SEO 2.0

Can you use StumbleUpon without the toolbar? Yes, of course you can, but why should you and how can you do it? Aren’t there limitations? What are the benefits?

Why should you stop using the StumbleUpon toolbar?

1. It can mess up your browser: My Firefox was broken ever since I installed the StumbleUpon toolbar. I just couldn’t believe it! A multimillion company owned by eBay lets you download a broken extension for Firefox? Impossible, I thought. Every second time I shut down FF it would loose it’s customization on next start up. So I had to use MozBackup daily. To no avail in some cases. Loosing precious time and sometimes data. Finally I disabled the StumbleUpon toolbar and since then it did not happen anymore!
2. StumbleUpon is addictive, time consuming and distracting: You end up stumbling sites for 2 hours in a row instead of working.
3. Sadly StumbleUpon will not honor your active participation. The contrary is the case, the more you are involved the more you run the risk of loosing traffic by automatic filters or people who hate you based on your profession for instance. So contributing too much is rather working for free for eBay. Let others stumble you and the effort vs traffic ratio is much more positive for you.

How can you use StumbleUpon without the toolbar?

1. Disable it in the Firefox extensions list with a right-click on “Disable”
2. Go to the StumbleUpon log-in page and log in. If you do not remember your password let SU send it to you, just enter your nick and it will be send to the mail address you registered with.
3. Now you can perform all actions you are used to on your SU profile, add friends, read and send messages or review pages others have stumbled.

Are there or what are the limitations of using SU without the toolbar?

1. You can’t click “thumbs up or down” on a page
2. If you review a page you found through browsing StumbleUpon your review will lack a thumbs up either
3. You can’t send discovered pages directly to your friends
4. You can’t just stumble by clicking the stumble button 

What are the benefits if there are any?

1. Curbing the time wasted on StumbleUpon, you browse the site lie any other so it’s not addictive anymore.
2. You can stumble pages and “like them” with a thumbs up on sites that offer “add to StumbleUpon” buttons
3. Stumbling pages by clicking those buttons is easier, you don’t have to choose a category, language or whether it’s adult content or not
4. No distraction while working of course
5. Less effort more choices
6. You do not end up being filtered or hated for being too active (or a spammer)

To discover new sites or news stories in accordance with my interests I prefer Yoono (new sites) and Spotback (news) or other social browsing services anyways. Less effort more automated, more anonymity.

As I am probably not the only one to look for a RSS reader I decided to share my list of those I think are the best ones. Most people nowadays use Google Reader for RSS (and Atom) feeds but I do not want Google to have all my data, I use far too many Google services by now.

Anyways, I still think that it’s one of the best RSS readers so I included it here in my list of the best 10 cross-platform RSS readers (also referred to as feedreader by many) along with 9 alternatives. Cross platform means they work on Windows, Mac and Linux.

3 of them are open source software based on the Java programming language, that’s why they work on all operating systems. 7 of them are web based feed readers. It means they work in your browser like any website. So here is the list, the desktop programs first:

• RSSOwl - Probably the most popular free open source RSS reader, nice clean interface, support dozens of languages
• BlogBridge - Simple, browser-like interface, also open source and quite popular newsreader
• BottomFeeder - It’s a complex open source RSS reader for the poweruser
  

• Google Reader - AJAX enhanced most popular web based RSS reader, using the typical Google colors and fonts
• Bloglines - Before Google Reader Bloglines was the most popular online browser based RSS reader, you can make your subscriptions visible for others here
• Netvibes - Netvibes is more a web based starting page than a stand alone RSS reader but you can use it like one
• NewsGator
  
• FeedShow
• Rocket RSS Reader
• Newshutch

Are newsreaders, feed readers, Atom and RSS readers the same? Yes and no, I prefer the term RSS readers although they also support Atom feeds (just another RSS-like format) because there is a RSS Reader software called Feedreader. I do not want you to mix it up.

I did not include Feedreader here as it only works on Windows. “Newsreader” might refer to the so called Usenet, a part of the Internet that came before the Web and still is used by some people. Usenet newsgroup readers are not the same as RSS newsreaders.

