Search our Site:

The growing significance of Web 2.0 and Community-Based websites in website promotion

The exponential growth of Web 2.

The exponential growth of Web 2.0, Community-based and Social Networking sites and their associated operations targeting high audience volumes has opened an interesting new channel for promotion of your website, but submission of relevant content from your site can sometimes produce surprising results.

Assuming the basic tenets of SEO are followed, ie your site is relevant and on-topic, can be categorized, is user friendly and holds the users interest, these encyclopedic sites can be a useful source of relevant site traffic from users who are more than happy to pigeonhole themselves into convenient categories, often filling out foot-long profiles for the privilege of participating and meeting people with similar interests. Being moderated and used by humans, however, you may find traffic to your site coming from unexpected sources, as users tag your site with labels you may not have thought of. Some analysis of the links to your site from referrers such as Digg, del.icio.us, reddit etc. can be a Garden of Eden of new ideas, because they come from real users and reflect the way they view your site content, rather than the way you want them to view it. Careful analysis of how real users tag your content can help you in (at least) two ways - firstly as a dynamic, evolving Thesaurus, providing you with a constantly rejuvenating crop of free-association keywords to promote and pepper your site with, and secondly as an honest wake-up call that perhaps your articles are straying off-topic. A little reflection on this over time can help you hone your content and may in some cases open new avenues of promotion, and its all free, and provided by your users!

Cross-pollination of tags and labels

Users of Community-based sites can often be somewhat insular, and once they have found a niche on one particular site may tend to focus their efforts on that site to the exclusion of others. This can mean that users of one site develop their own specific jargon over time, and terms which are relevant but rarely used on one site are commonplace on another. By nurturing and sowing these 'seeds' and using them in your site (even to the point of word substitution if this is appropriate), you can open up less-traversed paths (excuse the tenuous garden analogy), perhaps to fertile new territory. Simply adopting some of the language of your users can be enough to inure you into their group, much as a gardener who takes the time to learn the taxonomy of her favorite plant family gains an insight into the relationships and subtle variations in the various strains of the plant unattainable by any other means.

So make the time to take a stroll through your Google Analytics backyard from time to time, even if its not your specialist area - it can be a refreshing and insightful journey. Amongst the weeds and wildflowers you may well find a Narcissus papyraceus (White lily) or Hymenocallis liriosme (Texan Spider Lily) you never knew you had!