Quality vs Bounce Rate?

As you can see, I have plastered stumbleupon icons and messages along my blog. This is rather weird for some, as they think that stumbleupon does not bring ‘quality’ traffic to your site or blog. I definitely beg to differ.
I signed up with stumbleupon right from the beginning of my blogging (which mind you, it was only about 3-4 weeks ago, and I already have under 400k alexa) and have been very pleased with the traffic hits that I have been receiving.

What is Stumbleupon?

Stumbleupon is a social network/community that allows not only to connect people with others that share the same interests, but to connect people to websites which are not yet popular or have yet to become famous. This is done easily with a toolbar that can be downloaded from the website (http://www.stumbleupon.com).

Not to really bore you with the details as I am sure that many webmasters have heard of stumbleupon and have passed it up because they think the bounce-rate is bad. Its not the greatest thing in the world, but only 30% of my stumbleupon viewers actually leave the site in their first view (why? probably because I often do some stumble-exchanges on certain forums - and that requires the other person to only log in once and stumble then leave - so I’d have to say that it is rather an exaggerated remark). Stumble traffic, in my opinion, has a certain type of quality that will just keep going if you just take the time to stumble.

Quality Traffic?

It would depend on how well your site is presented, but ‘organic’ or referral stumbleupon traffic, i’d have to say, is quite great for any blog. I have stumbled over 1000 pages on my account and I am slowly beginning to get “followers”. Stumbleupon is a beneficial service which is often overlooked as crap quality traffic, thinking that most people will just leave the site when they feel like it. Well, if you have a bad quality MFA (Made-For-Adsense) site with no content, chances are they wont want to stay (but then again, who would?)

How do you know?

I am on a forum right now (forums.digitalpoint.com). I often ask people to review my site and rate pages and even stumble pages directly from the forum if they like it. Mind you, I get a lot of traffic from digitalpoint. Want to know something funny? though I get a couple of hundred impressions a day (if not more) from digital point forums, I get MORE impressions from stumbleupon. According to my Google Analytics, I have been gaining (a rather chaotic) intake of impressions from stumble upon, daily.

When I stumble something from my blog I usually get 100-200 people who come and visit from stumbleupon. (which mind you, may not be much - but its still an extra 200 people for pressing 1 button). When I undergo a few stumble exchanges (which often, I’d say, only 20 people stumble on average), I end up getting an intake of anywhere between 300-400 people). What does this mean? People like it when I stumble :).

The Secret

Get friends who are interested in your keywords. Casually drop them a line and add them. Talk to people. Ask them how they think your site is. If someone stumbled a previous topic, ask them about a new one. If you have not done so already, check out DigitalPoint. There is a massive and endless scattering of FREE information at your fingertips. Check out the freebies section where you can often find deals on certain scripts or even some free stumbles ;).

The Experiment

I did a bit of an experiment at the beginning of the year. Not many people noticed as I only held it for an hour. What I did was I created a poll which was seen on the top of every page on my blog. I then did two things. I stumbled any new pages that havent previously been stumbled and looked for reviews and waited for traffic from digitalpoint. I did a stumble exchange and then I just waited some more. (yes, we all like waiting - *watches paint dry*). I had more people vote saying that they were from stumbleupon than digitalpoint. Some people came from mybloglog (which was rather surprising, as I thought it was just as bad as blogcatalog, but I was wrong - mybloglog definitely proved me wrong). 25 people VOTED saying they were from stumble, and 15 people voted from digitalpoint.

My single-page bounce rate is lower from my stumble traffic than any other site (aside from maybe organic google traffic). What does this mean? Stumbleupon can have quality referral traffic.

Conclusion:

Get off your butt and get a stumbleupon account, then be nice to me for telling you by stumbling and giving positive reviews to all my posts. I am your master. Muahaha.

No really, stumbleupon traffic can be very quality traffic if your careful and try to gain a couple of friends out of it, too. Noting that I get the majority of my increasing daily traffic from stumbleupon, I must ALSO note that 53% of my visitors have bookmarked the site (according to awstats). That is my 5-10 minute rant. Thank you!

Good day!