Most Internet marketers about to introduce StumbleUpon to you will tell more or less the same story. According to those StumbleUpon tutorials you have to undertake certain actions to succeed on SU to get more traffic for your own blog or website. Well, at least 3 often repeated tips are simply wrong according to my own experience as an active user on StumbleUpon during the last weeks.

The 3 most common StumbleUpon myths are:

1. Get more friends on SU to get more popular and thus get more traffic
2. Stumble yourself as much as possible
3. Most stumblers are friendly and do not hate SEO

1: After initially just receiving traffic from StumbleUpon, I was stumbled for the first time on day 2 of SEO 2.0, and then again and again, I decided to use StumbleUpon myself. As I am real social media aficionado, until recently mostly in Germany, I gained momentum very quickly on SU. Maybe too fast for the algorithms or the SEO haters. Why? The more friends I got the less successful my SEO 2.0 blog got on StumbleUpon it seems.

While initially complete strangers would stumble me and I would receive a small wave of traffic each time after some weeks Lyndon of Cornwall SEO stumbled me a started the first avalanche that brought me massive and enduring traffic for a single post. This post still gets some visitors from SU.

In contrast the same Lyndon stumbled me some days ago and did not bring any significant traffic for some days now. Also several other SU friends of mine reviewed and stumbled this story. Either it was “disliked” by many others (the equivalent of burying it) or SU does not count your friends votes to prevent fraud. That’s why I stopped to befriend people on SU in order not to hurt them and myself. Your friends will notice your posts and probably stumble you more often as they read your blog on SU and your real one probably but you won’t get traffic if no strangers vote for you. So basically it would be better if those people would not be your friends, then their vote would count.

Conclusion: It is rather useless or even counterproductive to befriend all the other people of your niche at SU, especially if it’s the SEO niche, as SEOs are watched ten times as close being perceived as spammers by most mortals. Lay low on SU or do not engage in the community at all if you do not want to be perceived as a SEO wanting to spam StumbleUpon (as any action by even the cleanest SEO will be perceived as spam by the SEO haters). I made the mistake to be outspoken about the SEO hate on SU and just more SEO haters buried me as a reaction and nobody else cared that people use hate speech to intimidate me.

2: Being active on SU is the prerequisite to success with your own projects on this social discovery site people tell you. Well, I noticed no positive change. Being active on SU is very time consuming and addictive, so you end up stumbling 1 or 2 hours per day. So think twice if you want to invest the time into an eBay company or into your own. The more active you are, the more SEO haters will notice you and offend you even without taking a look and who you are.

Conclusion: Think of your activity at SU as leisure, just like surfing the web. Do not mix it up with work for your blog. Write your blog posts and let the SU community discover you, but it doesn’t make much sense wanting to push yourself by sheer SU activity.

3: I wrote it myself, “stumblers are much friendlier than Diggers” who will flame in the comments etc. Well, that’s not true. The only difference is that SU sends more targeted traffic so the people who hate SEO or whatever your topic is won’t notice you at first. After you become somehow popular on SU they will and they will stalk you. If you criticise them, they will inform all of their friends on SU and those will “review your SU blog” or your real site with a thumbs down and things like “Get some AIDS 2.0″. I have at least 6 negative reviews out of 14 on my SU profile. 3 of them are so ugly that I decided to hide them. The difference to Digg is also that no other people will speak on your behalf. Nobody cares if those people puke on you.

Conclusion: Do not give additional publicity to the SEO haters. I know I do it again, as I’m not a true internet marketer. I’ve been on the net for 10 years and do SEO for 3 now. So things like Netiquette and truth are more important to me than to other people who earn their money and ignore those who mess up the Net. You should too if you want to get traffic from SU. If you are truly after a community like I am, SU will disappoint you. People don’t care for the hate speech. Just those that want to hate care for it and will bring you more of it.

My overall conclusion is: I will curb my professional use of SU as it has a rather negative impact on my professional endevours at the end of the day. I will use the time for working on my projects instead. I will keep on stumbling photography sites and reading my SEO daily newspaper by my SU friends but I won’t work for StumbleUpon that much anymore.

