Project Backlink
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New to this Project Backlink hub?
Please visit the first section below this one and its comments first (then come back up here). Begin at the section entitled What Works for You?
Step 2: Social Bookmarking - What works, what doesn't?
It seems from responses so far that the Social Bookmarking sites are a mixed bag: for some, they don't work at all, for others, they work great.
Let's get more granular:
- Which Social Bookmarking (and Social Networking - like Facebook and MySpace) sites have worked well in terms of bringing in traffic for you?
- Which ones have worked poorly?
If none have worked at all for you, tell us which ones you've tried.
If you believe you've found success with one or more SB/SN sites, and have a strong feeling because you took a certain approach/method, please share that as well.
Which Social Bookmarking/Networking sites have worked for your Hubs?
I'm only just starting to use Facebook and I can't find a blog like Myspace. Maybe I'm missing something. But in the meantime I've just been writing on my own Wall. And I like the way it automatically creates a thumbnail of the first image in your hub, and also grabs the first few paragraphs of your introduction simply by putting the URL in your post.I've used Myspace infrequently to post announcements of hubs, and other hub like pages.I think there's two things a person must do...1) Post in moderation. Don't be spam machine, even on your own profile page. Don't overuse the Bulletin. Make each punch count. Mix it up a bit. Don't say the same thing twice, not even on both Myspace and Facebook (or whatever other site you use). You may have the same friends on both, so surprise them by making each announcement or blog post unique. IF you do have to plug the same URL on both sites then write something unique and original for both, but don't even post it at the same time. Wait a while, even MONTHS before you mention the same hub at the other site.2) Create a reputation of being someone who says something worth listening to (or reading). Consider yourself a "brand". Do you want to cheapen your brand identity by annoying people or appearing desperate? I think not. Find ways to make yourself appealing enough to subscribe to.3) Think of a game plan. What is your strategy? At Myspace I'll befriend anyone and everyone. I'll go out looking for people living within 50 miles of me and put in a friends request. They feel far less threatened because we're 'locals'. Occasionally someone will ask "do I know you?" but most of the time they're quite willing because I think there's a tribal aspect to the way people can relate to each other at a social networking site. In the past I (almost) randomly selected people who were my new friends and would do an "ASCII Portrait" of them. If they had an image in their gallery I'd choose the best one and recreate them in "ASCII Art" (go to www.asciibabes.com to fully understand what I'm talking about, it's okay, the site is Safe For Work). When I was done I'd post a link on their Myspace profile telling them to check out the pic. Every single person loved it. I must have done dozens and dozens over the course of a few months. They were getting something for absolutely nothing. I'd also make a blog post about it, and link to their Myspace page. I got a lot of people subscribing to my blog waiting to see if they'd be the next person "ASCIIfied". I'd have people putting in a friends request and then messing me or posting saying that they saw the pic I did of their friend and how fantastic it was.On Facebook I'm trying a different tactic. I'm only adding people I have met in real life. I'm making it more personal. I've been digging through old photos I've taken on my assortment of digital cameras I've for the last 8 years and when you upload images you get to "tag" people. What happens is when a person is tagged it shows on their Facebook profile feed. It also automatically adds it to their personal album. Some of my friends haven't seen these photos in years. In fact some haven't EVER seen them before. Ah the memories. They're tagging it with names of other people that are in the photos that aren't yet on my friends list. People are stopping by and making comments on my Wall. It's becoming a habit for them to stop by and see what I've found next. I've still got about 10,000+ more photos to sort through and plenty of ammunition to embarass the hell out of a lot of people! Though it goes two ways, a guy I haven't seen in 20 years who is a friend of a friend had me in a photo from the late eighties! Talk about embarrassing! :DSo I think that the Web 2.0 social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook are a great way to REALLY socialize. Make it personal (though you don't need to have contact details published online!). Keep it real. Don't make a page that is sales pitch or a receptacle of copy and paste half hearted invitations to see a website or webpage that you've got a vested interest in. Gain trust, build a reputation and be honest.
(edit- PS: I had this typed up as 8 easily edible paragraphs but they've disappeared!)
