Social media sites and search engines

[henk]

Hello,
After being hit by Panda I have been looking at social media as a way to promote my sites. I Twitter ( or should I say I Twit? ), I Pin, I Stumble etc. I start to get a good few visitors now, especially from Stumbleupon. One of my sites got over 3000 visitors in the last 30 days, just from Stumbleupon. If these visitors would have come from search engines, I would have made at least 20 sales, now I made none. The same with Pinterest. I start to get visitors, but no sales. I would like to know of this activity with these social media sites, would, after a while, raise my sites in the search results. Is there link juice coming from these social media sites? In my Google web master account I only see a few links from Twitter.

[SENtelligence]

Social media promotion is a whole different story. In order to attract the right traffic to your site, you should develop the right kind of following (it's best not to buy followers) and provide links to posts or deals that would be interesting to them (for a change, you can tweet or post about something fun, inspirational, etc.).

To attract those followers, you can offer them a reward (a prize or a discount) that can be unlocked only if they like you on Facebook, for example.

It's also important to post at peak times, there was an interesting research by KISS metrics
regarding this.

[stuartthomas]

I think you should do continue social media marketing and besides you should have to micro blogging and guest blogging and RSS feed directory submission .

[imvain2]

I would like to comment on the different mind sets of visitors from the various types of sites.

Search Engines
People coming to your website are usually actively searching for your company, service or product. Therefor they are more likely in the buying mind set , some also maybe in researching mode. However, in this case you have someone who is actively searching for what you offer.

Stumble Upon
Although a way to generate traffic, these visitors are not normally in the buying mind set. You should remember these visitors "accidentally stumbled upon" your site. Sure, your site came up because it matches some of their interests in their profile. However, these visitors aren't typically at your website because they have shown an interest in purchasing, just shown in interest in the category of product or service that you fall into.

[claybutler]

Social media does factor into your SERPs. I've experimented with it and a bunch of FB likes and user activity can most definitely boost your rankings for the related keywords. Now converting that traffic is a different story. I don't think social media traffic will ever convert as well as organic SERPs. The main difference is intent and personal investment. When someone clicks on a social media link it's more likely that person clicking is just curious. It's take little effort, the emotional involvement is nearly zero, and chances are the person was not even really thinking about the subject until they just stumbled upon the link. But when someone types in a keyword, they are in a diffent state of mind. They are making an investment. They are searching for something specific and are seeking a specif outcome. That's a big difference.

[jhannawin]

As far as conversions go, the clue is in the name, Stumbleupon. You 'stumble upon' stuff that might be interesting, you 'search' for stuff you want to buy. So a visitor from a social media sourced visitor will almost certainly need many, many more visits to your site before they buy.

[PhilipDunn]

as far as your question about Twitter. From what I've read, there is no link juice passed through Twitter. Though ask.com doesn't honor no follow attributes, so you could pick up some through there..

[claybutler]

as far as your question about Twitter. From what I've read, there is no link juice passed through Twitter. Though ask.com doesn't honor no follow attributes, so you could pick up some through there..

With social media signals "no follow" is not a factor as all social media is no follow by default. But I've seen first had the power of social media signals. I predict than in a couple more years Google will largely depreciate the "no follow" attribute as it almost means nothing now. After all, they made up the attribute anyway.

[Milo]

I think social media is a great source for visitors, but do find they are largely "lazy" visitors that don't convert often and more than likely click to your site through curiosity, rather than intent to convert. Also, very dependant on your product, but YES, I believe and have seen social media helping with ranking, albeit in the small way. We have become more active on FB on one of my sites and I've climbed up a few notches. Sales are not there yet, but thats marketing. Not always getting sales, but promoting a site is not a bad thing. Saying all this, we're working harder and focusing more on our website adding fresh content and new products all the time. We don't use all the social sites out there as we're a small team and just don't have the time to do it all. i also don't really believe they're all that good for business, but again, its dependant on your "product". We focus mainly on FB.

As always, focus on your own site rather and use social media as a complimentary addition to your SEO or advertising/promotion. Very much like you would a blog. Nothing lasts forever, but your website should

[PhilipDunn]

I'd like to ask how is it that social media can affect serps. Are you saying the additional traffic causes a rise in serps?