Using Web 2.0 Sites to Drive Traffic
I became aquainted with web 2.0 sites after doing the 30 Day Challenge in August of last year. This tactic involves hosting content on sites that you do not own that rank well in the search engines and have the ability to generate traffic.
The Problem With Google
Search engines such as Google have the potential to drive a huge amount of traffic so everybody wants a slice of that. However the difficulty is that once you’re past the basic ‘on-page’ SEO tactics such as an optimised title, good use of keywords and so on, the rankings are affected mainly by the authority of the domain on which the content is hosted.
Recall that in my January stats I saw a significant increase in search traffic to this blog. I speculated that it may be due to the PR5 that it now has, or perhaps due to the age of the domain it is now out of the sandbox. Either way, my domain now has more authority in Google than it did when I first launched.
However consider the amount of work I needed to do to get to that position. Of course I expected this blog to be a lot of work but I created with the long term view in mind. But if you want to drive traffic without spending 6 months up front then raw Google traffic is not likely to work well for you.
What are Web 2.0 Sites?
Basically a site can be dubbed as ‘web 2.0′ when it offers the user the ability to interact with it rather than just be a passive observer. Blogging platforms such as Blogger & Wordpress are web 2.0. Social media sites like as StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter are all web 2.0. Sites will user driven content like YouTube and Flickr are web 2.0.
As you can see the content varies considerably and there are a multitude of different kinds of web 2.0 sites. The key ingredient to them is that they allow you to upload your content, whatever that may be.
The kinds of web 2.0 sites that can really drive traffic though are the ones that allow you to upload full pages of written content that stays around long term. Ignoring the blogging platforms for a moment, these include sites like Squidoo, HubPages and EzineArticles.
Web 2.0 allows the masses to own a piece of the Internet without needing to host content on their own domains. For a proper explanation see this article from Tim O’Reilly.
How Do Web 2.0 Sites Help with Traffic?
In a word or three - Google likes them! Heck, Google owns some of them now! These sites are massive, they have authority which means they rank very highly in Google, and probably other search engines too.
This has two primary benefits:
- Content from these sites gets indexed very quickly
- Content from these sites tends to rank highly
Compare that to a brand new domain that you just launched - Google hates you and you’ll have to wait a while before your content even gets indexed, let alone shows up in the search results.
However, if you use web 2.0 sites to host your content it will appear in Google very quickly and if you’ve done your SEO research properly you should also enjoy a good ranking and this is where the traffic comes from.
What Can You Do With Web 2.0?
Okay this could fill an entire book, well many in fact as there are a multitude of ebooks around covering just about every web 2.0 site there is! However for the context of this dicsussion I will talk about using web 2.0 sites to drive extra traffic to some external source.
In my case, I want to use these sites to promote my WordPress ebook. How do I do that? By writing an article about how money can be made using WordPress to build niche sites and within that article encourage people to read more about the topic by downloading my ebook.
If the article ranks well in the search engines then it will get traffic from Google which in turn should drive a portion of that traffic to the link that I promote within the article.
Web 2.0 Content v Your Own Domain
Here is where I think many people miss the point of web 2.0. They get all panicky about putting their content on an external site like Squidoo and say they’d much rather host it on their own domain where they have complete control over the page, earn 100% of the revenue and so on. However, I now see a very different potential for web 2.0 sites - simply to drive additional traffic to an existing site.
In my case, I already have a high PR, good authority blog on which to host my content and the download page for my WordPress book is hosted here. So far so good. The point is, that by tapping into sources such as Squidoo and all those other sites out there, I may be able to get traffic that I couldn’t otherwise.
Now as it turns out, this strategy may not be quite as effective for the promotion of my ebook as I had first thought but I’ll explain why that is in my next post when I discuss the technicalities of building these web 2.0 content pages.
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Josh Spaulding
February 7, 2008
Very good explanation of Web 2.0, Caroline. One thing you’re dead-on about, which isn’t exactly Web 2.0 specific, is this:
It’s too bad so many people make SEO out to be so much harder. That’s really all there is to it! Basic on-page optimization and authority (incoming links.)
The SE’s love Web 2.0 sites because people love Web 2.0 sites. People love them because they know their voice can be heard. This creates loads of frequently update, unique content and loads of incoming links from people who own sites/blogs and love them as well.
Great article, stumbled it.
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