Top 5 Places to Get Social Traffic

<a href="http://www.sitepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/webtraffic1.jpg"><img src="http://www.sitepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/webtraffic1.jpg" alt="" title="webtraffic" width="120" height="83" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-8876" /></a>After search engine traffic, Web 2.0 is the next best place to receive traffic. Web 2.0 is comprised of websites that allow its visitors to do more things than just read a page from top to bottom.

These emerging websites let users manage content by creating, sharing and interacting with other users. Otherwise known as the social web, visitors coming from these avenues are referred to as social traffic.

Social traffic is important for SEO because it brings targeted users. Links are passed on through cyber word-of-mouth. The backlinks formed through these media are accessed by users having related interests - which make them good quality backlinks.

Here's a rundown of my top 5 ways to get social traffic:

1. Social Bookmarking

Those small collection of tiny buttons you usually see at the end of an article are quick links to social media sites - an easy one-click promotion for your website. Social bookmarking sites provide instant backlinks to each of your pages.

These sites not only allow users to keep their bookmarked pages on-the-go, but also foster sharing of bookmarks through tag labels. There are many bookmarking sites out there, but right now, the ones worth bookmarking to are Delicious, StumbleUpon, Diigo (formerly Furl) and Pinterest because of their popularity ( = wide user base).

2. Social News

Similar to social bookmarking sites, social news sites focus more on article promotion. Digg, Newsvine and Reddit are some examples of social news sites out there. Users can share links to interesting articles and promote them through the a voting system, which at the same time, can also sink unpopular articles.

Similar sites like Technorati, Squidoo and Buzzfeed allow users to create their own content right on their website.

3. Social Networking

We have seen the influential power of social networking. It's no longer a popularity game, where you want to have as many friends as a rock star (hint: MySpace). Social networking now functions as a real venue for people to socialize. Facebook, in particular, has already become a part of most people's daily lives.

It is easy to share information through social networks, so website promotion is less tedious. An example of this is FB's "like" button or Google's "+1" button. When a user clicks on the button, all of his friends get notified and gain access to the new information. These buttons can be embedded on any webpage, so the users are essentially doing the promotion for you. Additionally, in FB, you can create a fan page for your site which can be linked to your main website.

4. Microblogging

What seems to be only an offshoot of blogs and social networking sites, microblogging is another way to reach out to your target audience. It doesn't require as much work as full-on blogging or maintaining a profile page. Just embed your link from time to time when posting a blurb through sites like Twitter, Plurk or Foursquare. When posting a photo, through Tumblr for example, you can also watermark it with your URL.

5. YouTube

A household name in its own right, YouTube is the place for user-generated videos. Thousands of how-to tutorials, funny videos and presentations are uploaded to this website. It is not a search engine, but users frequent YouTube to search for content.

There a few ways to channel traffic from YouTube to your website. First is by creating a how-to video that's so helpful to users that they want to share it. Second is by creating a viral video - usually a funny video - and embedding your website in the notes or in the credits. The problem with this is that it may not be related to your content. Third is by posting a video response to a video that's already viral and riding the popularity wave.

Social media can be a powerful tool to make your website viral. In SEO, viral is good.

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<a href="http://www.seowebsite.com">SEO Website</a>: SEO Expert's Diary on Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing 
 
			This article courtesy of <a href="http://www.sitepronews.com/">SiteProNews.com</a>

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