffic indicated in the Internet Search category is different from that coming from another category – Links from an External Page:
It appears that traffic coming from StumbleUpon and Digg in the Internet Search category are the results of people using those sites’ search functions and finding my pages, where as the traffic from the external page links are the result of people stumbling upon my pages or clicking on them directly within the Social Bookmarking sites.
Have social bookmarks “arrived”? Am I beginning to see the another benefit of using social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg? Or both? I’d love your take on it!
7 Comments
August 21st, 2007 at 9:35 am
Though I use social bookmarks and get hits through them, Char, my sense over time is that so many more folks have come into the arena and though they bring some traffic and diggs, they don’t appear to bring as much as when I first joined. Folks also find it challenging to see categories that really fit. For instance DIGG does not have categories for things such as Writing, PR and Marketing, HR, and areas which link to topics of moms at home, etc. What are your thoughts?
August 21st, 2007 at 9:40 am
Robyn,
I think the fact that Digg doesn’t have categories for a lot of non-tech topics is why we are seeing new sites like Sk*rt and other niche sites emerging.
What I found so interesting about the stats was the fact that Stumble Upon and Digg search results were grouped up with Google, Yahoo and Netscape (and most of that is social bookmarking traffic too).
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:43 am
These social bookmarkers do bring in traffic to my new blog. Since I don’t use keywords in my titles or content, due to my kind of blog [humor], I use them as alternatives to lure in traffic.At these social markers I can use make use of attention-grabbing titles to get my readers.
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 am
I haven’t been active with stumble upon and digg and maybe I should after reading this post. I’ve worked on Sk*rt but just not sure if it’s helping much – I’m glad you shared about keeping stats via hostgator – I should check it out. Thanks, Char.
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:00 am
Social Bookmarking had definitely arrived. Since becoming more active within the Social Bookmarking community, my visitors have quadrupled.
I encourage others to go beyond the larger social bookmarking sites and see if there are any smaller niche related ones that they can submit to. Many of these sites still use the follow attribute so PR and link weight will be assigned.
August 27th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Social bookmarking traffic is not that appreciated with me. Stumble Upon maybe the only huge traffic driving Social bookmarking service out there that is not tech driven.
That’s a shame IMO.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:12 am
I am using a tool from GoStats for web stats, they provide comprehensive reports. I have used others including Awstats but like GoStats due to its simplicity.