How to Increase Blog Traffic Using StumbleUpon aka Mix
I frequently search on the internet on how to increase blog traffic or how to get high traffic on my blog and other websites. Last week while searching about the same, I came across a video named "How I got my traffic doubled in 1 day". As usual, such videos attract and I watched the video and followed the steps.
Within no time I had a boost in my traffic and I was like WOAH that’s it I’ve cracked a code. When I did some further research on it, like checking who all from my Facebook friends are on it, the result was amazing.
I saw only top bloggers on it, and they indeed made a good reputation on it by sharing their blog posts. This made me sure that StumbleUpon is one big source of traffic for them.
Since late 2010, StumbleUpon has been one of the top sources of social media traffic in the US, even surpassing Facebook as a referrer. In fact, using StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your site can produce some amazing results.
Before knowing how it actually works, I would like to tell all the newbies about StumbleUpon.
StumbleUpon is basically a Discover Engine that recommends interest specific web content to the users. It is a social network with millions of members where people share web content, photos or videos. It has a very broad list of categories allowing us to find pages and sites of our interest.
Now the question arises, How to Get Instant Traffic from StumbleUpon? Well its really simple and everyone can easily take advantage of it to get the maximum out of it.
Step 1: Firstly, Signup at StumbleUpon.com. After signing up it will ask you to select your areas of interest, Don’t fill randomly as it an important part.
Step 2: Once you have completed with all your profile related activities, it will lead you to your interest related contents, you can like, dislike or stumble those pages. In this way, you may find some really interesting tricks, topics, and other content.
Step 3: Now its time to add your page and content so that other users find your website too. Login to your account and go to Submit. Here you can submit your post easily as shown below. Just fill the details accurately and submit them.
It is not necessary to always go to the link and submit your post, you can easily submit by using a StumbleUpon social widget or even a toolbar having StumbleUpon button.
Understand StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon itself define the content community in one sentence: StumbleUpon is a giant collection of the best pages on the internet!In fact, StumbleUpon is an application (available for Desktop and mobile platform) that is used to bookmark best pages on the internet.
Once someone like a page and bookmarks it, the community can visit that page, like it, leave comments and share on other social networks. Each time someone interacts with it, it gets more popular.
This is then a huge possibility for that page to go viral instantly… without further efforts.
it is possible because StumbleUpon has 25 million + users. It stores more than 100 000 000+ bookmarked pages, and get 180+ visits per page submitted on SU per month on average!
Furthermore, contents are grouped under categories, channels, lists, etc… It makes things more interesting.
StumbleUpon shows pages submitted by another stumbler to anyone who browses the site. it selects those pages based on interests the user entered in his profile or based on recent pages he likes.
So, you can get targeted traffic from StumbleUpon… quick, effortless, free. But there’s a catch.
If your webpage is not optimized for StumbleUpon, people will spend 10 seconds on your website and leave. If it is well optimized, people will spend time reading or like it so it reaches more people.
- How to use StumbleUpon to boost your blog traffic?
- How to make that traffic converts?
As I said above, the common way users visit pages is to hit the “stumble now” button. The best pages according to StumbleUpon ranking criteria are served first, then the others. An optimized page get more traffic; how to optimize a page to get traffic from StumbleUpon?
Then, you can get traffic from directory pages (list, category, channels, profile, brand, tags, etc. Optimized pages still apply then popularity and interests. The following tips will help you make StumbleUpon your best passive traffic sources.
1. Become a stumbler
You won’t be able to use StumbleUpon correctly unless you become a stumbler. If this is new to you, to “stumble” simply means to discover web pages by clicking the StumbleUpon button on your browser bar.This is what it looks like on Chrome:
Now, since you’ll be using StumbleUpon to promote your own blog in hopes of getting targeted traffic, you need to stumble and vote on pages that are similar to your content.
What this does is it identifies other stumblers who have similar to your ratings and usage patterns. This will get content you stumble, eventually including your own, in front of these users as they stumble. If one of these users sees your content and likes it, that person submits it for others to see. That gives your content a chance to become part of a chain reaction, where high-quality stumblers share it with other high-quality stumblers.
2. Follow like-minded stumblers
StumbleUpon is unique in that users are clustered into very specific categories depending upon your stumbles, preferences and even connections.