OK, I admit it, I read more than 5 SEO blogs, indeed I read more than the other 10 SEO, make money and blogging blogs I mentioned some days ago. Basically I read far too many of them. There are at least 12 more SEO blogs out there that are really worth it. Check them out.

So here is the list of 12 SEO Blogs you might have missed until now, they are largely underrated for no apparent reason (this time the list consists of strictly SEO blogs again):

• SEOish - Technically savvy both in SEO, Google Gadgets, StumbleUpon
• aimClear Search Marketing Blog - Good mannered SEO company weblog from Minnesota, great resource, broad scope
• IT Drive - Offers powerful recipes for getting traffic in today web environment
• Tim Nash the IT Consultant - Tim Nash is so funny and intriguing he got even banned from Google for that, great stumbler btw.
• Reel SEO - SEO for Video? I don’t even shoot videos so I am very much impressed by a whole Video SEO blog or Wiki
• TellinYa - Clean SEO blog with some server side tips you won’t get everywhere
• Red Hand Studios - White hat SEO not afraid to tell the truth and to debunk myths.
• SEO Theory - Michael Martinez sometimes sounds a little arrogant but he really knows so much to look down on you
• Shaun Anderson SEO - Shaun Anderson is “innovative, aggressive, uncompromising” so I rather do not describe him further so I don’t piss him off or I get sued for supporting him
• Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog - Good blog design good advice for the average webmaster and SEO pro alike.
• The Venture Skills Blog - Tim Nash again! Analytical blog for the heroic reader. Here he will go deep inside StumbleUpon e.g.
• SEO World Jon Rognerud publishes both great overviews and in depth articles

So if you want to spend all day reading SEO blogs follow the links on this list but if you aren’t an expert after 2 weeks return to your daily habits and read just the 5 most important SEO blogs

Today I was surprised to see that over at StumbleUpon 4 users reviewed my ode to the SEO community in the 20 Sphinn stars post and overall 12 stumblers liked it. Why was I surprised?

I was taken off because I did not notice any traffic whatsoever on this post from StumbleUpon. Usually so many “like its” bring something like 1000 visitors.

At first I thought that probably just my StumbleUpon friends voted for me and SU did not count them to prevent spam. Then I took a closer look at those who stumbled and reviewed SEO 2.0 here: The only thing they all have in common is: SEO. Only roughly 50% are my friends at SU. 5 of them are my friends, one is a fan of mine, and I am fan of one those 12 stumblers. So it’ still 12 vs 7. So it can not be about the friends.
All of them are SEO stumblers, people who stumble SEO posts from several well known SEO sources. None of them is a “SEO spammer” though. All of them are genuine active StumbleUpon users. So why didn’t I get any traffic? Did StumbleUpon decide to give us some AIDS 2.0 like the SEO haters who bashed me there?

It’s no mistake unfortunately, I checked all three stats that run on SEO 2.0. The numbers are valid. Moreover I still get significant traffic for other posts who have been stumbled before so this is not a ban against the SEO 2.0 blog by itself. It’s a crackdown on the SEO stumblers it seems.

Did you experience something similar on SU? Or am I the only target? If this is true, it seems that StumbleUpon strikes against the good SEOs instead of the bad ones, those who truly contribute to StumbleUpon get punished for practicing SEO.

Btw. sometimes the SU traffic takes a while after a posts get stumbled, something like 2 hours. The Sphinn stars post was stumbled by Lyndon 24 hours ago in this case.

Hey, there are just too many people on Sphinn I appreciate, so following the 3 favorite Sphinn users I did not know before meme is very difficult. Moreover I just don’t know anymore whom I noticed where, as I started blogging, sphinning and stumbling more or less at the same time.

To me there is already something like an online SEO community you can put trust in wherever you “meet” them and in whatever medium their content or recommendations appear.

That’s why some of my favorite Sphinn users ale already mentioned in my stumbler friends or great SEO blogs lists.

