The SEO world, particularly the blogosphere and forum chatter, is overwhelmed with talk of how to leverage social media sites for SEO value. Tonight, I'm curious - which types of social media platforms do you actually get the most direct SEO benefit from? Think classic SEO - higher rankings and more search traffic. Which slice of social media sites help you achieve this goal?
I'd love to hear your examples, too. If you said Wikis - how? What did you do on Wikipedia that resulted in more search traffic for keywords that bring you high quality traffic?
I like all of them Rand. :D
I can't just pick one flavor, it's like pokemon, gotta catch'em all!! (runs away because of thousands of thumbs downs :D)
Re: Your wiki question. I'm not sure if I'm the only SEO that believes this but I think Google and Wikipedia are in the bed together. :) As soon as I put relevant links on a site, it was immediately influencing the SERPS.
Other factors can be at play, being the long tail, semi-competitive niche. But when my referral traffic went up, my SERPS referral traffic went up. Same thing with it going down.
It could be both are following the trends of the demand. (Monday is more popular to look for x than wednesday..etc). But I just find it way too fricken ironic. Frustrating really.
I monitor those pages but the links are still there. I have had only one time I had to bring it back but someone else beat me to it, cause someone just deleted the entire article! (Grr...weird wiki environment.)
But ya, a balanced mix is my cup of tea. :)
No, you're not the only one - I've been observing a similar behaviour these days - although I have to admin that wikipedia only influences my ranking in a positve way, didn't see pages going down ...
As for the pokemon: no comment :-)
I agree. The big thing with wikipedia is when they syndicate their content to highly trusted sites most of those sites don't nofollow the links like wikipedia does. So you end up getting links from large trusted sites.
I don't think I've ever had a link remain on wikipedia. No matter how informational (and non commercial) the site or link is, there are some dick moderators that sit on those pages all day. That's my guess. In the meantime, Wikipedia pages have JUST surpassed many of ours on Google. It sucks, and sure does seem a little fishy. Wikipedia is great but it is definitely NOT the best resource out there for the terms we're competing for.
And, well, Joshua, I'm just not really into pokemon.
Not into Pokemon huh? That's what I've been saying about the election!
Do you have Google Analytics installed? I noticed a similar trend on a site I used to work on with G analytics but haven't seen the same movement on sites without it.
It's not listed but Yelp has helped me the most but I have worked with brick and mortar companies the most. It has been so quick and easy to get the information up, the photos, claiming the business, adding the right information, etc. sometimes faster than getting the business to get their websites updated, and getting results in search engines for that company.
I rarely read through all the comments on posts, but these were all interesting... the exchange about wikipedia has been especially good.
I've personally only been able to get a few links to stick there, and one article profile for a business (which I was surprised to see stay). I typically add the links to the resource links section and not in the article itself. I find that if I add to the article while I'm there, and truly do the research to find some other good resources to link to at the time, I can often get my link slipped in without notice. My guess is that the moderators are looking for people that are truly adding something valuable and not just looking to add a single link which is probably a "red flag" to them.
I used to do the same thing when I was a dmoz moderator a few years ago. I would try to get multiple links into a page and try to "slip" mine in while I was at it.
... a little shady perhaps, but you've gotta do what you've gotta do.
If I look at it objectively, I'd have to say that most of the social media platforms I use end up either bringing traffic OR links, but not both. StumbleUpon and Twitter have been great for traffic, and social bookmarking sites drive links, but the only sites that have driven both for me are probably social niche sites, like Sphinn.
I find StumbleUpon brings in the most traffic, while Facebook often brings in more relevant traffic
My answer is none. Driving traffic with social media is a no brainer and here to stay. But if the question is how to derive actual SEO value to improve search engine rankings and traffic from those search engine rankings, the answer is none (especially from the "nofollow" sources listed above).
We've experimented with "dofollow" social bookmarking sites to gauge the value of the link on those sites, and the results were mixed and the links honestly look to be about the same value as a simple directory link.
The majority of those getting substantial value from Social Media to improve SEO results are essentially crossing over to the dark side, going underground and bribing bloggers to get links within the text of blog articles and news articles. The financial costs to get those links has got to be steep. The amount of time spent to get those links is also high.
People here are confusing the difference between traffic and improving search engine rankings ...
There are some social mediums that can tell a story more than others, and as the old saying goes, "A picture tells 1000 words", and if that rings true, how many words can a video say?
When dealing with products that have a huge visual stimulus, for example, destination resorts or outdoor activities I would have to say that the more visual a social medium is the better. My vote goes to Flickr and Youtube for just that reason.
good point on the visuals.
Does this not depend on your target market and the industry you are trying to market for?
