Why should you save bandwidth? You’ve got enough of it haven’t you?
You should ask that question to someone who gets lot of traffic, especially from Digg/ SU etc. They’d immediately gulp down anything you suggest to save the bandwidth.

Recently, there have been server breakdowns with many bloggers because of the social media outburst. Many of them did nothing wrong but some ardent reader of their’s picked up one of the stories and submitted to Digg. The story went viral and made it to the top of the Digg’s most dugg pages. Unfortunately the blogger was running on a shared hosting platform and the server could not stand the immediate traffic burst that was created from Digg making it to go crash. The site went offline soon after the story was popular resulting in some bad reputation too.

Now this would happen only if you make it to the top of Digg, anyways it makes sense to save some bandwidth with some common, unharming tips right?
One of the things that eat up your bandwidth is images - when you upload images in wordpress it goes to the default directory - wp-admin/uploads
Now, when ever a story is accessed with the picture on it, file is being accessed and it doubles your bandwidth usage.

What you can do in this case is upload the images to flickr or any other image upload utility so that the image gets accessed from there and not your server.

Now, I know how hard it is to upload image to flickr while you are writing a post, it takes another 10 minutes of your time (unless you are using the upload function from the Flock browser).

So here is a wordpress plugin that will help you upload images to flickr just the way you do it on wordpress. Yes, while you are writing the post with no extra time lost.
Download the plugin here.

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Hey, have you ever checked out those SEO firms claims on the features page? I always make it a point to thoroughly go through all those points mentioned in those sites, particularly the “We do it all” segment.I mean clients too should go through this and let me tell you there are a few things by which you can easily mark out a fraud guy from genuine.

Recently, been to a popular SEO firms website who claimed to do “everything SEO”. Curious enough, I checked their features page to get an idea of what exactly dos they mean by saying “Everything SEO”.

Well, basically what the guys have done is, put in everything they could find as SEO and arrange them randomly in the features list.
One interesting feature list went something like below -

We do all SEO services.

• Search Engine Submissions
• Directories
• Link building Experts
• Google Pr Rank Increase solution
• Paid Inclusion solution
• Software Marketing
• Meta tags
• Title tags etc..

Brilliant isn’t it?
More than half of what’s said there is BS and is in no way related to SEO.

You see there is a common misconception in peoples mind about SEO. The reason is that many people give their own definitions of SEO and SO services. For instance take the elements discussed in the above list.

Search Engine Submissions - I’m assuming it means submitting your site to Google/Yahoo/MSN etc. Though it sounds interesting to a client who wants to get his post atop search engines, the real catch is that he is paying the SEO guys for doing nothing.

Search Engine Submissions are no longer valid. In the sense that there are smarter, assured and safer ways of getting indexed and there is no need for submitting to search engines. And even if you are keen on that, anyone can do it in five minutes. So what’s the point in paying someone USD 500 to submit our site to search engines?

And directories are so old my friend, nobody uses them except for spam and unacceptable content. Of course there are the great directories like BOTW and V7, but none of them carry any weightage nor can they help you earn search engine rankings. As a matter of fact, many of the directories are banned from Googles index.
And if you are keen on paying for directories, anyone can use the Yahoo directory. Who needs a “professional SEO” to show you how to?

And of course there is “Paid Inclusion solution”. I’m assuming it’s a SEM/paid marketing that the SEO guy is referring to. Now, wasn’t that called SEM and not SEO? If you are going to pay someone to get you “top ranks” (well, almost) then why do you need an SEO? Hire an SEM company in the first place, they’ll manage your funds properly.

So essentially, I find that many professional SEO guys are limited to doing things like directory submissions, meta tags and link exchanges. All of them makes no or little sense to SEO.

The real or toughest part of SEO is to think like the search engines and frame a strategical approach to take your site to the next level gaining it respect, authority and popularity. Everything else will follow.

The next google page rank update is round the corner. No no no…easy, now don’t bug me on IM asking when is the date, I honestly have no clue. The grapewines say it’s around in April mid/last, so let’s watch and see.

Everytime there’s a page rank update the most excited would be the bloggers who started their blogging venture is less than three months earlier. This is the time when there are more searches for the term “when is the next google page rank update” and the related long tail ones on Google. Rest of the best, the boring daily bloggers wouldn’t be as excited as the young blogger because he’d have gone through the  update - downgrade - upgrade process by now and (probably penalized) lost his affinity to the green bar.

Now, the enthusiasm of the young bloggers is something that’s universal. Everyone is worried about whether their blog will get the green bar filled or not.

My question is - How much value does Google page give to your blog?

So you are a young blogger with a blog less than an year old. You have around 100 posts and gathered a few links from around the blogosphere. Hell, you’ve even submitted to directories only to know that they are a waste of time. I’m sure some of you might have even bought links from others in the blogsphere for as chaep as 5-10 bucks. So what value is Google Page Rank going to give you once you are calibrated?