Darkside,
You can create posts to post links of interest instead of writing on your FB wall. In the FB culture, people will think you're a bit odd for writing on your own wall. I won't think any less of you though. ;-)
You can pull an RSS feed of your Hubs into Facebook of you install one of the RSS reader applications - you can then click "share" beside any individual item, and it gets posted as an item and reported in your mini-feed of "facebooktivity".
It is also good to join relevant groups - when you publish a relevant Hub, post it on the group's Wall, or as an item on the group's page. Groups also have discussion threads, like a forum, and you can link to your Hubs which address the subject under discussion, just the way you would in any other forum.
I'm starting see a lot of hub profiles rank on Google, so it is starting to be one of my favorite sites to rcommend to clients. Great Hub topic, thanks.
I had quite a pleasant surprise these last few days with traffic and AdSense earnings from sxc.hu. Each time I use a photo from the site, I leave a thank-you comment for the photographer and invite him to see how I used the photo in my hub. So, in the comment I include my hub's link, which I modified with an sxc referral tracker.
Let me say that I am very new to all of this, and if you told me four weeks ago that I'd be writing a comment like this here on HubPages, I'd call you crazy. As they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous, so now I'm wondering if sxc will be banning me, as digg and others have banned other hubbers.
Have any of you tried this with sxc?
Sally's Trove--what a good idea--I've used sxc for free photos and never thought to say thank you--nothing like doing well by doing good I always say--gonna try it. BTW is that a hubpages referral tracker just to see what comes in from sxc? Another good idea.Thanks
Yes, Robie it is. I've created about a half-dozen referral trackers. I've only used 2 so far, one that will tell me the traffic is coming from every one (friends, family, business associates) I personally invited to view my hubs and join HP, and the other from sxc members.
Meanwhile, traffic is coming in from the default tracker assigned to me when I joined HP, but I have no idea what the origin of that traffic is!
I like to use as many social bookmarking and networking sites as possible but I have found Stumbleupon to give me a lot more traffic than any of the other bookmarking or networking sites combined. In one day Stumbleupon sent over 200 visits to one hub of mine whereas the others hadn't sent anything.
I've had a lot of success getting traffic from StumbleUpon and a decent amount of success on Mixx. Can't say if this is specifically because HubPages do well on them or because they're the two sites that I do the most social bookmarking on.
For anyone that writes "green" or "eco-friendly" hubs, Hugg is a good small social bookmarking site. The community there is tight so if people like your stuff there, they'll often link to it.
Yuwie is working well for me- MySpace has not brought much traffic here for me (but most of my friends there are younger, my sons ages- 22) Yuwie has older people like me...lol...Posting on my yahoo garden group / yahoo border collie group, and techforum is bringing some traffic.Digg is bringing me very little traffic ( but I need to work on that-learn more and network there)StumbleUpon is good for interesting hubs that get attention. (but don't stumble all your hubs there- you will get banned)Emailing my friends has been working out really well- I've had quite a few friends read my hubs and send them to their friends.
Step 1: What Works for You?
Project Backlink is a fancy name for a collaborative effort among Hubbers to share knowledge and strategies on how to get backlinks to your Hubs, and set up networks among interested Hubbers to help drive traffic to each others' Hubs.
You've probably done a few things that have worked for you in terms of getting traffic and, possibly more importantly, backlinks to your Hubs. (Backlinks are links to your Hubs on high-quality Websites and blogs) You might have tried other things that didn't work. You might have heard, from reputable sources, that there other strategies that work well, but that you haven't necessarily tried yourself just yet.
What we'd like to start off with first is sharing:
- what you've tried that does work
- what you've tried that doesn't work
- what you've heard works great but can't say from personal experience if it really works or not
Post a comment for each idea that meets one of these 3 criteria. Post as many comments as you like - the more wisdom to be shared, the better!
I'll take a turn at collating the comments later. For now, just leave your tips and tricks here.
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What backlink-generating strategies work?
Great idea. I have a few and I'll post them as soon as I get to my home computer.
