One of the biggest takeaways from Traffic Stampede Secrets that I reviewed a few months ago was how important it was to target the right social bookmarking and networking sites for your own sites, and also to evaluate and test how effective a particular bookmarking button might be.

I have just removed my StumbleUpon graphic that floats on the top right of every post, and the Technorati favorites button that was included in the same place.

StumbleUpon

I love StumbleUpon, I use it daily to find great sites, and my readers love it as well.

So why did I remove it?

I use a lot of tracking, and frequently I saw clicks of the StumbleUpon button, but no corresponding reviews.
Someone will click the button, and decide not to write a review, and then click their stumble button to go somewhere else. People are shy….

In that situation you don’t get a vote even if one was intended!

If someone is using StumbleUpon, they have the toolbar installed. The “Thumbs Up” button is right next to the Stumble Button.

It is possible I will get a few less reviews, but hopefully I will also get a few more positive votes for my content – those people who clicked a graphic and were too shy to write a review.

Thus whilst StumbleUpon traffic is great, the button I was using, because it only links through to a review form, might not have been helping me, in fact it might have been a negative for gaining votes, reducing the amount your best content is shared with others.

Digg

None of my content is written specific to a Digg audience. I try to write good “in-depth” content and generally many of my articles are not appropriate for the mainstream Digg audience.

Those articles that are appropriate appear to hit a well known phenomena, as happened on my article on Digg friends (which wasn’t about gaming Digg) or my in-depth review of PayPerPost Direct.

My recent articles on WordPress SEO, contain far more valuable information than the majority of “SEO Tips” articles that seem to make the front page of Digg.
Digg users often have short attention spans, and seem to prefer Digging shorter articles – I am sorry but I am not going to write short articles just for traffic. If an article needs more words, I am going to use them.

I am going to continue including the Digg button, because eventually I believe some of my content might become more appreciated by a wider Digg audience.

Technorati Favorites

The button was duplicating something I already include in my sidebar. I will still be reciprocating, many people find it valuable and it is my way of adding people to various OPML tools I am playing with.
There wasn’t a need to have the button in quite such a prominent position.

I maintain my Technorati Favorites with EngTech’s Technorati Favorites tool, the version from 23/05/2007 is working currently (see comments) – remember to clean up your favorites.

An example of how I use the OPML from my Technorati Favorites is the meme I created on Megite for the Technorati Favetrain.

The only way to be added to this special meme is to add me to your Technorati Favorites, and I reciprocate automatically.

This is how I get to read so many blogs, and seem to appear on blogs all over the blogosphere that have interesting articles.

PlugIM – New Addition

I have been a member of PlugIM for quite a while, and have always found it to be a good source of quality articles focused primarily on internet marketing.

Whilst many people might look on this as some kind of duplication with Bumpzee and the affiliate marketing community there, there is actually only a partial overlap in readership, especially among the dedicated reader base.

PlugIM is very much a niche community, whereas Bumpzee caters for many different communities, one widget fits all.
There are currently hundreds of niche communities which utilise some form of voting script.

Many might look on them as being Digg clones.

If you are a Digg user, let’s be totally honest – do you want the hottest knitting pattern for this coming season (yeah knitters will be thinking about Winter clothing already) appearing on the front page of Digg?

Until Digg caters for all topic areas, there is room for clones. Knitting is probably a bigger niche than Tech industry news.

Now for me, PlugIM is appropriate for my niche, I think it deserves a spot in prime real estate.

I have been waiting a little while to mention Michelle’s PlugIM plugin

When it was first launched it didn’t have the flexibility I needed to position it in the “prime real estate” that I wanted, but it is there now.

It is also very “light” in coding, just 4kb, and I hope it doesn’t affect load time too heavily. It certainly won’t be a factor on single pages. My front page is probably going to change somewhat as I make a lot of SEO changes.

One great advantage of the PlugIM plugin is that once an article is already submitted (which happens automatically because they pick up your RSS feed), you don’t have to be logged into PlugIM to vote, or even be a member.

I am also a marketer – PlugIM is designed for marketers and isn’t selfish – when someone votes on your content, it doesn’t take them away from your website.

Bumpzee

Bumpzee stays

I get a huge amount of traffic from Bumpzee on a daily basis, many of my readers are active users, and I maintain one of the largest communities on Bumpzee for blogs that have removed nofollow from their comments area.