So I just present to you those 20 users that make Sphinn and the overall SEO community truly great and who I can’t ignore because they seem to live at Sphinn

• Lyndon
• Sebastian
• aglobalwarming
• msaleem
• aimClear
• TheNanny612
• DoshDosh
• qwerty
• tamar
• TannerC
• patrickaltoft
• fantomaster
• Eavesy
• Harith
• matt608
• AndyBeard
• chriswinfield
• 0thelisa
• flyingrose
• lorenbaker

I left out Glen aka ViperChill as he is hiding in South Africa from his fate.

I want all of you Sphinn stars on the list to write what 3 Sphinn users are your greatest discoveries and if I’m not one of those 3 I will de-link you, put you on ignore at StumbleUpon and never again vote for your stuff! The others whom I omitted should de-link me, put me on ignore at StumbleUpon and never again vote for my stuff!

One love to the online SEO community!

The thing about Blogrush, the visitor exchange for blogs traffic driving scheme is more than hype, it’s a viral sensation, it’s incredible, but that’s also it: It’s not credible. Almost from day one I felt a little like: It sounds to good to be true. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an early adopter and I was already on the Blogrush website watching the video and thinking like “well, great idea for getting traffic and also adding extra value for your visitors”, but somewhere deep down in my head a voice said: “wait, don’t rush the Blogrush“. Last time I felt like this was with Agloco. It also sounded wonderful but like a pyramid scheme as well…

Instead of rushing to Blogrush I wanted to see the results and statistics of Blogrush first:

1. Are the links offered in the Blogrush widget useful?
2. Do only “make money online” bloggers and “SEO spammers” use Blogrush to push their own agenda or
3. do also some non metabloggers use it?
4. Do people really click the links and do the blogs really gets visitors?
5. Who gets the traffic and who does not?
6. Is this quality targeted traffic or do the people run away after clicking?

Well, after less than a week the first traffic reports pour in. Moreover I used Blogrush as a visitor to many blogs myself. Basically I click the links in Blogrush wherever your blog posts bore me. It happens quite often. Now let me answer the questions I posed above:

1. In fact some links are useful, one of 5 is always matching my interests so I leave your site to read another blog but StumbleUpon brings more relevant blogs to my attention.
2. My impression is: It’s almost completely a greed driven rush now, but probably it’s because I only read greed related blogs myself all the time
3. I searched for “Blogrush art” at the Google Blogsearch and found only one good design blog that uses it: Nordic Design Blog
4. Indeed the first Blogrush stats appear on the blogosphere and some people get traffic while others do not seemingly…
5. John Cow, the great John Chow parrot and already very popular has some siginificant traffic to report. The Google Tutor, also quite prominent, has likewise good results but The Blogbeat, a good looking blog that offers “ads for free” I have never heard before reports something different: 2 visitors and a record low “click through rate of … 0.00917“. If you watch the statistics closely you see that John Cow for instance got his traffic not by his own but mainly through others who are his network. So basically it’s like with every pyramid scheme out there, those at the top get the money or here the traffic, those at the bottom do not.
6. So well, no, Blogrush is not targeted traffic as only 2 out of 400 click. 398 are not interested obviously.

So the bottom line is: If you’re a top blogger and already popular and use Blogrush from day one it works for you in a way. If nobody knows you in the first place you won’t get much traffic out of Blogrush but probably will use some visitors who will use it as an exit.

Also make sure to check out this in depth analysis by Alister Cameron of the Blogrush phenomenon introduced by reknown marketer John Reese: BlogRush: the Amway of the Blogosphere.

[Update]: The Marketing Pilgrim offers even more insight confirming the bad visitor numbers BlogRush Finally Adds Reports But Traffic is Very Poor

Andrew of Internet Experiment inspired me. He brought up the topic of non-profit SEO that was on my mind for some time at least as long as I have known the Graphic Alliance, a social designers network of companies and individuals dedicated to social campaigns, non-profit advertising and media activism. His idea is basically to create some kind of organization that optimizes for just causes or non-profit organizations.