What works -> posting from other sites that I personally write = visitor trust factor is high and traffic follows through
What doesn't work -> social bookmarking = traffic is very hit-or-miss, click-thrus from that traffic are very poor, and often sites get banned
posting links to your hubs in your blogs, is a good source of backlinks and i find that social bookmarking sites often lead to other people posting a link on their blogs.
my hub on how to build a catapult, seems to be a niche topic and it has had alot of backlinks to it without me even trying.
depending on the quality of the work in a hub backlinks can happen without doing anything.
great idea Hubpages.....jimmy
StumbleUpon works well for me. My highest paying hub has generated a total of 1500 views more than Google. This hub averages anywhere from .20-$1.00 per day
Social networking sites work often for me, and more often it's the profile pages of these sites that gain some traffic from the backlinks, I do get some small amount of traffic from social bookmarking sites, but these are quite small in comparison to either my blogs or lenses, connecting to other sites on similar topics also get good results, plus since blog posts are web pages in themselves I can target these posts towards my hubs or other promotions that I want to.
One big thing that jumps right out at me is do on topic forum posts around the web. You want to comment on other peoples posts and it is in your signature where you want to have a link to a Hub your trying to get traffic to. Some will allow you more than one link.
Think about the titles you have in your signature. Would it make you want to click it. Does it promise something interesting or does it feel a need.
Also be careful to do your posts at on topic forums. And be sure you read their rules. Some forums can send you huge traffic. Especially if you take part in their discussions and they get to know you.
Now what I tried that doesn't work for me is adding my links into link directories, even though I add it in the correct category, my stats don't show any visits coming from them at all, this is free submissions though, but still if free backlinks don't get results then would the actual paid ad links bring any traffic?
Don't miss Yahoo 360. Especially if you do Hubs that are entertainment based. What you want to do is post about your Hubs on your Yahoo 360 blog and you want to post to it often. You will find yourself picking up some great traffic in a short time.
I've heard lots said about Google adwords but until I research this thoroughly, I will keep my money safe in my wallet, as I've never personally tried it as there is quite a lot of keyword research to be done about your topics that you want to drive traffic to, even though when set up can bring you traffic in a little over 10 - 15 minutes.
This is certainly one for the advanced article marketer.
You can get good to great traffic from Yahoo Groups but here you want to be very careful to stay on topic. If you don't you will find your Yahoo account closed.
You should even consider starting a Yahoo Group or Groups that are on topic and match up with your Hubs. This way you will be building your own traffic and you can place links out from the front of your own Yahoo Groups to your Hub Pages. As you get more and more people in your group you will of course get more and more traffic to your Hubs. You can also build Google Groups and harvest traffic from them the same way.
video link are some of the best and more importantly the buzz of today, sites like youtube and revver to name a few are good video uploaders to promote your hubs, if your topic is informational then a simple video with the link to your site could be added, they don't have to be professionally done either, simple screen capture slideshow presentations and away you go.
Well when I make comments on other blogs instead of writing my name, email, and website in their form I write the webaddress in the name field and the full address in the webaddress field. This way instead of my name showing and being a link to my site, my site name appears so people know it is a link. It doesn't increase the number of backlinks but I did see a large jump in traffic when I started to do this. I think it makes it clearer that it is a link.
I'm new here and haven't made a page yet, I need to jump in but I can't seem to get started even though I have a blog with lots of posts and I like to write.
Keep 'em coming guys!
Are there certain social bookmarking sites that do work? Some that don't?
I've had OK success with Propeller (but stopped using it during HubLove), but got banned from Digg and StumbleUpon, even though I thought I was being relatively active on those sites.
On the You Tube ideal I can expand on it futher. If you create your own videos you can add links to a hub or hubs in the description area. You will find over time as you add more and videos to You Tube you will get more and more traffic. Again its important that you have your videos match up closely with the hubs of yours that you link to. You can if you wish go back later and change your links out for your newer links for your new hubs.
Well, I posted already that bookmarking hubs to delicious is a waste of time because of site-wide ban.
In general, inexperienced people like the majority of hubbers approach WEB2 sites with a wrong spamming attitude - and get banned. After several people are banned, the whole site they were trying to promote gets banned, too...
