If you look at most blogs teaching about SEO, most of them tell you that you should put your articles on Digg, Reddit and other social bookmarking sites. While I still agree that social bookmarking is very important in the long run to increase SERPS and getting more traffic, I am starting to feel that in Digg, your website, gets drowned in the noise. People still Digg your topics and click on your website, but how relevant is the traffic? Will you get more page rank and traffic?
Page Rank +Traffic Relevancy = More Time on Site = More Sales
So far, I am not impressed. The average stay of a visitor from Digg to my blog is 0.48 seconds, with only 1 page view and 100% bounce rate. What does this mean? Is my blog that bad? Of course not, agreed, this blog is still it’s in infancy and it does need a lot of improvement but that’s the life cycle of every blog, you try, you track, you measure and the cycle goes on and on.
Comparing the same amount of Traffic I got from LinkedIn.com the average stay of a LinkedIn visitor was 4minutes. That’s a hell lot more than 48 seconds so what’s the difference? The same goes on Twitter, where the average visitor stays on my Maltese Seo Blog for 5 minutes.
The difference is that on linkedin I answered some questions and was a slight help to my fellow man. That is what Social Marketing is all about. It’s not about how many links you have, it’s about how many connections you establish, how useful, helpful and inspiring you are in your niche.
What’s your take on this? I would love to hear your opinions on this subject and share your insight on what social bookmarking site is working best for you.
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Excellent content – as you always provide and inspires me to come again and again. You are on my RSS reader now.
I like the way you put it “It’s not about how many links you have, it’s about how many connections you establish”. It is so true and it is the key to establishing any business not just online.
It doesn’t matter how many billboards or magazine ads you publish if you don’t build a connection with your clients.
Brilliant post, thank you.
I agree man, Digg visitors don’t stay long. It’s about connections and interactions. Forget pointless traffic. Added ya on Twitter.
Later.
bonsaijon.com – now in my rss reader)))
bonsaijon.com – cool sitename man)))
Well this might be controversial, but i think irrelevant traffic plays an important role in the development of a site. Irrelevant traffic (such as the visitors you seem to be getting from Digg) is important because as you stated, it helps a page improve its SERPs. Since Google, pays no attention to bounce rates (MSN does though), then it doesn’t really matter that Digg visitors aren’t spending much time on your blog. They are increasing your traffic, and traffic just brings more traffic (unless you already rank #1).
Hi Jeffrey,
I am pretty certain that Google DOES pay attention to bounce rates.
When writing articles about SEO it’s hard to categorize it on Digg, because we usually end up posting it under “Internet News” or something similar, so the traffic is more targeted. I have noticed that if you bookmark a page which has a more viral edge, like a youtube video you will get more traffic like I got for this.