A great social media site for the travel industry and any travel SEO is https://www.vcarious.com/It's got some great independant articles and first hand accounts of resorts/destinations around the world. As long as you submit some worthwhile content with insight into a place, it should get you some traffic. Although traffic levels are not always high, it's great for targeting a really specific niche like travel/tourism.I reckon more of these kinds of specific networking sites will appear gradually. Oh yeah, they don't nofollow links either.Let me know what you think!Porl!
StumbleUpon is def #1 in terms of the number of traffic, just gotta try keep the traffic relevant.
Got to agree with Jac and those confused by the Wiki Inquisition's stance on "moderating". I've tried a few times to create relevant, topical and highly informative articles, following the Wiki guidelines strictly, and still end up finding the articles nuked within days. I've all but given up on even trying with them now.
The one article I have managed to get to stick (this one) was nuked 3 times before whoever was moderating finally realised I wasn't creating duplicate content about the Red Hot Chilli Peppers!Do those of you who have had success on wiki find the links from sites that copy the content to be particularly useful? If so I may persevere further with this.
Red hot chili pipers! Ha ha ha ha. Well, I'm glad you got this article to stick. It has every reason to.
And I'm glad to see they have the same lame, terribly-titled game shows across the pond: "When will I be famous?"
Yep, game show's, no matter where they are, will always suffer from lame names.... still it's no "hole in the wall" (yes we have that in the UK now too)!
I noticed there haven't been many comments regarding the microblogging sites such as twitter and plurk. How useful do people actually find these sites? Obviously if your promoting something thats easy to get people to talk about then I imagine they can be quite useful. Unfortunately not all clients make for captivating content that people will willingly referr to. How, if at all, do mozzers utilise twitter and the like for the promotion of less exciting clients?
PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait...wait... C: wait... SD: wait...
where was SEOmoz?
Stumbleupon is a true gem. Just imagine if sites like these were to disappear, we wouldn't even exist lol. Funny that.
By the way I'm proud to say that I grew up with Pokemon and I'm proud to say Pokemon is awesome.
Our top four have been Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and Apartment Ratings. I was pleasant surprised about how helpful Twitter has been.
-Andrew Lemert
I am using digg and facebook right now.Since i have travel website i will put my hands in travel wiki.
Very useful post and comments, posts like this can help freshers like me to make less mistakes when they start.
Wikipedia and LinkedIn quickly boosted our rankings and traffic. While the traffic was not as high as getting a story to front page on DIGG, it is much more qualified and less likely to bounce.
I've been able to keep links I post on Wikipedia by adding content other than just a link although that isn't always successful, it seems some pages the moderator is bent on keeping sterile. Also if you add content while you are logged in and not anonymous it's more likely to "stick."
Yahoo Answer's gives a temporary boost to rankings, seems to last about one week, despite the nofollow. And traffic from YA is pretty qualified.
YouTube has been fantastic for branding and ranks quickly and well, but didn't really do anything for our own sites search rankings, but our clients were political with an unusual life cycle for web pages/traffic.
SU does provide nice traffic, propeller used to give us a nice boost in rankings, again for about one week.
DIGG front page traffic can't be beat for the very short term boost in traffic/branding...as long as the article fits. And as a side bonus, when you are successful getting a client story to the front page, traffic to your own site from profile views is pretty healthy. Getting a story to front page recently did not seem to do anything for rankings. Bounce rates for great articles with product that wasn't right for DIGG's demo had very high bounce rates, but for sites where the product more closely matched the demographic the bounce rate was higher than normal, but not stratospheric.
I would think some of the niche DIGG like sites might provide some of the best seo benefits, one of the newest niche social news sites mentioned they do not put nofollows on links. (www.tipd.com for financial news).
StumbleUpon is #1 by far and after voting, I saw that LinkedIn is #2, which sounds about right.
For me Stumbleupon, Digg and Facebook are very useful...
hi
this is vishal
this is good post and i think this will help us to get the review of how to proceed in the profession by analyzing such polls and public opinion!!!!!!!!
I've never been able to get a link to stay on Wikipedia. Once added even when relevant to the content it has been removed.
i like stumbleupon best
I'd read somewhere recently (thought it was here, but can't locate right now) that delicious is the new dmoz. I wish that were the case because many of our sites would be bookmarked multiple times on delicious but be outranked by a site whose only evident advantage is a single listing on dmoz. Of the dozens of sites I've submitted to dmoz, not one was ever accepted. And I started submitting well over a year ago.
Rand, didn't you used to have a wikipedia page about yourself? What happened to it?
Stumble definitely brings a fair amount of traffic to some of my sites, so does facebook, I guess this all much depends on the focus you employ to tackle each of these various social media.
