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How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day!
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007

Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed
on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect
opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these
social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and
disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be
applied to your own online marketing or site.

Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless.
Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed.
However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great
differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes
a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an
internet marketing perspective.

In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media
sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes
from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon...
basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users
or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and
discuss.

These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command
the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about
obtaining.

But is this social bookmark traffic useful?

Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these
social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketing
efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the
benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a
site like Digg or Stumbleupon?

As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to
those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I
could use these sites from an online marketer's advantage; i.e.
how can they help me create more online income.

Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportunity to
really study these sites.

Of course, nothing happens without a reason... I did actually
court these social bookmark sites by placing the free
Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just
use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.

But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of
these sites can drive 100,000's of visitors to your site
immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server
and crash it.

So be warned; if you're actively promoting to these social
bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up
to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.

In my case, it didn't crash my servers but unfortunately, the
page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I
did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on
Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.

But still I am not one to waste an opportunity, so I put my
Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these
visitors and social bookmark traffic.

It pointed out some very interesting factors about this
bookmark traffic.

Most of this traffic will:

* simply bounce back

* very few visitors will spend much time on your site

* very few visitors will even venture into your site

* very few will sign-up to your newsletter

* very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels

(The unknown variable here being the content on your site,
how good it is? How well does it perform?)

Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites is
that it's very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last
a few days... until your item is moved back from the front page.

These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone
within seconds, never to be seen again. A few may sign up to your
newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.

Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the
drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant. They grab the
content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and
surf on to the next item.

This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic
from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from
traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.

It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or
SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers
in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information
and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to
my site.

So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from
these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark
sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the
search engines over any other source of traffic.

So the question remains - is social bookmark traffic useless?

First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is
useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without
traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a
server in the middle of nowhere.

Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a
webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it's game
over.

The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search,
visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what
you're offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who
will consider your offer, read your information, maybe buy a
product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They
often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal
visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.

Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some
saving graces.

Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand
your site or business. It can get the word out about your site.
Start a buzz.

If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these
social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for
visitors and traffic.

These social sites are good for another reason; getting your
links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can't
hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like
Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the
web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although
it has never been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com,
all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint
it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser
which has the Alexa toolbar embedded - your site's traffic rank
will increase. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my
site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa's traffic rankings
are not a true picture of the web's traffic, but it's a good
measuring stick, nonetheless.

Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google
basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic
voting structure... sites give a vote by linking to your content;
wouldn't it also be reasonable to assume more traffic means more
votes. So wouldn't getting a lot of traffic or being featured on
a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content
to the front be the ultimate vote.

One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from
Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my
site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon
site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in
the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded
me, all traffic from these social media sites can't be judged
with the one brush.

This whole experience also pointed out another important factor;
it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general
web surfer or the mainstream web. All my sites and content were
planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up)
visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.

If I, or anyone, wanted to take advantage of this social media
traffic, they would have to create site/content to appeal to
these surfers and then somehow draw them into their marketing
funnels.  I don't know if the majority of the users of these
bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not
very likely - the nature of the beast. But it would largely
depend on what you're offering on your site and how well it is
suited to these users.

So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.

Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from
these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in
regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before
making any final judgments.

For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out
whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption
to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much
ado about nothing.
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The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous
websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the
latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com
For the latest Internet Marketing Strategies Go here:
http://www.marketingtoolguide.com
2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if
this resource box stays attached.
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