Yesterday over at Search Engine Roundtable the question was posed, "Are Links from StumbleUpon Valuable?"

Anecdotally, I’d have to answer yes.

StumbleUpon is a social networking tool that adds a toolbar to your browser. You tell SU what you’re interested in, click the button, and awaaaaay you go! SU then takes you to a page that fits that category. I’ve use SU to find hundreds of quality Web sites on Web design, coding and video games that I might not have found otherwise. (Your topics may vary.)

You can vote up or down (using the toolbar) on any Web page you visit, whether SU took you there or not. If you vote on a new Web page not in SU’s database you can write up a review and that site becomes your "find." As other people stumble, that page will get served up to them if they have related interests.

But back to our story….

We recently launched a Web site that I was especially proud of, and I submitted it to SU in the category of "fly fishing." I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew search engine traffic wouldn’t happen immediately, so I figured we had nothing to learn. (Plus, seriously, the site rocked and I figured it would be an incredible resource to fly fishing enthusiasts and anyone planning on a fly fishing trip to Alaska.)

Well, in the two weeks since it launched, over 2,100 visits have come from StumbleUpon! Now, I’ve used SU before on a couple of sites and haven’t had quite this response. It could be because the fly fishing topic is narrow so there are less sites in the SU database to serve up, or it could be because the site was well-received. (I’ve never gotten as many positive reviews to a site I’ve submitted in the past.)

I do believe that the quality of this site (great photos, oodles of content, run times, detailed information on Alaskan fly fishing by fish, season and region, etc.) was the deciding factor. I wouldn’t recommend putting a small or mediocre site up to SU and expecting great things.

However, if you have a Web site with great content or a unique perspective, SU could deliver a lot of targeted traffic to your site…visitors interested in your topic.

Two caveats from Search Engine Roundtable:

• One person mentioned he was banned for submitting only and all of his own pages; the vast majority of pages I’ve submitted have nothing to do with flyte.
• All StumbleUpon links are "nofollow", which means they carry no link juice. However, if an influential blogger "stumbles upon" you, she might write up a great review and link to you.

If you’d like to learn more about StumbleUpon and social media sites, there are (currently) three seats left for our seminar, Social Media 101: Do I Really Need a Facebook Page?, here in Portland, Wednesday, May 7th. Learn more and register online.

Rich Brooks
Stumbler

As I was putting together notes for my Social Media 101: Do I Really Need a Facebook Page? seminar, I happily read Twitter: Why it Should Matter to You by friend/fellow Web marketer Shama Hyder.

Twitter is a social networking tool that I’ve been slowly warming up to…slowly overcoming my initial though that it’s the biggest drain on worker productivity since minesweeper.

Shama lists a number of reasons why you should be on Twitter, but the most fascinating is that she says that 20% of her Web site traffic comes from Twitter! She doesn’t mention how much of this traffic converts, but maybe that’s not the goal right now.

If you’d like to check out my Twitter page and follow me, please do! Who knows, maybe I’ll follow you right back!

BTW, there’s only a few spots left for the social media seminar, so register now!

Rich Brooks
Twitterer