I also use LinkedIn but you can only get a couple of links there. It has other good business benefits though.
Here in Spain, the networks that work well for B2B are negociame y mirlobolsa, they are like digg but treat only economy and financial news, so you are closer to your audience. These pages also rank quite well.
I think platforms like myspace or facebook are rather difficult in B2B. Might be useful for brand-building, but also bears its danger...
Writing for Wikipedia is surely a garanty for traffic and high SERPs, however they are quite strict with commercial messages and use to delete names, links or whole articles if they have been written by a company for promotion purposes. So you have to find the right tone.
Saludos
I tend to find that stumbleupon is the best traffic to leverage, if you get a good page to initially stumble then it works well.
Digg and co require too much tweaking of content to appeal to that "crowd".
digg, stumbleupon, yahoo answers, those are the ones I have found to drive most traffic to our sites.
I know they nofollow their links, but I got a site I'm working on from a PR 3 to 5 by upping it's wikipedia articles from 1 to 17. Wikipedia also accounts for 10% of total traffic at the moment. My advice is don't take this one for granted.
Even though they nofollow their links, their content gets copied so frequently onto other sites (along with the links). even those sites tend not be the most desireable link location, they oftentimes don't carry over the nofollow attribute and can sometimes provide some small amount of link value.
I will eagerly await the results of the poll. I don't have enough information to pick the few categories that I have tried. The limited success I had with some, such as twitter, has not been sustained. That makes sense for twitter as when there is something happening of interest, I can tweat about it (a swim meet for example) and it works. When the event is over the tweats that I have tried (workout tips for example) are not as effective for the swim coaching website that is my SEO project. Although not a wiki, about has been useful.
StumbleUpon has consitently given me the best results. Its very easy to get 10's of thousands of visitors spread over a few pieces of content, and I almost always see a corresponding increase in Google rankings after the traffic burst (sometimes within 8 hours).
My sites have also had success on reddit, but beyond the dofollowed link on reddit.com itself, it hasn't provided any SEO benefit and my bounce rate for redditors is close to 80% (compared to 30% for Stumblers).
Digg is great for getting crawled and its pages rank easily, but I haven't gotten any ranking benefit (I've also never gotten a site onto the front page).
Looking at my own analytics and not clients', Twitter and Facebook are great for bringing me referring traffic with a low bounce rate, and they work well from a rep management perspective, but they don't do anything for traditional SEO. It's the niche sites and bookmarking sites that I probably get the most leverage from in that regard.
Stumbleupon is #1, distantly followed by Facebook.
I've been pleasantly surprised by the steady traffic driven by stumbleupon. However as to the thousands of garbage quality links it provides, I could take them or leave them.
I typically add a client's site to a relevant wikipedia article after performing a researched, high quality update. You have to give to get. Otherwise, a wikipedia member will undo your changes. At its core, this is straight up organic traffic/lead generation.
I've been pretty successful adding links to client blogs and other content that are hosted on a different domain. You need to have appealing content on the other hand to inspire that last leap to the target, but *that* chunk of traffic counts.
Basicallly, my experience is that there are few cheats to this. You need to be able to provide quality content to make it work. The exceptions are, I suspect, might be sites that scrape Wikipedia but don't retain nofollow attributes, but I've never checked the clones to see if they have these. Might be worth looking at.
Ugh. I've had the exact same crappy experience with wiki - I found out some gung-ho site members tried to add links to my resource (a large, well known site) to some of the on-topic pages (for useful external information, not spam), and the high and mighty moderators proclaimed that it isn't 'important' enough to get linked. By their snobby decree, only a single other site they deemed appropriate would be linked. This, imo, is ridiculous censorship and exactly the reason why wiki's charter is garbage.
I find stumbleupon definitely works best but I didn't do anything to drum up this traffic - it just happened.
For awhile I, as an experiment, decided to make an elaborate myspace page, join various groups in line with my site content, and started getting the word out to see what traffic it would generate. After a few months of doing this I found that the result was minimal and wasn't worth keeping up - I had maybe 10 hits a day from myspace, while stumbleupon brings in thousands. Or, if I simply make a single post in a forum with my site signature on, that generates up to a few hundred clicks. Thus, why would I focus on maintaining the myspace push for such a minimal amount?
So really, I think it's all about trial and error. Try something out, see the results, and if it's minimal, move on.
Thanks for the exceptional list of “SM” sites. Today I have blogged, pinged, linked, blinked, digged, dropped, twitted, mixxed, furled, wikied, plugged, buzzed, spaced, and faced! Whew!!! See why here:
https://www.freeadvertisinggallery.com/2008/12/data-storage-boom-err-investment.html