For any blogger or website owner, traffic is at least somewhat inconsistent, and ups and downs are a natural occurrence. However, during those slow times most of us would like to be able to turn the tables and get some new traffic flowing to the site. The common thought for bloggers is that new content should be created and promoted to get things moving. This isn’t always necessary.

As I mentioned in a post last week, StumbleUpon has been by far the number one source of traffic for this blog since it launched. It can literally send hundreds or thousands of visitors as a result of just a few users giving a thumbs up or a review to a particular page. There are plenty of articles about drawing traffic from StumbleUpon, but I don’t remember reading anything about using SU as a source of traffic for older posts.

Most blogs have a number of older posts that are of high quality but just didn’t get a lot of exposure for one reason or another. It may be possible to promote these older articles rather than just always relying on new content for generating traffic.

Not too long ago I was wondering what type of results I could create by sending an older blog post to a bunch of friends on SU. I had a feeling that during a period of slow traffic, this would be an easy way to get a boost. As I was surfing one day I noticed a post on Blah, Blah! Technology that I really enjoyed, and I saw that it had not yet been submitted to StumbleUpon. At this point I thought it would be worthwhile to test this experiment by sharing a page from my own blog and by sharing a post from someone else’s blog and comparing the results of both. Well, I’m half way through the experiment so I thought I would share the results so far.

I contacted Wayne Smallman of Blah, Blah! Technology to ask if he minded me promoting one of his articles and if he would be willing to share some stats with me after the fact. Wayne was willing to work with me on this, so I submitted a review on StumbleUpon for Google FeedBurner, Analytics and Webmaster Tools Should Be Combined. The article was published on 12/11/07 and I submitted it to SU on 1/7/08. I then shared the page with 30 friends through the SU toolbar (which is way more people than I have ever shared a story with before, but I was curious to see what would happen) and one of those friends shared it with another 5 people.

Within about 1 day the post had ten reviews and over 50 thumbs up (the most that SU will display). Over the next 3 days the post received 3,962 visitors (3,749 were from SU), with 2,589 coming on 1/7/08. I also submitted the post to Mixx, which only sent about 35 visitors even though it received over 60 up votes. Wayne also mentioned to me that he got a bit of a boost in subscribers during that time as well.

This experiment clearly shows to me that StumbleUpon, and other social media sites for that matter, present an outstanding opportunity to generate traffic from older posts. In this case all I did was spend a few minutes sending the page to some friends.

One of the reasons that I used Wayne’s post was that I wanted to see if the results showed a difference in sharing someone else’s content as opposed to sharing your own. This is why I said I am half way through the experiment. I plan on testing in similar scenario with one of my own older posts and sharing the results.

Have any of you had significant results promoting older posts with social media?

Now that the blog has been around for a while I thought it would be interesting to look back on six months worth of data. The blog technically launched in March of 2007 but was not taken seriously until late June or early July, so 6 months goes back to mid July.

Even though I do check on the stats consistently, I found some things that were surprising. Hopefully I can use some of these findings to improve the blog and I’m writing about them because I have a feeling that many of you could learn similar lessons from your own stats.

I looked at stats from July 15, 2007 – January 15, 2008. Here are some of my findings:

- StumbleUpon was my number 1 source of traffic, which I knew. However, I was surprised to find that it was extremely close to producing double the traffic of my number two source of traffic, Digg. The traffic from SU is obviously more consistent than Digg, but I was surprised by the huge gap. I have only had 4 posts hit the front page of Digg, so I’m not saying that SU is overall a better source of traffic for everyone. The 4 posts received huge spikes of traffic from Digg, but aside from those brief periods of time, Digg traffic was almost non-existent.

I really don’t promote SU on the blog posts themselves because the traffic comes from SU regardless, but I’m thinking that it would be worth the experiment to see if providing a button for StumbleUpon could help even more. Obviously many of my readers are Stumblers.