So, if you are planning to bookmark one of your hubs anywhere, find like six other pages from different sites and bookmark them, too. Yes, it is more work this way, but it ensures you fly under radar... and don't use multiple accounts to bookmark the same stuff...
I participate in Yahoo answers and while I can't put a link directly in the answer, I can have it in my profile. When I see a question that relates to anything I have written on, I can go in, answer the question and let them know I have a free article here that they can access through my Yahoo profile. I have had many visitors from there.
What hasn't worked for me is many of the business networking sites because everybody is just there to sell products or get sign-ups so what I mostly got from that was an email box full of join this and buy this emails.
Bonnie
Stumbleupon seems to work best if you can get others to stumble your hubs for you and digg works best for tech news and business news topics are more popular, but perhaps the best thing about these sites is if you submit a good title, such as 7 top tips to...doing something, these all have a good impact if done right and tagged accordingly.
bonnie! I almost forgot about yahoo answers, I think this is were some of my yahoo traffic comes from, plus the fact that I've linked most of my hubs up to my relevant blogs.
One big thing I see is people are not spending enough time on their titles for their hubs or for their submissions at various sites. Your title or titles are very important.
You need to make people think they are getting a value or they are going to learn something. If you can do this you will be successful. You have to make them want to click. You need that click. You need to get them onto your hub page.
Social bookmarking can work on some hubs but not many. I find that by posting the best hubs instead of any and all hubs, you can get traffic long term versus 1000 hits in one day. The same goes with posting hubs in which you promote the top or best products and you review them, such as top noise cancelling head phones or something like that. That way you can get long term traffic and hits versus all at once and nothing come of it.
I like Yahoo Answers. By answering questions, staying on topic of course, you can get a number of traffic views. I haven't noticed much on clicks or buys, but it's ok on traffic. Better than some social bookmarking sites that I've tried and given up on.
Also, because I create a lot of reptile hubs, I tend to post links on the retile forum that I freqently post on.
How about creating some type of system where hubbers/fans click through ads on each others' pages once per day or per week? Would this be considered fraud or just slightly unethical? Would it even make any difference in the grand scheme of things?
Other allowable pages that also act as sign posts to your hub pages, these could be squeeze pages or lead capture pages, for the creative you can draw traffic into and out of your email lists to and fro to your websites or blogs with links to your hubs pages.
There'd be no such scheme eoco, as adsense policy is not to allow incentives to click on ads.
There are other creative ways to use adsense to get clicks the right way and earn some online income.
Just read the policies thoroughly first!!
What on earth are squeeze pages and lead capture pages? I have nothing to contribute other than the fact that when I joined HubPages, I realised how many forums and groups I had joined but didn't have time to participate in. I went back and updated my profile on all those sites - where there was an "About Me" section I deleted everything and said "for more about me, see [my profile on HubPages]." I'm thinking perhaps I could go back and add some actual Hub links, too.
StumbleUpon will only accept about a dozen hubs from any one user, so if you've exausted this option, you must have someone else stumble for you, which is not so great.
I also get some low but highly targeted traffic from niche forums.
When I submit my hubs to sites such as TopHubs and Squoogle I make an effort to write an original blurb or in the very least rejig (a rewrite, summary and edit) of the introduction.
If a person were to use the same information at a dozen, or even a few places, then Search Engines are going to realise that. But if it's fresh and original, it may as well have been from a third party without a vested interest in the linked site.
Are we talking about backlinks-for-traffic strategies, or are we talking about backlinks-for-SEO strategies?
Because they are different.
For traffic, it doesn't matter whether your link is "nofollow" tagged, but for SEO, of course, it does.
There is a neat bit of free software that will find blog posts tagged with your chosen keywords, that already have 1-5 comments on them, and don't apply "no follow" to the links.
Not only will you get links for SEO purposes, you will be finding fellow bloggers on your topic, and if your comments are intelligent they will come and look at the other stuff you are writing, and may even blog about it.
However, there is no guarantee that these posts have much Page Rank (another SEO consideration).
If the backlinks are purely for traffic purposes, you can use high-traffic pages which allow comments but "no follow" tag the links. Of course, the pages have to be relevant to the topic of your Hub - or, you have to follow current affairs and Hub on current hot topics.
