Since 2005 I had been wondering about alternative ways to drive traffic from sources outside of google and yahoo. So I started a little experiment to see what type of media would be less time consuming and more cost efficient. I was wondering have any or you decided to start to incorporate Social media into you SEO campaigns and if so Do you think you could survive off of that traffic alone??

Do you mean blogging?

ya, can you be more specific? I can't quite undestand when you say social media? Like myspace?

Not just blogging, I mean using available social media tools to figure out new ways to spread your message i.e. experimenting with delicious as a way to communicate with other delicious user, video embeads to give classes, Tools like Squidoo, Your own social networks .

I have never used it in a big way, but have had some good traffic from stumbleupon.

Originally Posted by john546

I have never used it in a big way, but have had some good traffic from stumbleupon.

Why good traffic?
Does any of the visitors convert ?

That would be good traffic. Other than that it's simply wasted server resources and bandwidth.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Why good traffic?
Does any of the visitors convert ?

That would be good traffic. Other than that it's simply wasted server resources and bandwidth.

Yes, say about 1 visitor in every 10 - 15 was looking at more than one page of my site. To use things like this you have to send them to pages on your site that will interest them plus you must make the pages look very catchy.

Originally Posted by jc_from_jimco

Not just blogging, I mean using available social media tools to figure out new ways to spread your message i.e. experimenting with delicious as a way to communicate with other delicious user, video embeads to give classes, Tools like Squidoo, Your own social networks .

We have tinkered with it. To date, we have learned that we can generate some real measurable traffic from the process, but none of that traffic actually converts into a sale.

We are in business to make money and not to stroke our own egos, so traffic that converts even on a small scale, is far more important than traffic that never converts - even if we can get a ton of the non-converting traffic.

I have played around with it a little. I have a blog on my site and would digg it and add it to all sorts of social bookmarking sites. When I was doing that I had slightly higher traffic stats, but no direct conversions from that.

As a web designer, the most productive online promotion I have ever used is simply the "Site designed by" credit on the bottom of sites I have done. I suppose that may help page ranking as well since they are incoming links to my site. Word of mouth still reigns supreme for me though. Do good work for good people and the word gets out.

yeah, word of mouth is the best social marketing for me too, though my blog has also started getting me some business lately so can't complain that they dont work.

I posted a video about a new boat model a client was releasing onto Google Video and did see some traffic, very little, ok, very very little and could never survive off of it. But I do feel that if the video was better produced it could be picked up by people outside the sailing world and generate greater traffic.

I was thinking of joining some social networking sites and I happen to read this thread. Now I'm totally confused as the bottom-line is that it is just a waste of time as there is not much to benefit from the social networks.

Another thread to read http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...opic=25910&hl=

Thanks for the link Chris.

I think Social Media Optimization is going to become more and more important in marketing sites. At least it will be one part of your overall marketing strategy. In truth we're all doing it right now here in this thread.

Here's something I wrote about Social Media Optimization, which has links to others who know more about the subject than I do.

All of us here at the forum practice one aspect of SMO by becoming part of this community. If we provide enough useful or interesting information in our posts here it's likely that others will click on the links in our sigs which brings new traffic to our sites.

Similarly for having your pages bookmarked at del.icio.us or dugg or stumbled. It may not help directly with SEO, but it can help spread the word about your site and you, which can lead to more links pointing to your site.

The optimization part in SMO has a lot to do with making it easier for your content to travel. Let people punlish your RSS feed, make it easy for them to bookmark your pages, make it easy for them to tell a friend. Anything to help your content travel beyond your site.

Another aspect is participating in other communiues. I'll dare use MySpace as an example and we can all debate the usefulness of MySpace traffic somewhere else. But with SMO you might set up a profile on MySpace and internally through MySpace direct people to your profile. It's probably easier to direct MySpacers to yoru MySpace profile than directly to your site. Your profile then can link to your site.

The idea is to become part of that community and extend your presence outside of your site. It's by no means a quick fix since to do it effectively you'll want to become a valued member of any community you join, but if you do you can leverage that community.

I don't know that SMO will be for everyone, but I think the basic principles are sound and can become part of the marketing for any site.

I have tried digg for one of my sites. It drove some traffic but no conversions. Stumbleupon sent be a bunch of traffic, but again no conversions. As far as myspace goes, a woman linked to my forum from her blog and I have been receiving a lot of traffic from it, but again no conversions to speak of.

Time will tell.

Bison

Thanks for those tips guys.

I started marketing with my site with MySpace a while back. Those are some good ideas vangogh. I'll have to write you a proper trackback when i have bit more time to implement some of those ideas.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Another aspect is participating in other communiues. I'll dare use MySpace as an example and we can all debate the usefulness of MySpace traffic somewhere else. But with SMO you might set up a profile on MySpace and internally through MySpace direct people to your profile. It's probably easier to direct MySpacers to yoru MySpace profile than directly to your site. Your profile then can link to your site.

This brings up an interesting, but only slightly related question: do people SEO their links? From a strictly Google perspective, if your MySpace page has a link to your site, and if within MySpace you make your page or profile or whatever it should be called more attractive, won't that give your "space" more power to pass link juice onto your site?

Let's look at another example, because I'm not sure if I explained my question well. Say you find that a blog or some other type of site links to yours, talking about something they learned from you. This is a backlink, and generally positive press. But their PR is 0 and they have as many backlinks themselves. Would you spend 15 minutes finding links to add to this page that links to you? From directories, or forums, or whatever is popular that day?

I wouldn't do this myself, but I feel like I'm starting to understand one little corner of the SEO community ( the stand up guys, white hat ), but would like to have a greater understanding of the community as a whole.

Is Google still growing?

No. Google's shrinking. Sergey Brin and Larry Page forgot to water it.

Personally, I have a big problem with "Social Media Optimization" as both a term and a concept. With idiots trying to manipulate these sites to try and draw traffic from them, it's getting out of hand.

I've even seen "SEO e-Books" with entire sections devoted to the idea.

As far as stumbleupon.com goes, I've also seen a LOT of traffic from them...in fact, I had 1000 visitors in a 14 hour period before I'd even heard of them or figured out who they were.

The same thing with www.netvouz.com . They keep sending me visitors and traffic (although at one point I was lumped in with a gay church in Vancouver...not sure what that's about). Never been there. Never used the site. Don't know if it's any good. To be honest with you, don't really care all that much. They can just keep sending me traffic.

As far as whether it converts or not, I really couldn't tell you because the site in question (the SEFL site) isn't a sales site. I just know that they're legitimate peeps and they are digging around looking at multiple pages and learning and stuff.

Can someone give me name drop on those some of those surf and bookmark sites? I don't seem to be indexed on stumblupon yet. I'm not keen on downloading or paying. Yeah, I'm cheap.