This is a guest post by Nabeel, if you like to write for Shoutmeloud, do read Shoutmeloud revenue sharing program.
This post is my personal opinion on Stumble-Upon traffic and I would love to get your opinion on, if Stumble traffic is good for a blog or bad?
Here is something to think about with Stumbleupon. A lot of bloggers use it, including me. But here is one thing which I’ve noticed after using Stumble upon to drive traffic to my blog: a higher bounce rate.
This could affect your SEO on the long run. How?
Assuming you are using google analytics, and assuming google factors things like visitor time and bounce rate, you could be setting yourself up for trouble. If someone is “stumbling” along, they might be going through 10-15 sites a minute, until something catches your eye. What does that mean for you? It means they only stay on your site for 5-10 seconds. And this is logged in your stats.
Many SEOs theorize that google factors in bounce rate and page time into your ranking. If they see a high bounce rate, and see that people only stay on your page for 10 seconds, they make an assumption that your site is bad, irrelevant or dangerous. By stumbling your own pages, you may be inviting this type of traffic, and might suffer a penalty in google.
I haven’t done a lot of extensive testing on this, but this is a theory I have, and I consider this. I personally don’t like Stumbleupon traffic for this reason.
What do you think, is stumble upon traffic worth for your blog and if yes, how ?
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
I believe that Google has indicated that they will start to take bounce rate into consideration for search but not from outside sources such as StumbleUpon.
Stumble statistics are not relevant when it comes to Google’s algorithm since they are two completely separate entities.
Yeah ! You are right . I completely agree with you . And this traffic getting trick is called ‘immoral traffic getting trick’
Ya i agree with your point…
same thing happening with Entrecard Also..
But one thing if you we a very good blog and content visitors will stay in our blog…. so we must also accept our fault ..
what you say ???
I agree with you that the visitors from stumbler only stays for 5-10 sec. The avg. time on my site by stumble users is 13 sec. but the bounce rate of stumble users is only 7% which is good. So how can you say that it effects bounce rate??
Really it’s bad? Thnak god I have share any post in that site. hehe…
i m not agree with you . if you properly analysis the so many site who are using stumbleupon and digg for traffic. example hongkiat.com one of the popular design blog who receive 100000 to 120000 visitor daily . but there Average Visit Length is 16 seconds only . if u properly analysis the site Average Visit Length very low and bounce rate very high.. but no effect on there SEO strategy. google provide them daily 100000 visitor. from last 6 month i m working on there site, try to analysis how they successes to achieved daily 100000 page views. day by day there SEO strategy will be improved and bounce rate and Average Visit Length lowered down.
conclusion : I don’t think so stumble upon and Digg effect harmful to u r SEO strategy.. but it will harmful for Adsense enabled site . it will lower down your eCPM rate and ROI%…. here is proof what i m saying to you …
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s46hongkiat
I can’t believe that google doesn’t know that SU traffic has high bounce rate.
yet it can intelligenty make out who is using black hat link building.
Sorry, I don’t mean to offend, but I think this is your personal opnion (without proper research)
I would like to dis-agree with your opinion.
I have been using Stumble Upon for more than one year and found no hit on SEO. In fact for sometime, the SU traffic was more than Google, but still there were no hit on SEO. From the Google Analytics, I could see that Goolge SEO was growing in a constatant manner ( thought the rate of increase is not so high).
SU, Digg, Twitter etc., all these sites might have high bounce rate. But Google is brilliant enough to make decision (again this is my opinion which is proved from Analytics).
In fact it may have an impact on Alexa ranking as the bounce rate is one of the key factor to decide the ranking.
Bounce rate has always been one of the important criteria in the eyes of Google. Stumble upon is more or less out of the scene. I have seen many of the sites taken over by Yahoo going down the drain. Stumble Upon is not what it used to be.
Saturation, you say? Well not quite sure but Digg’s been stable throughout..
I don’t agree to you. To some point its right that you won’t be getting quality traffic from SU. Quality means here that SU visitrs aren’t going to give you anything in terms of monetary and staying long on your site. But how can Google count it as a -ve point. Had this been the case, SU formula wud have collapsed till now. The popularity of SU shows that every site-owner loves SU and so does google. Even more thumbe up on SU, I think more love from Google too.
What you say?
Atul
More the bounce rate higher will be the CTR
I beg to disagree. The search engine especially the big G is getting smarter. It will consider bounce rates only from organic traffic, not like that of referral traffic. That’s still a theory, though. Still no one knows. The best thing we can do is just to write good articles for our respective targeted readers. In this way, you have a great chance SU users will really have to stumble on your blog.
I dont think that Google use analytics data for your PR. And if you think they are then use another web-traffic analyzer. Stumbleupon is a good tool for webmasters that we can`t afford to ignore :p
I tend to disagree that SU is bad for the health of your blog. The traffic SU drives to your site certainly is not going to be the most attentive or easily convertible but, isn’t any conversion from free traffic a win in the long run? Especially for those bloggers just trying to get their blog seen for the first time. SU definitely has a huge potential there.
The key to stumble is to take it for what it is – a shotgun blast of traffic. It’s not targeted and certainly suffers from ADD so you’ll have a high bounce rate and low CTR but, the people you do get may not have found your site without it.
This is a very valid point John. I agree but every coin has two faces this is a pretty debatable issue. Here all I was talking about the negative effects of stumble upon & you have mentioned two other effects of bounce rate & low CTR.
I would have to disagree with you as well on some of the posters. Google will not penalize you for outside sources like StumbleUpon for your pagerank. The algorithm on Google takes account for sites like SU.
I totally agree with your concept. I think StumbleUpon visitors are not “genuine” visitors,staying on for just a few seconds doesnt help a bloggers cause!!!
Well…. If I were Google, I’d only look at the bounce rate generated by users finding my website through the SERPs. I think that’s exactly what they do, considering that it’s the only thing they should be concerned with.
Bounce rate for blogs are at 80% on average. This is also factored in. You’re lucky if you have 60% or lower.