Jason, could you please clarify whether this is primarily about getting direct traffic, or whether it is about getting individual Hubs ranked higher in the organic search results, or whether it is about getting the HubPages domain in general more "authority" so all Hubs get a boost in the organic search listings?
Also, I have been wondering whether I will run into "reciprocal link" discounting problems if I link to Hubs from a domain that my Hubs (and anyone else's Hubs) are linking to? For example, my blog - currently, I link to it from HubPages, so I don't blog about any Hubs because then I would be creating reciprocal links. I was considering setting up a second blog so I could have my own three-way-link system!
Jason, am I just being paranoid, or is this a real issue?
Jenny
great ideas from every body!! i 'll have to try all of thse one by one and see what happens to the traffic.
Great ideas from everyone so far. I am going to be re-reading this thread and Hub alot! Thanks everybody!
I use Google Reader to discover and subscribe to blogs that relate directly to my pages. You just punch in your keyword and voila, niche blogs that you can comment on. Of course if there is a "nofollow" attribute, it is pointless like Jenny said when it comes to SEO but you can check the source if they use it or not.
Well, it's not exactly pointless. It will not give you link love, but it will register the ancor... I tested this
Social networking sites work often for me...
I have published links to hubs in online .so my friends and realatives visiting my sites can read my hubs with joining in hubpages...(if anyone intersted i will publish links to their post too)
Ezinearticles can be very good for traffic, so-so for PR links. If you try Ezine, make sure you follow their guidelines for naming the article (doing what they say can boost your articles organic search traffic, works for Hub titles as well).
eoco, that's definitely a violation of the Adsense TOS. Good way to get banned!
Thanks Misha for the clarification.
Stumbleupon seems to drive more traffic as compared to the stories submitted to digg .
Squeeze pages are a simple page that leads people in to sign up to an email list that will email them useful content or a 10 part tutorial by email, whichever, then as soon as they have double opt in confirmed that they did sign up to be on the list, then this redirects to your best hub or main website.
I use mass multiple social bookmarking sites like www.onlywire.com, www.getbookmark.com and www.socialposter.com. These allow 30+ bookmarks to be added in a single click. saves time, but you have to pre-register your profile at the socials before hand.
I have tried many socialbookmarking sites for my hubs. I would even bookmark a hub to atleast 25 sites but what I get is only about 50-60 visitors that also for a day or two and the traffic just dies out, now the major traffic that comes to my hubs is from search engines, but even that is not much.......I dont know how people get traffic from social sites............may be I am missing some thing.
you just gotta keep adding links, blogging, writing articles, responding on hubs,setting up blogs, and finding goog quality backlinks. yes its all hard work but its the only seo tips that really do work. as more people get into seo it will get even harder.
Putting up quality content helps a lot. If you build something that's *cool* then people will link to it. For example, We wrote a cookbook that made real world versions of the food recipes from inside the World of Warcraft online game. People seemed to think that this was a pretty way cool thing to do (or that we were spending WAY too much time with WoW...) and we got a ton of free links from all kinds of WoW related sites.
Try looking up articles on "link baiting," which is the art of writing something that people want to link to, just because it's cool. Such as this hub. If we can get people to spontaneously link to us then we're on the right track, I think, for both SEO and clickthru purposes.
Now I'm going to look for hubs that discuss linkbaiting tactics... Hey, here's one:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Build_10_000_Links_In_Thre
Good heavens it's a whole text book. I'll be reading you all. Great hub though, I am really wondering how to get my hubs moving along. Thanks
I recently found a neat new, fast (and cheap) strategy i'm putting to work for my web site, and I think there's a way to use it for hubpages, too. I'm too busy at the moment to follow up on it. But if you care to check it out, it's under "other" at bestrobotvac.com.
Articles, articles, articles. Great viral method of accumulating links. I use articlemarketer and have 100's of em out there.
ed
http://www.coach-fashions.com
Thanks for all the tips. I have tried stumbleupon, digg, delicious, etc. Get a certain amount of traffic. Will try some of the tips and report back. Blessings.
thx for the idea
What really works for me is posting questions on forums or commenting on high PR blogs. Another good way is informative articles if you get it right then it flys.
