Social Shopping & Traffic/Ranking

[eCopt]

Note: It is not a good idea to spam social networks and I do not recommend abusing the strategies discussed in this post! Instead, submit useful informational product descriptions, reviews and links to items you would actually buy.

Social Shopping & Impacts of Traffic / SE Rankings

The question that led to this small experiment and the discovery of some interesting things... How do social shopping networks impact traffic and search engine rankings?

The social shopping site I used for the experiment ... http://www.thisnext.com

Creating a list to post and tag related items ...

Most online catalogs are seperated into categories or sections with items that are related. Similarly, you can create lists (or categories) on thisnext to post items from your own or your clients online catalogs. Things to keep in mind while creating a list include catchy titles, use keywords in title, be descriptive, take time to write a quality review, tag your list using keywords and words from the title.

Lists create context for product recommendations. Lists help people understand what was on your mind when you recommended a product and how you use it. Lists can be about:

• Activities
• A single type of product
• A group of products you use at once
• A bunch of things you like
• Things that support a cause in which you believe
• Anything. Surprise us

To make a list navigate to your profile using the My Stuff link located on the site menu. Then click on the Lists tab followed by Add a new list.

Adding related items to a list ...

Once a list is created adding items is easy. Just enter the url of the item you wish to recommend, write a short catchy review about the item and tag the item using descriptive keywords. Remember to give credit back to the site you link to by filling in the [via] box and anchor text. Once you are done, add the item to the list you created for those types of items.

The results ...

I tested a bunce of different terms, so I will show you a small example of many. The url of the site is qualitysilks.com and the url of the shopping site is thisnext.com.

You can look at the date the item was posted on thisnext to see a possible timeline of results. In addition to rankings, they sent a bunch of visitors (no confirmed conversions to sales, but still about 20-50 uniques a day for this site).

silk bromeliads

artificial bromeliads

silk orchids

artificial orchids

silk floor plants

artificial floor plants

I used the first few categories and subcategories in the experiment and as you can see the results are pretty decent. Now I am not saying this strategy will make you millions, or even make you one sale, but it certaily helps get the word out about some of your most popular items.

So post items to social shopping sites like thisnext, stylehive, and shopwiki!

[dazzlindonna]

Thanks, ecopt. This is definitely a strategy I haven't played with yet. Good stuff to know.

[eCopt]

Yeah, this has been fun to play with. I am trying out other sites too so I will try and post any other interesting findings along the way.

Most of the SMO related info is about posting to Digg, Flickr, wiki's and tech related sites or talks mostly about blog promotion in these respects so I thought others might be interested in knowing it works pretty well for sites other than blogs and doesnt have to be strictly tech related.

This tid bit talks about using stylehive, but due to the lack of search engine friendliness I opted out on that one for my tests.

The key thing to remember is not to abuse the rules of whichever social site you post to, they do watch for it and they do frown upon some types of self promotion.

[seo-john]

thanks for that. good stuff.