The second part of the idea, SEO for non-profits is not entirely new as I found out doing a little research at Google. I have found 9 more links that might be a good start if you’re from a non-profit group and are looking for SEO services. Some consultants and firms already offer discounts or special offers for non-profits, but that’s not all, just check my list:

1. Andrew’s inspiring article: How To Kill Yourself?? - SEO For Non-Profit
2. Get your non-profit PPC campaign financed by Google: The Google Grants Program: Click Here For Charity
3. SEO at Grassroots.org “a nonprofit organization that brings emerging technologies to communities across the world”: The Nonprofit SEO Guide
4. Mary Pierce describes SEO for the Non-Profit Organization
5. Dave Chakrabarti summarizes Nonprofit SEO
6. … and lists the Nonprofit SEO Advantages
7. Michael Stein has a simialr focus in his non-profit technology blog: Organic Non-profit SEO
8. Dew Point Productions offers SEO for non-profits on a “pay what you can”-basis: Non Profit SEO
9. This website offers NonProfit SEO/SEM
10. SCOGrowth.com offers discounts for non-profits: Non-Profit SEO and Copywriting Development

Basically it’w what I told you before: SEO is not evil as most people who hate SEO assume. Those people offend me even without checking out my site or knowing who I am. I already optimize websites about ecological houses or solar energy. In future I plan to change my focus even more towards good causes. So do not hesitate to contact me at onreact.com if you are working for a non-profit.

Do you think that link building is the most important part of SEO nowadays? You may be right if you refer to SEO as search engine optimization for Google. In this SEO world you get your links, Google assesses them and sends you traffic after a while if all of your site is optimized and you target the right keywords.

In SEO 2.0 you do not have to take the indirect way. You can get traffic directly cutting out the middle man, in this case Google.

Basically just a handful of sites or blogs have the ability to send traffic in any relevant numbers. If you check your web stats you will notice that most links bring something like around 5 visitors, or if you’re lucky more like 20-50. Only really popular publications can bring you many visitors, meaning more than 100.
Then there are of course social media or rather social news sites like Digg and Reddit and of course many topic specific or international Digg-like sites. There also a few lucky webmasters get much or some traffic or rather those who are prominent enough in the first place.

With great link baiting articles you can get popular there too but it takes lots of know how, luck and perseverance. Besides people will hate and offend you and will be calling you names like “Digg spammer” (Smashing Magazine) .

My new SEO 2.0 blog does not rank well at Google, or at least not where some traffic might come in like say in the top 10 for SEO, or even SEO blog. Nonetheless I get between 300 and 3000 visits daily. Some of you already know where I get those, at my favorite advanced social medium: StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is the most successful social browsing service, it’s not just a site. If you visit the front page of SU you will only see the same old links for weeks or months, like Cool Hunting e.g.
You can use StumbleUpon to it’s full effect only if you install the toolbar and start stumbling. Or if you browse people’s SU blogs, like mine over here, but without the toolbar it’s a little tedious.

So what do I do to get traffic? Almost nothing. I just offer StumbleUpon buttons on my respective posts. This measure by itself, combined with perfectly targeted content for the StumbleUpon audience already brought me hundreds and thousands of visitors. This made me really curious so I started to use SU myself. I found dozens of like minded people, hundreds of interesting sites and my traffic grew even more as active stumblers will more likely notice you if you are stumbling yourself. But do you know what? I did not even get links in significant numbers, I just got lots of traffic and only some links. Those brought me only a tiny traffic trickle in most cases. Even reknown or rather prominent weblogs did not bring significant traffic. So while all in all I was linked quite often there were only a few cases where I got more than 100 visitors by a link from a blog while in contrast I got at least 200 visitors each time someone submitted my posts at StumbleUpon. So let’s repeat once again what we found out until now and add some info I wrote about elsewhere:

• Google brings no traffic if you are not targeting important keywords or your site is too new to have the authority to rank well for those.
• Direct links from blogs or other normal websites bring seldom significant traffic, if they do, they do for only a short period of time.
• Social news sites like Digg and Reddit only bring traffic to the chosen few and for those they amount to a denial of service attack and can bring down your server if you’re on shared hosting.