- My number 3 traffic source was direct traffic. I didn’t realize that the direct traffic would rank this high, and I’m happy to see that it does. I think having direct traffic helps to decrease dependency on search engines and social media.

- My number 6 source of traffic was DZone, which proves to me that targeted niche sites are very much worth the time (assuming they have an audience and visitors of their own). CSS Globe and Design Float ranked 9th and 11th respectively, and I anticipate Design Float rising a bit higher in the future because it is still a fairly new site itself. Sphinn is one niche site that I have not given the attention that it deserves. I plan to target these smaller, niche sites more in coming months as opposed to Digg. Digg hasn’t been working for me recently, and the niche sites send much higher quality traffic. I’m not done with Digg by any means, but I’d like to see how I can increase the results with some other sites.

- My number 7 source of traffic was popurls, a social media site that links to popular stories from the major social media sites. I see a good bit of traffic from popurls on days that I have success with del.icio.us (which was my number 4 source of traffic) and those rare occasions that I’m on Digg. I find this to be interesting because most of us place so much attention on getting popular with other social media sites that we forget about the traffic from popurls being a nice added benefit.

- My most-viewed blog posts were many of the resource lists, including 77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer, which was number 1 by far. These posts tend to do very well with social media, so I was not at all surprised that many of them were in the top 10 posts.

- All 3 “gallery” posts (collections of web designs) had similar results to the resource lists and were all in the top 15 posts, despite that fact that 2 of them were just published in January.

- Posts that focused specifically on web design (or resources for web design) received much more traffic than those on other topics such as blogging, seo, making money online, and even social media. The blogging category has more posts than any other category besides design, but no posts from the blogging category were in the top 20, the best one ranked 21st. This is one of the most significant things I got out of this traffic analysis. There is a clear difference in the amount of traffic the average post on web design received as compared to the average post on blogging. While I do think this is extremely significant, I think it is also a bit misleading because several niche social media sites send traffic to posts on design, but the blogging posts don’t receive significant traffic from comparable niche sites. Many posts on blogging and social media have generated a very positive response from readers, but the web design niche has such strong social media sites that the traffic isn’t comparable.

- The only mullet linkbait page that I created ranked 14th, which I consider to be a success.

- I’ve been aware for a long time that my number of page views per visit is lower than I would like, but I have not had much success increasing that number. A big contributing factor is the high % of traffic that comes from social media, which is known for being one-and-done. However, the page views per visit were pretty consistent from July through January, so even as the blog has grown the page views average has not increased. This is one of the most significant findings for me as it confirms that this is an area I need to focus on.

- Along the same lines, my bounce rate has always been higher than I would like. I thought it had been pretty consistent, but I found that it actually increased very slowly, which is another issue that I need to remedy.

If you look at your stats over a span of several months, what do you notice? If you do a little poking around I’m sure you can find some things that will help you to improve your blog.

In this post I want to show what can happen when you have internal links on page that gets a large amount of traffic. If you are creating a similar list post of your own that you anticipate drawing a lot of visitors, I suggest that you take a look at the statistics below and consider including some internal links to yourself.

Result #1 – Increased Traffic

I linked to 3 other blog posts in 77 Resources, and they all experienced a bump in traffic due to click-through visitors. I’ve include some before and after images below to illustrate the point.

Find the Perfect Colors for Your Website was the 3rd most frequently visited page from August 1 to today (7,797 page views), even though it was published months ago.

31 Sources of Quality, Free Icons was the 2nd most frequently visited page from August 1st to today (15,821 page views). From the image below you see a huge spike the day it was published and then another spike when 77 Resources was published.

Effectively Testing Your Website in Multiple Browsers was the 9th most frequently visited page from August 1st to today (2,065 page views). Again, in the image below you see a small spike in traffic.

If you write a list post and it gets a lot of visitors you will naturally be sending a significant amount of traffic to other pages. Why not include some of your own pages (assuming they are relevant to the list)?

