Friends for Traffic and SEO!
Friends and Web traffic? The two might seem mutually exclusive. Friends are for sharing a relaxed drink, or some active adventure. Web traffic is strictly business and not for pestering friends with.
Actually, we are speaking of virtual friends that you acquire at social networking sites. For that matter, even real friends can help you if they are themselves writing blogs and Web pages. However, virtual friends are already on the Web and can typically offer much more. Let us focus on them.
How Can Friends Help You with Traffic and Links?
Being denizens of the Web world, your virtual friends are likely to write blogs, or put up websites. If they write about you on their blogs or web pages, people can come visiting through the links to your site these friends provide. And of course, they can vote for your article at the social bookmark site itself.
The issue is how to acquire friends and how to leverage their potential in generating Web traffic and providing links to your website. At the very start, let us add a word of caution. Select your networking site carefully. Pure “social” networking sites are mainly for social communications. Attempts at business promotion might lose friends, not win them.
There are networking sites like LinkedIn that are meant for business networking. Join such networks. At other networking sites, find and join the particular groups that discuss business.
How Do You Get Friends?
To be worthwhile, you have to acquire many friends, and establish helpful relationships with them. How do you manage this preliminary step?
Here are some tips:
- Use the site tools to import contacts from your email address books at Yahoo, MSN, Google and AOL. When you click the Import Contacts button, the site will ask you for the relevant mail username and password. If you type these in correctly for the concerned mail account, i.e. Yahoo etc, the tool will review all the email addresses in your address book, and tell you who among them are already registered in the network. You can then send them invitations to connect with you at the network, i.e. to become your friend.
- You can invite those who are not already members of the network site to become members, and become your friends.
- The networking sites also help you find members who have been with you at your school, or workplaces or other associations. You can then invite them to become your friends at the network.
- The network sites typically allow you to see the friends of your friends. If you go through these lists, you might find people whom you know, and can get connected with them through your friends.
- You can also check for friends by going through the members of groups that discusses things you are interested in. Join the group and connect with these friends.
- Take active part in the group discussions by commenting on other people’s posts, making your own posts and dropping notes. You can then invite others to become your friend and others might invite you similarly.
You should soon cultivate a lot of friends, and can explore the possibility of establishing mutually helpful relationships with them. They can write about you in their blogs, provide links to your site, even interview you and publish the interview. You can return the favor in some way.
For the greatest effectiveness, attend to certain things:
- Focus on one or two networking sites, preferably business networking sites. Network effectively at these sites.
- When you invite people to connect with you, write personal messages pointing out your relationship, e.g. same school at about the same time. Don’t use the standard impersonally message template provided by the site itself.
- Write interesting posts, comments, notes and other communications instead of blatantly self-serving ones.
If you work at it consistently and sensibly, you could cultivate numerous friends at social networking sites. You would then be able to explore the possibility of establishing business relationships with them and seek their help in getting traffic and links to your website.