In contrast StumbleUpon brings you direct immediate traffic if you’re content is targeted enough for the highly demanding StumbleUpon audience. My content is enough though, at least for a few hundred visitors although you might imagine that SEO is not even at SU the best topic.

If you want to please the stumblers rather choose something less commerce oriented to write about (in alphabetical order):

• activism,
• art,
• bizarre,
• blogging,
• design,
• graphic design,
• photography,
• software,
• tutorials,
• space,
• ZEN

I do not mean to say that you should add a page about art to your SEO blog, make a site about something that matters in the first place to get the attention of the stumblers.

Then use a big StumbleUpon button and wait or engage in the community. You don’t need Google. Links from other blogs are nice but they can’t be your sole traffic gaining strategy. Of course you can wait 6 or 12 months until Google accepts you an the links start to work, but then of course you have to do on page optimization for popular keywords and what blogger does like that?

If you want to have visitors right away, take the direct way and optimize your content for the StumbleUpon crowd. They’re a great audience. The traffic is the best I have ever seen.

As an Internet addict I read more blogs on SEO, making money, blogging and a plethora of other topics daily than other people do in a year. So I’ll get a good overview quickly which blogs really matter or stand out while other people have to stick to the same old blogs. If you have more time to spend on blog reading take into consideration checking out those 10 blogs that I collected during my virtual journeys in the last week or two.

To understand how many others have not made the list just picture me stumbling, scanning and blog hopping for an hour or two every morning, during lunch break, at the evening and at night before going to sleep. Countless blogs haven’t made it. On the other hand it’s easy to count the remaining: 10 fresh blogs about SEO, making money, blogging etc.:

• Make Money Online with Dosh Dosh - Dosh Dosh is not really new, but it’s comparatively new and many people still don’t know it although he surpasses John Chow or even Problogger.net offering a unique point of view and unmatched deep analysis of online phenomenons
• AjaxNinja.com - The AjaxNinja does not cover predominantly Ajax as the name might suggest, this blogger feels at home on the Net bringing awesome lists of useful resources for blogging, traffic enhancement, broader web development
• Codswallop - Codswallop of the Cogniview company tackles daily routine with an innovative but down to earth approach
• David Airey - David Airey writes about a wide range of topics, the freelance designer manages to combine all of them with ease
• Chris Garrett on New Media - Chris Garrett combines professionalism with empathy and a keen mind, he offers fresh insights you won’t find anywhere else
• mGarrett - Michael Garrett is not be confused with Chris above, but his blog is at least as interesting, he mixes overall Web 2.0, with social media and search topics, no wonder he’s a writer at Profy, one of my favorite Web 2.0 blogs along with Webware. He contributes also to Mahalo, the “human powered search” I described recently as a Google alternative for broad topics
• Vandelay Website Design - Vandelay is of course not new on the blog but fresher than ever covering design, coding, blogging and SEO. Without doing it on purpose I end up reading his blog daily anyways, don’t know yet how he does that
• CLM Blog - The Closed Loop Marketing corporate blog is full of how to articles stuffed with advanced methods of blog optimization, usability and SEO. Beautiful blog header btw.
• Pro Blog Design - Pro Blog Design made by Michael Martin, not to be mixed up with the Micheal Martine of the similar sounding Better Blogging, has a great way of presenting useful advice for bloggers on how to make blogs “profitable, usable and attractive”. I don’t know about the profitability but the other two are already obvious.
• Cbarker.WS - This guy addresses the new webmaster and offers solid tools, SEO tips, and some stuff that even I wasn’t aware of. He’s not perfect as he tends to over optimization, but who is? I certainly am a “returning visitor” to his sites.

You might recognize some of those above mentioned as you will find them in my list of my StumbleUpon friends. You see, socializing on the web is the best way of blog marketing, be active and other bloggers will notice you. You also noticed that I do not solely concentrate on the topics mentioned above, SEO, making money and blogging. You need a holistic perspective to succeed online as nobody will want to read about only those three topics all the time.