In many ways Bumpzee is more like a social network than a social news or bookmarking site.

Bumpzee is the most multi-purpose voting widget, because the service caters for any niche.

Del.icio.us

I am going to integrate something for Del.icio.us with my next major overhall. I find myself using it more frequently for content I really want to keep a bookmark of for future reference.
It is most likely going to be using Feedburner’s Feedflares.

Netscape

I know a few readers use Netscape, though I have seen only limited usage of it where it has been provided in Feeds for the last 6 months.

Someone browsing your site from Netscape might be doing it with a sidebar with a voting button, so in many ways providing a button is superfluous.

Other Services

I am always on the lookout for services that would be useful to add, which my readers would actually find useful. I can provide lots of different buttons using the hacked version of Sociable I use, if readers are going to use them.

If there is a social bookmark service that you actually use on a regular basis, and would like me to add, please let me know.

Facebook? Well I have included it in my feed for a long time, it doesn’t seem to be used

Other Optimization

I am going to start adding some additional optimization, such as custom greetings for each source of traffic.

Linking to Wikipedia Technorati and Social Bookmark Sites Could Damage Your Google Search Results!

Here is an excerpt from the Google BlogSearch patent document that I discussed in depth earlier today:-

A link distribution of the blog document may be a negative indication of quality of the blog document. As disclosed above, some posts are created to increase the pagerank of a particular blog document. In some cases, a high percentage of all links from the posts or from the blog document all point to ether a single web page, or to a single external site. If the number of links to any single external site exceeds a threshold, this can be a negative indication of quality of the blog document.

Lets take a look at the type of links that people have on their blogs

Technorati Tag Links

Google in the same patent mentioned that tagging could be beneficial for the quality of your site, but what of the detrimental effects of linking through to Technorati with 10 links on every post? Maybe you are undoing all the good work of tagging your content.

Solution: Use local tagging, or just rely on lots of categories or labels to convey tag data – local tagging can be easily achieved using plugins such as Ultimate Tag Warrior if you use WordPress.

Wikipedia Links

Some people link through to Wikipedia it seems almost every other post. Despite Wikipedia being looked on by many as an authority site, such linking habits might be looked on as spammy.

Solution: Use nofollow on your links to Wikipedia

Social Bookmarking Links

This one is a biggie – some people have 10 or more social bookmarking links per page, and many of the most popular solutions don’t provide “safe” links. By safe I mean that the links serve no purpose because they go to an empty form, so in no way are they a pointer or vote on a particular piece of content. I am sure search engines probably discount them heavily, but they may still reduce the value of other links on your page, and may incur a ranking penalty due to being spammy.

I don’t use a normal version of the Sociable plugin, I use a hacked version. If you are using the Search Status plugin for Firefox, it is easy to tell, because you can see the pink boxes.

If you want to hack the Sociable plugin I wrote this guide a few months ago or just use my hacked version, now available.

Digg buttons such as “DiggThis” are not a problem, because they are normally Javascript. Some others use true dynamic linking using things like “onclick”.

Subscription Buttons

Yep more pink on this site, how about on yours?

It is ok to use a followable link to your feed, in fact that is recommended, even if you use and external service such as FeedBurner.

These buttons however link through to forms, not content. They should always be nofollowed.

Solution: Add rel=”nofollow” to the links

Conclusion

I am generous with my Google Juice, using Dofollow plugins for my comments, and link out to my readers often, but I hate pouring Google Juice down the drain.

What he forgot to mention was the Del.icio.us tagometers that were recently introduced by Delicious that you can also add to your blog. I have been testing them on a few niche blogs, and they have proven to be quite effective in encouraging additional clicks.

Additionally important is that the code doesn’t contain any specific references to you or your account anywhere – no footprint, and that it loads relatively fast.

I have decided to add the code to this blog as well based on my testing.

The code is very simple to add to your blog

This adds a nice box to your sidebar

<script src="http://images.del.icio.us/static/js/blogbadge.js"></script>

This adds a single line

<script type="text/javascript">
    if (typeof window.Delicious == "undefined") window.Delicious = {};
    Delicious.BLOGBADGE_DEFAULT_CLASS = 'delicious-blogbadge-line';
</script>
<script src="http://images.del.icio.us/static/js/blogbadge.js"></script>

One bug / annoyance I have noticed is that if you include both on the same page, it seems that data is not completely pulled down for both widgets, which is a shame.