But after dozens of very specific stumbles and votes, you’ll eventually be getting stumbles based on a very narrow brand of entrepreneurship that interests you.
In other words, you’ll start to get matched with highly targeted stumblers who think like you and who will probably even be interested in engaging with you and your content.
If you and other users start to thumb up similar content, then StumbleUpon may eventually show your content to those users.
3. Post in the right category
Content is categorized; either you manually pick a category or StumbleUpon will do it for you according to the context!Categories are followed by users waiting for new stuff to read; if category is popular and followed by a lot of people, you’ll get more traffic for your submission under that category. You can visit the category page for insights.
As example:
- Business – 1.4 millions+ followers
- Computer Science – 187 000 followers
- Writing – 3.4 K followers
4. Get likes by popular stumbler
On social networks, the audience is always limited. To get more audience, you need to get promoted on someone else network.Help user to share your content and get more audience. Add stumble upon button to your pages to help to share by users with an existing wide audience.
And, pages popularity and stumbler authority help rank better in category pages.
5. Shorten your URLs with StumbleUpon
Shorten your URLs with StumbleUpon to increase your site traffic!A sharing with a link shrink with StumbleUpon will include the social bar with the Like and Unlike button which will help the user to add your pages to its lists and share it with his friends with one click.
And, add more text to your sharing where the text is limited to 140, 160 or 150 characters.
6. Submit interesting web pages – and not just yours
You can certainly promote your own content on StumbleUpon, but if that is all you do, then it’s not likely that you will create a strong following since, like all social platforms, StumbleUpon works well when you are social. That means that you contribute to other people’s valuable content to the discussion.Besides, StumbleUpon does monitor user activity and may prohibit activity if all you do is promote your own stuff.
The point of StumbleUpon is to build up content in its collection that adds value to the community. This will keep you in good standing according to their Terms of Service and add credibility to your name in the community.
Keep in mind that you can view which of your discoveries have been viewed the most. It will give you an indication of what people like and don’t like to see.
This will be helpful when it comes to sharing your own content…you want to be able to submit content that will resonate with the audience.
7. Get more followers
Followers mean audience. With StumbleUpon, you can reach anyone by interest, but higher pages are served first; with followers, you get seen whatever the ranking of your pages based on the time line.StumbleUpon also delivers suggestions by mail, getting followers will help your pages to be promoted through emails.
8. Use effective tags
Tags are powerful in StumbleUpon listings. They help to create new interests people can follow!When tags exist on the system, tags help you share your submission under more than one category.
Remember to pick carefully tags you will add to your submissions.
9. Create clear web pages
When it comes to optimizing your site for the StumbleUpon community, there is a one really important rule you must remember: the content on your page must be crystal clear to anyone who sees your page.Stumblers like to explore pages that are designed to make sense and appear to reward exploration. Give the Stumbler visuals and good writing, along with links to other content on your site to encourage deeper exploring.
TED is a good example of this.
That includes additional options that the Stumbler can explore like a bio to read or other videos to watch.
This is why you never want to submit a Home or About page. You want to submit something specific like [Calculations] Generate 1,000,000 Pageviews and $3,000 Per Month, Amazon Associates Program - Pro Tips to Make $3,000 Per Month, and Event-Based Niche Blog – Make up to $10,000 Per Month from Blog. Specific articles are more likely to be shared, discussed or saved by fellow stumblers.
10. Group your pages under lists
The game is not to simply share your pages and stop! You can create custom lists for better segmentation.Those lists can be about anything (best workouts, 2013 SEO traffic tips, etc…)! Unlike categories, it is up to stumblers to create lists.
Create a list, add your pages and get your lists followed by stumblers for even more traffic from StumbleUpon.
11. Try StumbleUpon Paid Discovery
Sometimes you may not get the traction you would like from your organic efforts on StumbleUpon. Or maybe you simply don’t have the time to wait for natural discovery.You can speed up the process with Paid Discovery.
The nice thing about Paid Discovery is that it sends traffic directly to your site, whereas with Facebook ads, for instance, you buy a small ad and hope that people will see it.
If your site doesn’t violate any of the content rules of StumbleUpon, then you have three plans to choose from.
