EU Commissioner Hints at YouTube Probe After Google Investigation

Europe's competition commissioner said he could investigate Google's YouTube if he saw any attempt by the company to abuse its dominant position in online video searching.

How Bing Chooses Your Webpage Titles

A new blog post from Bing explains how they choose the titles for webpages, and why they might replace the one you've selected with something entirely different.

5 Useful Facts About StumbleUpon Traffic

StumbleUpon may have been around for awhile, but marketers have been mixed in their advice about using it. As far as social media tools go, it is much different than most. Rather than allowing for interaction, it is used as a discovery tool. You introduce people to your website through this randomizer, increasing the chances of your users finding you based on how many pages you have to share.

***Take part in the thread: Is SstumbleUpon any good for building traffic to my site?

They also have a paid advertising program. StumbleUpon Paid Discovery service links people directly to your pages without any clicks-through from ads. It is supposed to remove the most difficult step, as so many users are jaded about following real advertisements thanks to an increase in shady pop-ups and sidebar ads.

How StumbleUpon Paid Discovery Works

Using the Paid Discovery tool is simple enough. You sign up and then pay a rate per Stumble, so you are only paying for the people who see your link. There is a base pay, and then you add ala cart based on specifications.

For example, the base Stumble is $0.10 each. Adding things like location and age targeting are between $0.02 and $0.06 each, upping the price of each Stumble to as much as $0.35 a piece.

What you are ultimately paying for is traffic that comes directly from StumbleUpon. But is it worth it? Here are five facts about StumbleUpon traffic that you can use to decide if it is the right tool for your campaign.

1. SU Is Still a Social Platform: Don’t make the mistake of assuming just because it is a traffic driver that StumbleUpon is just another marketing tool. It is still a social platform, and one that is increasing its user base by the month. People like a content driven social network, as it provides a unique formula that takes it out of the usual micro or connecting spheres (think Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn). It is more comfortable among the category of Pinterest and YouTube, as it is there to push traffic through content itself, and not engagement. While you have to change your tactics of interacting, you still have to look at it through the same lens. For example, sharing your own content is fine. But it is not likely to get you a large following on its own. Instead, you have to engage socially by sharing third party content relevant to the interests of your target demographic. This will ultimately increase the numbers of users who regularly return to your stumbles, and so your site.


2. Mint Has 180,000 Unique Visits From SU Alone: In probably its most enticing case study, Mint is a primary success for StumbleUpon. The financial site itself stated that SU was the most effective and cost-efficient form of advertising they had used, including an unnamed social network (ahem, Facebook) they had used for PPC. That number isn’t in total, it is per month. They managed to both increase traffic on a consistent monthly basis that continues today, while increasing their user demographic to include the elusive 18: 25 women category they had wanted to more strongly influence into using their product.


3. Only a Percentage Of Traffic Will Be Paid: Looking at the Mint example again, all of the primary traffic came from free campaigns. Only 44% came from Paid Discovery. An additional 20% came from shared Paid Stumbles, so when they said it was cost efficient, that was obviously very much the case. SU’s other case study, the Wisconsin Milk Board, saw an addition 60% traffic increase from Paid Stumbles. So while you use Paid Discovery to increase your traffic boosts, there is evidence to suggest a fair amount of what you see will come from free Stumbles.


4. Good Content Provides Increasing Traffic Over Time: Nicholas Tart of Income Diary presented an interesting look into his own use of StumbleUpon. He said that he had submitted a single, high quality piece of content that was “content StumbleUpon users like”, and measured the results. On that single piece of content, he got an astonishing 158,000 Stumbles over time. Most of this started to happen five months after it was initially submitted, which teaches an important lesson: timing is different for SU campaigns. Where with other social networks you would hope to see a quick increase in shares, and possible viral status once in a blue moon, SU is a more patient form of marketing. It has to be planted and allowed to grow. Be sure to check out Tart’s article for some interesting advice on improving your results. Here’s also a very actionable article on getting traffic from StumbleUpon (supported by my own case study).


5. SU Might Be The Best Hidden Treasure On The Social Web: Check out this post by Shareaholic. In the beginning of 2014, SU saw a 30% increase in referrals. In fact, it saw the highest increase of all of the social networks, along with Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+. Sites like Twitter, Youtube, Reddit and LinkedIn saw a fall in referral rate. Granted, the numbers for SU could be because marketers started to really catch on to the platform’s potential in the last two quarters of 2013. But it doesn’t change the potential seen in those gains. StumbleUpon might be the best hidden treasure on the social web, and really worth a shot if you are failing to see the traffic or influence you hoped on more saturated, less content focused social networks,

Conclusion

Nowadays StumbleUpon may not be the most talked about social tool out there. But it is one of the most promising, and it is growing by the day. The statistics speak for themselves, and seeing the progress made by sites like Mint using it is nothing short of inspiring.

