Social Traffic

Nowadays, getting your website included in the top search engine
results is not the only way to drive more traffic to your website. Search engine optimization still helps, yes, but it’s not the only alternative to focus on. Now, with the escalating growth and
popularity of social websites, it’s important that your website gets
a piece of the social cake, too!

Understanding what makes up social traffic is vital to your success with this traffic generation method.

A lot of people are still confused with what exactly makes up social traffic. While there are many varied definitions you can obtain online, most, if not all, will agree that social traffic generally includes those coming from social media, such as blogs, forums, social news and bookmarking websites like Del.Icio.Us, Digg,Reddit, as well as social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook, and lastly any other product of Web 2.0 such as Amazon Review or Yahoo Local.

Any traffic you obtain from such sites can be immediately classified as social traffic. Social traffic is generated more or less by the preferences of other people since it is the users of websites like Digg and MySpace that made the choice to link to your website.

Now that you know where to get social traffic from, let's talk about some of the different things that will help you to use it to your advantage.

Know who you're talking to
It is easier to generate social traffic if you know what particular market segment they represent. Knowing who they are will consequently help you learn what they may or may not like on your website. Then you can take the necessary steps to ensure that your website is as pleasing as possible to them.

Make an impressive profile
This will work with all kinds of social traffic as well. Blogs, forums,and social networking websites all let you create a profile. Take advantage of this to let readers know more about you and most importantly of all, use your profile page to convince people to read more of your content.

Social bookmark your blog posts.
Social bookmarking gives you a way to get back links to your blog very quickly. You should be bookmarking to social directories such as Technorati, Digg, Stumbleupon, and Propeller. Be sure and use a quality blogging platform such as WordPress. They offer a terrific plug-in that makes social bookmarking a blog post very simple.

Also go get a Twitter account and learn how to make friends and use it to drive traffic to your blog. This is fast becoming one of the top social sites online.

Be the first!
This tip works best with social news websites like Digg and Reddit. It’s very important to be the first to write about the latest topics concerning your websites industry. If you are selling pet supplies, for instance, then news like purported toxic contents in a popular dog food brand would be something you can certainly write about. If you’re the first to write about it, more people will be able to link to your work since it’s the first thing they've seen and able to use as reference in their own writings.

There are two types of traffic you get when your content becomes popular in a social site.

1. The primary traffic comes from the site where it becomes popular. For sites like Digg, it can be huge and your site should be ready to handle the surge in traffic without crashing.

When your site becomes popular in a social site, people will talk more about your site and the post becomes popular. They will put links to your content.

This primary traffic exposes your site to people who have no other way of knowing about your existence. Some of those visitors will become regulars to your site if you are providing something that they want on a regular basis.

2. The secondary traffic or the indirect traffic flows from those links long after the surge due to the primary traffic is over.

The greatest benefit from both types of traffic you get from social sites is the natural links to your site given by others because they are talking about you. Natural links from a large number of relevant sites improve your search engine rankings and organic search traffic.

There is much more that we could discuss about social sites such as FaceBook, My Space, Twitter and others. The bottom line is getting traffic with social marketing is fast, free and all comes down to getting out there and getting known. So, take a little bit of time every day to work on your social marketing campaign.