The cost is based on how much you want to spend per visitor.
A campaign is broken down into 6 steps
- Enter the URL – This is going to be the page that you want stumblers to visit. To track this via Google Analytics, you can enter a utm_parameter by adding this to the end of the URL http://yoursite.com/yourpage.html?utm_source=stumbleupon&utm_medium=paidscovery&utm_campaign=social
- Choose topics – StumbleUpon gives you the option to choose up to 10 topics, or you can let it guess the topics based upon the content. You also have the option to split campaigns into topics if you want.
- Choose your audience – Set the demographics you want this content to get in front of based upon age, gender, location or device. Alternatively, let StumbleUpon optimize this for you.
- Set your budget – A priority placement will bump you to the front of the que. Or you can upgrade and set your highest daily spend, which will calculate how many visitors it will send to your site based upon your plan and budget. A budget of $30 a day will send you 300 visitors a day.
- Schedule – Finally, if you set the campaign to start immediately once the ad is approved, then it will run until you run out of money. Or you can set campaign dates so that the submitted page shows up over a period of time.
- Add funds – From your dashboard, go to the Account area and add funds from your PayPal account or credit card.
Finally, here are some tips to help you optimize your Paid Discovery campaigns:
- Try your content in multiple categories to test what works best. StumbleUpon’s new metric score is a great way to see which categories drive the most stumbles.
- To find out which categories are the most popular, you can select “manual targeting” before you submit your content to Paid Discovery.
12. Share your stumbles and like your stumbled pages
Extends your impact with proper sharing. To get traffic from StumbleUpon, you can share your pages with your social networks, your StumbleUpon followers via mail and suggestions, and even more.If someone else shared your page first, go to that profile and like the submission.
It is claimed that pages submitted by your audience are more powerful, your listing from them just add values and help you with your success.
13. Use StumbleUpon Badges
Another way to get targeted traffic is to have your visitors submit your page, vote or share your content via the StumbleUpon badge.
Of course, if you prefer to customize it, you can use StumbleUpon’s badge API. You’ll get all the information you need to build a badge perfectly suited to your site.
This customization will also help you offer information on the badge like if that page has already been submitted, how many stumbles it’s gotten and the thumbnail and metadata of the page on StumbleUpon.
14. Optimize your article headline
Your page is shown also in user home page on StumbleUpon, lists, categories, and profiles.To increase the click-through rate, nothing better than a great headline that catches user attention!
15. Use attractive and high quality featured images
With your headline, an image is shown under the title and above the page description!That image is taken from your post, the featured image is used or your page screenshot.
Thousands of words in a pic can dramatically increase your traffic from social media; StumbleUpon is not an exception to the rule.
16. Use StumbleUpon widgets
With StumbleUpon widget, you can reach people out of your network anywhere you can add some HTML codes.S.U widgets help you to showcase your popular and latest submission on StumbleUpon.
Plugins also help to get StumbleUpon followers and sharing. Add them somewhere that will be visible and you’ll notice augmentation of your traffic.
17. Use StumbleUpon advertising
While all the above tips help to get traffic from StumbleUpon without spending a dime, StumbleUpon advertising helps you get cheap traffic packages. pay $0.10 per targeted and high-quality traffic.That traffic is direct and helps to get even more as they are natural and increase likes that spread the word across the world.
18. Stumble pages submitted by others
It seems ridiculous, visit others while you want to get traffic! Yes, it is not required but it is recommended. First, if everyone just submits pages, who will read the submission? Then, each time you stumble pages and like, it is recorded by the system.It will be used to show you only page you like but also to suggest your account to be followed by other users. So, define your interesting by stumbling upon pages and get promoted by the system who knows you better.
Apply these tips to get traffic from StumbleUpon with less effort! You get targeted traffic, high-quality social traffic, more followers and real readers.
Conclusion
While StumbleUpon is not often in the spotlight like other social platforms, e.g., Pinterest, Instagram or Tumblr, it’s still a great workhorse for delivering high-quality traffic…if you do it right.And, if you spend a lot of time online like I do, stumbling stuff all day won’t take extra hours out of your day…it will become part of your routine.
Do you know of any other ways to drive high-quality traffic from StumbleUpon?