Result #2 – New Inbound Links

One of the reasons a lot of bloggers use list posts is to gain backlinks from other bloggers. However, the effect can be multiplied if you also get some new links to your other posts.

Find the Perfect Colors for Your Website:
- Technorati shows a current total of 83 inbound links.
- 27 links have come since the publishing of 77 Resources.

31 Sources of Quality, Free Icons:
- Technorati shows a total of 50 inbound links.
- 23 links have come since the publishing of 77 Resources.

Effectively Testing Your Website in Multiple Browsers:
- Technorati shows a total of 22 inbound links.
- 10 links have come since the publishing of 77 Resources.

The farther down the link was on my original post, the less external links it drew. Part of the reason for this is that some bloggers that linked to 77 Resources copied and pasted the first part of the list, and then linked back to the original post for readers to see the rest. As a result links that were located at the top of the post were more likely to also get links on other blogs that re-produced part of the list. So if you are planning on creating a similar links post, consider including some internal links near the top of the post.

Result #3 – It Helps to Identify Scrapers

Other bloggers that scrape your feed can be a real problem. If they don’t link back to the original article it’s hard to know when someone is scraping your feed (although there are methods to prevent and detect this). If you have links to some of your other blog posts in the feed that is scraped, you’ll probably get a pingback which will help you to identify the scrapers. I don’t have statistics on this one, but this did help me find a few scrapers. In most cases I just left a comment asking for a link to the original article.

I hope this scenario encourages you to use more internal links, especially on posts that you expect to get the most traffic.

If your website or blog doesn’t have many readers, even great linkbait can go relatively unnoticed. If this is the case, you need to get a few links and some traffic to get the ball rolling and the momentum should continue if the piece of linkbait is effective.

The goal is to get targeted readers and links from other sites/blogs that also have targeted readers. Focus your efforts on getting other bloggers to the page, because they have the ability, and are the most likely, to link back to you.

Here are Some Ideas:

1. Use StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon can be a terrific source of traffic even if your blog doesn’t currently have a lot of readers. Other social media sites, such as Digg, give websites with large audiences (or users with a lot of “friends”) a big advantage. With Stumble Upon it’s very possible to drive a ton of traffic to your site without already having significant traffic.

After one of your pages gets submitted to StumbleUpon it can continue to get visitors if many users like the content and give it the thumbs up. As a result, quality content can get a lot of exposure quickly, regardless of the source.

Another advantage with StumbleUpon is that the majority of its users are also bloggers themselves, which means it’s possible to get a lot of links as a result this traffic.

In order to maximize your chances of getting traffic from StumbleUpon, you can place buttons on your pages that will remind readers to give it a thumbs up, and to make the process as easy as possible for them.

If your linkbait isn’t getting enough attention with StumbleUpon naturally, you can pay StumbleUpon to bring visitors to your pages. StumbeUpon advertising is affordable, and best of all, it can start a viral reaction. If your paid visitors give your pages the thumbs up it can result in even more traffic, which you will not pay for.

2. Try 2nd Tier Social Media Sites. Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and del.icio.us aren’t the only social media sites out there. Small sites that are focused on a specific niche can be extremely effective. Best of all, success with one of these sites can lead to success with the major ones. Find a social media sites whose audience would be a good match with your content. (See our list of social media websites).

3. Submit to Blog Carnivals. A blog carnival is a collection of links to blog posts that all cover a certain topic, and it is published on a host blog. Anyone can submit links to be included in blog carnivals (although there is no guarantee the host will include your link). Blog carnivals may not generate a lot of traffic for you, but it’s an easy way to get the first few links and get things rolling. It will only take 5 or 10 minutes to submit your links to several carnivals. For a list of current carnivals, see BlogCarnivals.com.

4. Funnel Traffic from Other Pages on Your Site/Blog. To get more traffic to your linkbait, create some links on other pages of your site that get the most traffic. You can also funnel traffic by including a link in the footer of your RSS feed.

