StumbleUpon- What is it?

Have you heard of StumbleUpon?  I think I'd heard the term, or read about it somewhere, maybe two times before yesterday.  Here at Fresh Look Creative, we're gearing up to offer our clients some more intricate services in the way of Social Media Management, SEO Consultation & Execution, etc.  So I've been doing a lot of research about different online tools.  Yesterday, I read an article regarding StumbleUpon.  I've pulled a lot of this information directly from Ian Lurie's article, and you can click the link above to read it in full.

What is StumbleUpon?

is half site, half toolbar. You create an account online, then download their toolbar. From then on, you can give sites you visit a 'thumbs up' or a 'thumbs down':

By clicking on the "Stumble!" button, StumbleUpon will direct you to sites it thinks you might like, according to the interests you indicated you have when you created your StumbleUpon page.  By using the like & dislike buttons, StumbleUpon learns what you do and don't like, and uses that information when you're Stumbling.

You can add friends, see the sites they like, and comment on the sites you stumble.  You also get your own page.  Be warned, however, that this is an EXTREMELY addictive tool!!  Download the tool bar and click the 'Stumble!' button.  I spent over an hour doing this because I couldn't wait to see where it would take me next!!

While links from StumbleUpon.com don't help with SEO, (in order to prevent spammers from overrunning the site) it CAN help generate traffic for your site.  If lots of people give a website or page a thumbs up in a short time period, the 'Stumble!' button will display that site more and more often. That generates a snowball effect: More folks see the site, more folks vote on it, it shows more frequently, it gets more traffic, and so on.

How StumbleUpon Builds Links

Some of the traffic generated will be high quality.  Now, I'm new to this, but check out how Ian's traffic grew in relation to his StumbleUpon activity (this section is taken directly from Ian's article):

March 19th, I started seeing a huge influx of StumbleUpon traffic. Within a few days I'd received nearly 7500 visits from toolbar users:

My Technorati links surged a few days later:

And my Yahoo! inlinks surged almost exactly 4 weeks later.

I checked against 12 other bursts of traffic from StumbleUpon over the last year. Same pattern: Surge in traffic, then surge in Technorati and Bloglines links immediately, and a surge in Yahoo! links within 4 weeks.

Because using StumbleUpon frequently can mean more links, you will have more success in the search engines and possibly a lot more folks talking about you.  IT only takes about 5 minutes to set it up, and it's well worth it.

Using StumbleUpon

1. Download the StumbleUpon toolbar

2. Stumble stuff you like about 10 minutes per day

3. 'Friend' people who share similar browsing interests.

4. Stumble your own stuff if you think it's worthy.

On that last note, do NOT try to spam StumbleUpon.  Don't ask 100 of your best friends to do it either.  The filters are set to catch this sort of thing, and you can find yourself banned.  Follow these steps and you'll be building some strong traffic and links.