What doesn't seem to work is social bookmarking sites, unless you have something of exceptional interest you get very little traffic and even then its only for a short period of time.
A lot of keyword research goes a long way too, doing a simple google search can find potential answers or questions that need answering and so that's were your hub pages come in handy for others to read!
There are free places out there that can find keywords that are searched upon regularly without having to resort to using software that you have to pay for!
Follow This Advise And Guarantee Faster And Better Indexing In All Major Search Engines!
You are going to love this one, and trust me, this really works faster and better than any other back links solutions you have ever tried, and it is really simple.
www.socialmarker.com
"This is a free service and perfect for you".
There is nothing else I can really say about the ease at which you will see traffic to your websites/hubs etc.
This works for everything. It is a bit boring the first time you do it, but worth every minute you spend there. It is super easy to use and repetitive, and that is one of the pulse signs of using it.
There are 46 social sites available within socialmarker.com
You have to join everyone first time around (which is why it is slow and boring first time around), but after you have registered, it takes about 10 minutes to back link from all 46 social sites!
Get socialmarker.com A.S.A.P!
I guarantee you will see results and faster indexing.
Wishing you the very best.
Sincerely,
John From Dog Obedience Training
Yes. Backlinks have worked for me in the past and are working for me today also, but it is all about time, you have to put in a lot of time and patience to get great backlinks. There are many social bookmarking and rss sites like digg, delicious, feedbite, blinklist, etc. but two most important things I do are:
1. Adding my hubs links on different types of forums, social community sites like orkut, ibibo, etc.
2. For example, whenever I create a new hub, I simply paste its link in my different blogs and sites, like I have created a hubpage http://hubpages.com/hub/Is-it-wise-to-stretch-befo so what I have done, I have added this same link in my blogger blog http://bodybuilding-india.blogspot.com/ which contains approximately same title, keywords, etc, so if a person will visit my blog and finds it interesting to visit my hubpage, I can get free traffic to my hubpage, so I revolve this on my squidoo lenses also.
A lot of people don't know this but if you add RELEVANT tags that ALREADY have a high PR you can pass some of that juice to your hub which will give it a boost in the search engines.
Inspirepub - Backlinks for both traffic & SEO. I think both can benefit you, although the latter is often overlooked by more inexperienced online publishers.
About reciprocal links: ask the community here! That is precisely the reason we'd like to have a discussion here on this - to see what's actually worked for people, and to see what has not worked.
We at HubPages don't own the magic SEO hat. Since Google is an ever-evolving creature, it's important to keep getting educated constantly.
It seems like time is sped up in internet world...by the time an idea that really works has really caught on with less experienced people, Google has caught on...and moved on! It's tough and a lot of work.
I have discovered a way to get absolutely loads of backlinks to your Hubs, websites, blogs, lenses etc. They are not quality links and you won't get alot of traffic from them but you do get lots of backlinks.
To discover how you will have to read my article on Squidoo, it is about free advertising sites and there is loads of them, I have started you out with links to approximately 20 of these sites. Once you have posted your advert on a few of them you should soon discover even more of the ad sites.
"Keyword" + suggest a site. Put this in the search engines and it will bring up a list of sites that you can submit to.
Thanks guys n gals for all this info..Very valuable indeed and will help us all help tremendously!!
I do "some" of thee above suggestions but not all of them "as yet"... For me some social bookmarking sites will bring in lots of traffic and others very few so it looks like it's best to submit to "all"... My best for me are digg, stumble, propeller, yahoo and of course, good old hubpages:)
It looks like my daily Birthday hubs and fans hubs are going to be delayed again because of all these hubpage nuggets that just have to be implemented:/
A MUST come back to hub!
Thanks again everyone:D
In South Africa , we have an article submission service that looked good . I ended up with 500+ confirmation emails when i signed up , "losing" more than half because i could not confirm within the allocated 12 hours . Two articles later , one of them with anchor text , I found 4 backlinks . If I had found these directories manually , and spent the same amount of time , I probably would have had 50 or more . So the old rule still stands : If you want something done , DO IT YOURSELF !
