OK, this post is in my SEO category, and you’re probably thinking if I write about StumbleUpon I can’t know what I’m talking about, after all every expert will tell you that being stumbled might bring in traffic, but it’s worthless traffic that doesn’t convert.
Well in most cases you’d be right, but have you ever thought of using StumbleUpon to build backlinks, no, not from being stumbled, but instead from making sure you set your toolbar to show you related websites that you can comment on.
Here’s what I do. I know one of my websites is in the make money online niche, so I set my SU profile to show me other make money websites, then I click the Stumble button on my toolbar to show me the next site in the niche.
If I find one that is relevant I make a comment. If it isn’t relevant I might pass and click to the next site, or I might leave a comment anyway, but perhaps using the anchor for one of my longer tail keywords.
The people who have the sites get a comment from being stumbled, and with many of them I get a backlink. It’s a win/win even though Stumbleupon is usually bad traffic. This is why I don’t mind being stumbled myself, I often get some great comments.
Too many people think if all you get from traffic is a comment, that the traffic isn’t worth having, but I disagree. Anyone who leaves a good relevant comment increases the amount of content on my page for search engine spiders to index. That’s good news for me because it means I might rank higher.
I delete poor quality comments, and I’m sure a lot of other webmasters do as well, but if I can leave a good quality keyword rich comment on another site that I found using SU, then I’m happy, and so is the website owner.
And you can confirm the link is valuable by checking Google webmaster tools. If the link shows up, chances are good you’re getting a backlink.
