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Thursday, January 26, 2006

Utilize The Power Of Web 2.0 To Drive Traffic To Your Site

This is an account of how I used web2.0 sites to drive traffic to this site

This site used to get between 100 and 200 hits a day mainly because of searches and by using the blog traffic exchange sites. When I submitted the page to digg and reddit I got 4000 hits in 1 day, I would say that is a nice increase and there are a couple of blogs that are linking here now because of that. The page that I submitted is about Google interview questions. The link to that page is here

If you go to the page you will actually see that there are a bunch of people who left comments and some of these people actually went back and forth trying to prove someone else's answer is incorrect. Some people actually suggested that I broke Google's non disclosure agreement which of course is not true since I have never gone to the interview and have not signed any kind of agreement.

So let me first start by explaining how I used the traditional sites to drive traffic, Before I do that let me tell you about my other blog. My other blog is a SQL Server blog and to drive traffic to that blog I participate in SQL Server newsgroups and SQL Server forums. I will answer people's questions and have my SQL blog as part of my signature. For this blog I do not use the same method since this blog has nothing to do with SQL server and thus probably will not interest those people

Traditional web
For this blog I use the following traffic generators

Blogexplosion
Good site, once you start surfing you will see hits within a minute or two. Also a lot of free credits I have 'won' 100 credits several times

Blogsoldiers
Another good blog traffic exchange site with even more free credits than blogexplosion

Blogazoo
Not as many free credits but still a good site. You also get hits seconds after you start surfing


The problem with these 3 sites is that it's tedious and you have to browse a lot of sites to get some traffic. Another problem is that you see the same sites over and over
Another way to generate traffic is to leave comments on other blogs and people will usually check out you blog once you leave a comment
If you write something really interesting other blogs/sites will link to you and this is of course the best way to increase traffic
Enough about this and let's go to web 2.0 stuff


WEB 2.0
Below is a list of the sites that I submitted the story too and additionaly a list of other sites and readers that I got hits from

Digg
I submitted the story on digg, got about 500 hits and 9 people dugg the site. I am still getting about 10 hits a day

Reddit
Reddit was the big one I got about 4000 hits and 110 people voted for the site, still getting about 10 hits a day

Fark and TotalFark
About a day after I submitted on reddit the site appeared on fark and totalfark. The total traffic from these 2 sites was about 100 hits

Simpy
After submission I got only a couple of hits

Ning
With Ning it's the same story as with Simpy, after submission only a couple of hits

Shoutwire
The 'fake' digg, same here only a couple of hits and 2 people 'shouted' the story
Then again shoutwire is not that popular

Blogreporter
A couple of hits, blogreporter doesn't look like a high traffic site

Del.icio.us
After submission to reddit 16 people shared the link

Yahoo my web 2.0
The link was submitted by someone else and I got around 50 hits


RSS readers
Live.com, Bloglines Google RSS reader
I got some hits from people who probably subscribed to the reddit RSS feeds


The big question?
Why did the story it make it to number 5 on reddit but it failed on digg? Is it the time of day that the story was submitted (1 PM on digg versus 8 PM on reddit)? I also have to point out that I submitted the page in programming instead of technology; it might have had a better change if I submitted it in technology. This of course is speculation and I will never know. Hopefully this can help you to get an idea of how to use using some of the web2.0 sites to increase traffic to your site or blog



Google interview questions links on the Web 2.0 sites
Digg
Shoutwire
Del.icio.us
Reddit should be the first one


Some of the blogs that have linked to Google interview questions
Juventuz.net
damox
eclairs

3 comments:

alexis [kn0thing] said...

Great write-up (and reddit submission)! We're happy to hear that reddit sent you so much traffic. Here's one piece of advice for your next submission: traffic on reddit mirrors the typical workday, so you actually submitted your piece at a low-traffic time of the day. Best of luck to you and your future posts.

necromanc said...

Right now i'm trying what you've said in this post.If the results will be pozitive, i'll come back and post a feedback.

Do you have an YM id ? To talk !

Anonymous said...

I will have to say that this is one of the best write-ups I've ever read. Recently, I started to use the same methods to generate the traffic for my blogs however, I didnt get enough responce from them, may be I did'nt have the content which you have!