Wow, there are some excellent tips here!Thanks, don't really have much more I can add.Just thought I would thank all the contributorsfor some good hints and tips.
Waynet wrote: "Stumbleupon seems to work best if you can get others to stumble your hubs for you..." This is so true. When other people "stumble" my hubs, they get more traffic from Stumbleupon for longer than back when I used to stumble my own. I noticed after one hub was recently getting a lot of traffic from SU, that I suddenly was getting traffic from other sites and blogs (I think they may have linked to my hub after stumbling upon it).
I don't have anything of value to add, but thanks to everyone who contributed such valuable information!
I have tried only Diggs so far and could not get it to work for me.
I have had some excellent traffic from Linkreferral.com. While it has been to my business site rather than directly to HP, I have links to HP on my website. I am also going to see if there is a catagory that I may add my HP link at their site. It's not like a regular traffic site in the window opening automatically and sitting there for a few seconds when people aren't paying attention.
What makes it work is the fact that it is a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" type of site. Each day, you view 30 sites. Out of those, you rate and review 5 of them. Each member does this so you usually get a review from those that you have reviewed, plus any others who want to write a review on your site. It is free to join (although they do have an upgrade option like most sites if you want it) and I can usually have my reviews and views done in about a hour, plus, I have found some very interesting sites there. It is actually where I found my sponsor while advertising my original gift business LOL. It is free, easy and gets the traffic without having to deal with all the spam offers you get from a lot of social networks.
Bonnie
Fantastic hub with a timely topic and great info. The comments are also informative. I have a few tidbits to offer-In reference to yahoo answers when you answer a question you can add a link but it must be in the section below your answer _the source section. Also it helps to get more traffic if you get the top answer because addtional searches are done here. Last but not least forums are helpful but can be time consuming here's a free tool to help.
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Network_and_Int
I think that you should gather all of the information on this page and put it into one story, all of this information is overwhelming in a good way, this way it could make a great reference page.
I think that you should gather all of the information on this page and put it into one story, all of this information is overwhelming in a good way, this way it could make a great reference page.
Some great ideas - thanks hubpages and fellow hubbers. My greatest success with Hubpage hits has been through StumbleUpon, but only when I "discover" (cough, cough) my own Hub, and not when someone else discovers it. As already mentioned, there is a limit on this and like writing on your own wall on Facebook, it is considered unethical. What we really need is an equivalent to Digg where we reciprocate and Stumble each other's hubs. With that in mind I've just written a hub called "Reciprocal hubbers".
http://hubpages.com/hub/Reciprocal-hubbers
My concept is that you leave a comment listing your Social Bookmarking memberships and wait for someone to respond to your request. They respond with the following info: - name of hubber they want to reciprocate with [this is not simply for my benefit!]- name of their hub they want promotedThe original poster then posts the aforementioned hub to his/her social bookmarking site and clicks through each one once (to prove it). S/he then returns to my "Reciprocal hubbers" hub and leaves a comment, listing the places s/he bookmarked.The original hubber then reciprocates with the same process. That way, everyone can see who is reciprocating and if anyone defaults. Everyone benefits because you get extra traffic at the least, and depending on your social bookmarking type, extra SEO. Of course I might benefit if I write a hub where people make a lot of comments...but it was my idea! I hope it works- it may need to be tweaked.
Ezine articles have been mentioned - in my experience the time of the day is crucial in getting immediate exposure to your article. Mondays are worst and midweek is good, preferably between 2-5 PST.PJD
One thing you can do with Facebook is create groups on topics of interest. For instance, if you enjoy writing and talking about cats you can make a group about that. Invite your friends to join and you can discuss your hubs on the topic there. Or if you belong to a couple of message board groups you can share your hubs with friends there.
I think that it really depend on your Hub's topic as to which social sites will work the best for it.
What may work fantastically well for one of your hub could be a disaster for another. Just find out which social networks gravitate towards your subject and it will do well.
A discussion of a more technical nature has started on the forum here:
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/4173
Some of the issues concern overuse/spamming if social bookmarking sites suddenly link back to a hub.