5. Make Reciprocal Link Agreements with Other Bloggers. With a good piece of linkbait it will be easy to find reciprocal link partners. All you need to do is find blogs that you think would be appropriate and email the owner with your request. You could include a link back to them in an upcoming post, your blogroll, or anywhere else. Many bloggers publish a daily or weekly post of interesting links. These bloggers would be good to target.

6. Email Bloggers in Your Network that You Think Might Be Interested. If you have been blogging for any length of time you probably have made some contacts with fellow bloggers who cover the same topics as you. Think about the content and the links that they provide to their readers and decide if you think they would be interested in recommending your post to their readers. If the information in your post would be appreciated by their readers, they may give you a link.

Alternatively, if you don’t have any bloggers in your network that you think would be willing to link to your post, look for others who might be interested. Find a popular blog post on a related topic and do a Technorati search to see who is linking to that specific post. Contact them to let them know about your post and maybe they’ll link to you as well.

7. Leave Comments with the URL of Your Post. When you leave a comment on another blog you are able to leave the URL of your blog. Most people always leave the URL of their homepage, but why not leave some comments with the URL of a specific post? This will work best when you are commenting on blog posts that are related to the one you are linking to.

Now when the blogger or other readers click on your link they will be taken directly to your link bait. Remember, getting bloggers to your linkbait is key, and this is an easy and effective way to do it.

To get the most out of this method, leave some comments on Do Follow blogs (those that have removed “no follow” tags from links in the comments. I have removed the no follow tags on this blog, and you can find a great list of Do Follow blogs on Courtney Tuttle’s D-List.

8. Post a Link in Blogging Forums. You may be able to find some other bloggers that like your post and are willing to link to it by doing a little promotion in forums. If you try this be sure to promote it in a place that allows this type of thing. The best way to do it is to find some threads on the same topic as your post and leave the link as a resource. This way you are providing more information for people who are seeking it rather than just blindly throwing a link out to the forum.

9. Consider a Press Release. Depending on the type of content in your linkbait, you may have some success with a press release. In order for a press release to work you will need to have something very noteworthy. Editors get thousands of press releases each day, so yours needs to be something special.

You can submit free press releases at www.i-newswire.com and www.prbuzz.com.

10. Don’t Follow Up Too Quickly. In order to give your linkbait maximum exposure, consider not publishing another post to keep it high on your front page for a while longer. This way all visitors to your blog front page will see it right away. Also, if you use excerpts you may want to consider temporarily switch to full posts to give visitors a better look at the linkbait.

This strategy should not be used if your readers are used to a regular posting schedule. Keeping your subscribers happy is more important than a little bit of extra promotion on the homepage.

11. Set the Post to be Sticky. By default your blog will show newest posts at the top of your front page. If you want the linkbait to continue to have the most visibility while still publishing new posts, consider making the linkbait sticky, which will keep it at the top of the page. WordPress users can download the Sticky Post Plugin to do the trick.

12. Build a Large del.icio.us Network. Del.icio.us is more than just a tool for managing your own bookmarks. You can add users to your network and other users can add you. When you’re logged in you can see the bookmarks of people in your network and vice versa. This means if you bookmark your own linkbait others may see it and bookmark it too.

This can help you to build links because some del.icio.us users automatically post all of their bookmarks at the end of the day to their blog (it’s a feature that del.icio.us offers). If these users bookmark your linkbait you’ll get a link when it is posted to their blog.

To find del.icio.us users that post to a blog, copy the URL of a few pages that are currently on the front page of del.icio.us (these pages are getting a lot of bookmarks). Tomorrow do a Technorati search to see who has linked to that specific URL. Search through some of the links and you’ll probably find some who have posted their del.icio.us bookmarks. If they are bookmarking pages on topics that are similar to your blog, look around the blog and see if you can find a link to their del.icio.us profile. If you do, add them to your network (you can add me to your network in the sidebar of my blog, although I do not post my bookmarks).

If you have a post that you are hoping to draw a lot of inbound links, try some of these tips and see if you can give it a boost and start the momentum.