SEO For The Common Webmaster

I am not a big fan of most social bookmarking sites. I do like like a couple of community sites. I joined MyBlogLog.com a while back but have not done much with it. As you can see in my sidebar, I decided to give it a better try. I have added the widget and I have updated my profile. It is a great way to interact with other in the same niche and also to drive some traffic to your site. The main reason I use it is that it is fun. I am beginning to find some people that I interact with that share many of the same interest as I do.

It is easy to join and if you are a member of Yahoo, you can use the same log-in information and add all your blogs to the site. You can also link to all your other social sites with ease. I have had problems verifying my blogs because they do not seem to pick up my blog post to verify it. I am going to try again today to see if it works.

If you enjoying reading my blogs, please bookmark the site and subscribe to the feeds. I have provided easy links to all book marking sites and a subscribe button on top for easy RSS subscribing. Please also leave comments if you have something to add to any of my posts. It is a great way to influence what I write and also to add a link back to your site for others to visit. Please do not spam because that will be removed.

Thanks to all my readers for being part of SEO08.com.

The number one way I always stress on this blog for getting traffic is to build solid back links. Social bookmarking sites are the biggest craze in building both links and traffic. I am one who likes to explore all options when it comes to building back links. I have checked on many services that will help build back links by doing the leg work for me. I have not found many that I liked but there a few good ones.

I ran across a great service for Social BookMarking Submissions. This company offers submissions to 500 social bookmarking sites for only $47. If you do the math, that is less than ten cents per link. This service provides professional service done manually. Building back links is important so you do not want to rely on a company that uses software to do the work.

They have a list of over 750 social bookmarking sites and they choose 500 of them to submit your site for the one time fee. They provide advice and offer a full report as to what sites your site was submitted to. One thing I have not seen offered elsewhere was the offer of a screen shot of the submission to ensure that the work was done professionally.

The site is set up for easy ordering and they accept all forms of payments including major credit cards, Paypal, e-gold, and more. The easy to fill out order form takes just a couple of minutes to complete and your order is processed quickly. They also include links to tools for SEO and some informative articles.

If you need help with building back links and are looking for a professional company, I recommend checking out the link provided to get a great deal on link building.

I have used Stumble Upon since they first came out. A few days ago, I got an email that my account was suspended for violating their terms of service. It seems that you can not promote your site or anyone else’s. In other words, if you choice to stumble all your posts or websites, you could violate the policy. I see no other purpose for Stumble Upon.

It seems that they sucked people in to use their service but once eBay purchased them, they decided that unless you pay for their premium services, they no longer want you around.

As far as traffic, I got a lot of traffic from the service but it amounted to just click through traffic. Most did not even read a post or bother staying on my sites. I am annoyed that they suspended my account but I am glad to delete the clutter off my browser. Good bye Stumble Upon, YOU SUCK!

If you are not familiar with Stumble Upon, it is a social bookmarking site owned by eBay. It works best if you are using the Firefox browser. It is an installed tool bar add on that allows you to thumbs up or thumbs down a site you come across. It puts that site in a cycle where it is sent out to people who are looking for a certain topic.

On Stumble Upon, you can also get friends (up to 200) and have fans of your personal page. When you have friends and fans, you can send pages to them for them to view. When you hit the stumble button, you will also view pages that your friends have sent.

Along with thumbs up and thumbs down, you can give a review of the page rather you liked it or not. This is helpful to other people.

Stumble Upon is fun and you can spend hours just stumbling sites and finding interesting sites to view. However, I just wanted to give a basic overview as an opening to the main point of this article so to find out more, just download . Once you have the browser go to tools and add ons and download the Stumble Upon add on and sign up for an account.

I use Stumble Upon everyday and every time I write a post on any of my blogs I stumble them. At one point I started a blog dedicated to website reviews and stumble exchanges but I was told this is no longer allowed so I changed the site to just website reviews.

Now on to the point of traffic from Stumble Upon. In my experience and the experiences of many webmasters that I converse with everyday, Stumble Upon provides a lot of traffic. The problem with the traffic from Stumble Upon is that it does not convert well. If you are selling something or trying to make money on clicks from ads, this traffic does not turn into money as well as regular search engine traffic.

Many users of Stumble Upon just keep clicking through and do not stay long enough to even read what you have on your site. I would venture to say that less than 1% converts into any ad click or sale. I am not sure what the percentage is that stay on your site and read it but I would say that is low too. There are those who search for your topic and are really interested in your site but like I said before, many just click right on through.

So after reading that, I am sure you have one big question. Why should I use Stumble Upon at all? The answer is clear. It is free and though it may not be the best traffic, it is still traffic. If you get just a few people out of thousands that will really enjoy your site and make you a little money, that is more than you had without Stumble Upon. It is also a great way to get your site seen. If you site get many thumbs up, you can thousands of visitors a day to your site. Many will not return. However, some will and you could end up with a nice loyal reader base.

I love Stumble Upon and find it both fun and a good way to drive traffic to my site. Do not use it as your only source of traffic because you will be disappointed. However, mixed with other sources, it can add visitors to your site and money to your pocket.