Hi. I've only just started writing at hubpages, but I have a bunch of experience writing for other websites and my own sites. I've also used a lot of these social bookmarking sites to promote or to encourage others to promote my work.
One of the best I have to say is stumbelupon. If you produce content that this community enjoys, then you will get a good deal of traffic. If you write more technical stuff or technology or computer or internet-related material, digg could be a good option for you.
One of the things I like to put on my websites is a small widget from a site called "sharethis." A little button will pop up in your posts that will say, unsurprisingly, "share this." When a visitor to your site clicks on this, a little box pops up and they can choose from a variety of social bookmarking sites.
I'm not sure if you can put one of these into a hubpage, but I think if you could, you might do well. What is the policy on widgets like this? I don't know yet, like I said I just started here. I wrote my first post today.
Here's the link if you're interested: http://hubpages.com/hub/Watch-The-Office-Episodes-
Use the link to find free episodes of The Office, my favorite show.
I am experimenting with Stumber, Digg , MySpace, Yahoo groups, and Yuwie so far. Yuwie has been bringing me alot of traffic (it's my second best traffic right now )
My referral link is here for anyone that wants to try it:
http://r.yuwie.com/theartistchick
(you do have to sign up to be member but it's free)
What I've done on my Yuwie blog is list the articles for the hub with a brief description, and also made a blog just for my latest hub, then I post notices which go out to all my friends that I have a new published article. I've had better success with Yuwie so far than MySpace because there are older more discerning resders there for the most part- (more baby boomers like me...lol..)
I've also been getting some good traffic from Yahoo groups, I'm in the process of joining groups that I will truly participate in and not just to spam them with my articles- I joined a Border Collie group and just joined some gardening groups.
I have'nt figured out Reddit ,Technorati or Simpy yet but I'm working on those too.
OK, Dorsi, you got me with this one.
How the heck do you get traffic from this Yuwie site?
There are no discussion groups, no forums, nowhere to post links, even inside "clubs" there is no general discussion.
How do you get people to come and read your Yuwie blog?
Jenny
Great comments, I just added an RSS feed on my Facebook profile and it updates my blog and my Hubs to my profile. I previously shared my blog posts on Facebok one at a time. This saves a bunch of time. Hopefully this will help with traffic as I do get about 15 visitors a day from Facebook.
I participate in a Stumble Upon Exchange at a nother forum. We agreed not to publicize it directly on forums because no ne is sure if it is against SU TOS. You post a link there that you would like stumbled and you agree to stumble the other links posted. PM me if you would like to know more to participate. For me when I work at the exchange I can get a bump in traffic of 1000 visitors per day.
Of course it still comes down to quality content. Some links I posted did not do well but the better more interesting ones definitely got great traffic.
su works
Squidoo is great, I have recently interviewed the owner
http://searchfeature.com/blog/search-featured-seth
I like facebook for the groups, easy to promote new stuff. So is twitter.
Myspace works well if you have a friendadder, otherwise it's a waste of time IMO
StubmleUpon does bring large amounts of traffic, but it does not convert well. While I do submit to several social bookmarking sites, no one has really generated the traffic like StumbleUpon.
The best ever is digg!
Wonderful, wonderful information from everyone. Thank you all for the tremendous amount of tips, tricks and suggestions!! Now to get enough time to give them all a try!!!
My favorites are Real Estate Webmasters, ActiveRain, Squidoo, MyBlogLog and now Hubpages. I think I need to get into social bookmarking more.
As for me Stumble is far ahead comparing with other social sites, and also yahoo answers works good with me, and Dorsi, you haven't answered Inspirepub, because i am also curios to know how you generate traffic with yuwie site.
Stumbleupon is definately the best for a lot of types of content :)
working
robie2 says:
4 months ago
I joined Digg,Stumbleupon, Top Hubs and have a Facebook but not a MySpace page. I also included links to my Hubpages profile from every other profile I have on the web:-)(like Flickr and Kiva etc.). Problemm is I'm not very active on these sites, don't have a lot of friends( except on Digg) and so don't get much traffic from them....but I do get a little so I guess it is worth it:-) BTW thanks for this hub. It is a wonderful, ongoing resource.