If you are looking for a traffic driver that will be based more on content than on links, you might want to try it out. Less focused on building through clicks-through, you can see how it might be more appealing to the average social user. Plus, the competition is less fierce, thanks to its status as being under the radar.

Have you used StumbleUpon for marketing? How did it go? Let us know in the comments!

The post 5 Useful Facts About StumbleUpon Traffic appeared first on SEO Chat.

The 10 Best Ways to Generate Traffic Without Google

Rather than worry about losing or never having Google organic search traffic, plan for it. You can't rely on a single traffic source for business. You need multiple streams of traffic as insurance against the inevitable search algorithm changes.

5 Boring Companies With a Fascinating Social Strategy

Some "boring" companies have proved that even the boring can become fascinating when smart people are at the helm. Here are five examples of how unsexy companies take full advantage of social media with great social strategy.

Content Conundrum: The Vanity vs. Performance Dilemma

The rise of vanity metrics often distracts content authors from the true meaning and value of publishing great content. You shouldn't create content based on vanity metrics. The best content balances firm audience, personal, and business objectives.

Link Building for Gaming Companies

Developing links for gaming companies is a lot of fun. But it's an extremely competitive area. Here's how to get great links from loads of content possibilities, social media, and an exceptionally passionate, loyal, and very Internet-savvy audience.

Google Payday Loan Algo Punishes Spammy Search Terms, Except On Youtube

Recently I put together an article about press release sites taking a huge hit in search rankings, presumably due to the “payday loan” algorithm which is supposed to target highly spammed keywords and sites using spammy techniques.

I spoke to an employee of a press release distribution company (who both will remain nameless) and they told me that the initial punishment occurred over the keyword “garcinia cambogia”, a keyword that gets more than 800,000 searches per month according to Semrush.

As I continued to write I decided to do a search for that keyword and see who the new results were. To my surprise I found a short YouTube video ranking near the bottom of page 1. After doing some research on the video I examined its backlink profile and came to the conclusion that the site was ranking purely on the strength of pure spam.

This discovery got me thinking that perhaps YouTube, a Google owned property might be “protected” from such actions. After all the more traffic their videos receive, the more revenue they can generate through ads.

I decided to check out some other keywords to see if my theory held true in another niche. After some consideration I decided to focus on a local seo keyword, such as “city name seo”. I wanted a term that would have value and a term that would have some good search volume.

The keyword I settled on has roughly 500 searches per month for its city name “seo” and could potentially generate a few hundred more visits by ranking for other variations of this same keyword.

Lo and behold I was able to find a YouTube video ranking in the 6th position for this keyword.

Well, if it is ranking in the top 10 and Google is attacking spammy backlinks, then this must be a squeaky clean white hat video correct?

Think again!

The video has 65 views yet it has 1700 backlinks from almost 300 domains. How does that happen? How can only 65 people viewed the video yet 1700 links been created for said video? Perhaps the links are quality, so let’s take a peek!

After checking the backlink profile on Majectic SEO most of the links are coming via blog comments. Wait a minute, blog comments can be white hat right?

Of course they can but when the anchor text is either exact match or some variation of the main keyword then it screams spam. Don’t take my word for it, take a look yourself!

Notice that this page has been spammed to death and has some unsavory keywords on the same page as the “seo” keyword. I have marked out most information since I just want to point out the facts but do not want to “out” the video in question.

I think it is pretty clear that the site is simply using YouTube as a “host” to spam and rank.

In light of how Google has handled some news sites and the press release distribution sites I find it rather interesting that they are punishing these domains in the name of “search quality” yet their very own property can be used to rank for some of these keywords using the shadiest of tactics with no ill effects?

What are your thoughts?

The post Google Payday Loan Algo Punishes Spammy Search Terms, Except On Youtube appeared first on SEO Chat.

Google Reveals 4 Things You Need to Know About Quality Score

Google has published a whitepaper called "Settling the Quality Score" and updated the 5-year-old Hal Varian-AdWords Quality Score video. While the new content is mostly a re-hash of old stuff, they do disclose a few new insights about Quality Score.