SEO 2.0 Basics: StumbleUpon Categories
From now on I want to start a little series of posts. It will be called SEO 2.0 basics. I will write short posts about fundamentals needed in SEO 2.0. I want to start with StumbleUpon categories.
As you probably know SU is a great source of targeted traffic if you know how to use and not abuse it.
A key factor in making stumblers visit your site, stay there, and thumb you up is the category you post a submission in.
StumbleUpon has an overwhelmingly large number of categories. I use SU frequently for several months now and still haven't used most of them. I do not stumble SEO stuff only so I tried plenty.
In this short post I want to advise SEOs and search or social media marketers on which categories they can submit their posts to and why.
The 7 best fitting cats ;-) are:
- Marketing
- Business
- Writing
- Weblogs (Blogs)
- Search
- Web development
- Internet
Now this might seem obvious but there are certain aspects of these you should take into account.
SU works like a TV set. If you serve SEO on the discovery channel or at CNN people will frown upon you.
If you use "Marketing" you will get significantly less traffic while you seldom will be bashed and thumbed down because you will reach the same audience you meet at Sphinn. So if the post is SEO speak strictly put it in here. Remember that thumbs down mean no traffic if you get too many of them.
A post like "Why Google is So Important for Small Business" could fit in "Business", but try to write for a wider audience. Still: Not the biggest traffic here.
"Writing": Copyblogger posts please insert here. ;-) Remember, also people interested in writing books read it.
4 is self-evident isn't it? Do not overuse it though: Just because you write about SEO in a blog does not mean it fits in "Weblogs". Good for meta-blogging though.
You can use "Search" if you write about SEO from a less webmaster or marketer oriented perspective I think. Here the audience is a little larger than in "Writing" and "Marketing", but there are less stumblers than in "Weblogs".
A post about ten ways to tweak your website to make it more suitable for spiders fits in "Web development". You can get quite a big audience here.
Now 7, "Internet" is the king of the categories that SEO or rather SMO fits in.
Now beware though, people will hate you if you get too popular here. You may get thousands of visitors but also get so many thumbs down that you won't go anywhere but SEO hate hell's kitchen. Ask yourself before posting: Is my post really relevant for the Internet as a whole? If not make it relevant for it or use a more specific category, especially if you are new at StumbleUpon.
Happy stumbling!
I recently started using stumble upon about 3 days ago. Yesterday I got 50 new visitors. Is this progress?
excellent post. In my stumbleupon series I will be adding a whole section about properly submitting an article to stumbleupon. Many people actually submit to the wrong category or they dont even realize they were supposed to pick a category =( This can hit the owner of the website hard, and give him a lot of hate mail
Well written article Tad, I have yet to learn how the categories work in SU. Thanks for shedding some light!
What a great post, Tad!! It’s funny, I am a big time user and lover of StumbleUpon, but I never really thought about the categories like that. Thank you for explaining a little bit about why you would or WOULDN’T chose certain categories. It makes complete sense how you described your reasoning…. I will think about my choices a bit more next time I am stumbling and need to chose a category. :)
Great post!!
Shana
Thanks for posting that – I’ve been thinking a lot about SU categories. I tend to think that Web development and Graphic design categories can generate a great buzz (though people their love to criticize and thumb down). The good point about these categories is that people tend to review (not just thumb) it and thus spread the word. I did write a piece ‘for them’ (my ‘color’ post) and the response was just great.
Thanks guys and gals. Feel free to suggest what should be next in SEO 2.0 basics!
Excellent post
Thanks Tad,
I would love to read an analysis from you on other SU categories
[...] Just posting on a social news site is one issue to consider. Another extremely important side of the story is where to post your piece of news or article. Choosing the right category for a story means getting it through those actually interested in reading it. SEO 2.0 further explains how to work with categories on StumbleUpon. [...]
Thanks for sharing the information how to use StumbleUpon in a succesful way! Looking forward to more of this kind of posts!
[...] not everybody agrees on.The fitting categoriesI already made you aware that it is very important to submit a post to the fitting category. As tags and categories are mixed on StumbleUpon you can submit to several fitting categories by [...]
[...] The Importance of StumbleUpon categories. [...]
thanks for sharing information of stumble upon.
Very good post on SU. I m using SU from 3 months but still not used to it bcoz I don’t know how to use it actually.
If u can more elaborate this post it will be nice help..