You might sell some links? But Google will penalize you.
You might show off the page rank to potential advertisers? But they are more interested in your subscriber count.
You might show off your PR to a fellow blogger? They might have a better one.

Essentially, Google Page rank does not give you any value what so ever other than a fancy green bar.
It is just a publicly available visualization of Google’s own standards of rating sites to gather information.

And yes, please do not mistake that if you get a higher Google Page Rank you’d get better search engine rankings. That’s a mistake.

Google Page Rank has got no effect whatsoever on the search engine rankings position of a site. It is just an internal metric of Google to grade sites to make it convenient for them for data collection (or something similar).

So this time around, rather than fretting over the green bar, try gathering one way incoming links to your blog and developing unique content rich pages. Those two things can earn you lot of respect from Google, this page rank update.

I thought I might be the only guy who prefers it. In fact, it was an easy guess to me that it would die out soon as any other social media mushroom. But the fact that it managed to get into the good books of many and stood face up to the criticism made me like it more.

ChrisG liked it and I completely agree with him. It has all the features, carefully planned to take down Digg (I assume). Community, UI, Ease to handle, Content - everything is just rich enough to take down any existing social media site. Some of the features made me think - “Why did not Digg implement this earlier, or why aren’t they?” Now, if you compare Digg to Mixx, clearly there are differences that puts Mixx on the forefront.

1. Digg takes more time to submit a story.
   Digg
   A normal story submission process on Digg will take me 2 minutes or more, since there are more clicks involved.
   - First the waiting screen.
   - Second, I’ve to write a description myself and select from a picture.
   - Third, select a category.(No miss here)
   - Four, Enter Captcha.
   - Five, Submit.
   - Six, Duplicate check.
   - Seven, final submission.Mixx
   A normal story takes lesser time to submit, with lesser clicks.
   - First, submit URL.
   - Duplicate check.
   - Three, title and description automatically filled.Select category,tags (optional)
   - Four, Submission.

2. Digg wastes my time and confuses me during a submission
   Ssince it checks for duplicate entries only after I’ve taken time out to write a description about the story. While MIxx checks for duplicate content even before you provide the description, and quickly after you’ve submitted the URL. Makes sense this way.

3. Digg always aks for a captcha, Mixx requires it only when they find you submitting stories too frequently.
   This probably may have something to do with the traffic and spam ratio. But as a end user, I’m not bothered about it, I’m worried about my time, my effort and how easy the process is. Digg fails here.

4. Digg is Spam, has no room for development
   Digg is controlled by the mafia you know it. There is very little or No chance at all for fresh stories to get popular, however good it is, unless you have the help of the mafia.
   Mixx is all new, there is lot of quality submission done and every one gets appreciation. Again, down the line Mixx may become like Digg, but as of now, it’s pretty good.

5. I can’t find an appropriate category on Digg, Mixx has better categories
   It’s a shame that Digg has no apt categories for submitting blogging related stories or niche topics like it. You have very narrow choices that doesn’t make any sense at all. Everyone can’t be running a TV station or a Gizmodo to break stories. Why don’t they understand it?
   On the other hand, Mixx has got a better array of categories, and even if you fail to find one, there’s the option of tags. Which is awesome!

6. Digg throws up stories that it thinks is interesting. Mixx shows me stories that are of interest to me.

7. Digg does not have groups and Communities, Mixx has lot of them
   I think one killer feature of Mixx is that it has groups and communities to share your stories according to your taste and preferences. After all, that’s the whole fun in Social Media isn’t it ?

8. Digg is harsh, It thinks some sites are unworthy of submission
   That’s bull s**t. While I tried to submit a story from a nice site, Digg says that the site is banned from submission, and I can’t submit any article from that site, despite them being good articles.

9. Digg is Dull, Mixx is Hot !
   Looks matter after all. Especially when you are spending more time on one site , you don’t want to strain your eyes looking at dull and pale colours. Mixx on te other hand has got soothing colour scheme for your eyes, not too bright not too dull, just perfect with the best UI and user friendlyness.

So those are the nine points I think makes me prefer Mixx over Digg. Hope they make sense. If you really like Mixx, feel free to join The Mixx Fans group and get the company of the most passionate mixxers.

Have you tried to outsource your social media campaigns? Link building, bookmarks, creating viral content etc?

No? Well, if you decided to, then you’re unlucky. Because, once you have decided, and you have the budget, it won’t be an easy task to find the best guy around. In fact, there are so many SEO’s and SEO gurus that you get sick of them so easily.

During my early days, I had contacted some DP forum SEO experts for contract work and with my limited budget, I really had no choices but to go for the cheapest guy. And DP forums as you know has quite a lot of them. Interestingly, many of them were “we do everything” guys who could do everything from link building to directory submissions to content writing. Everything at damn cheap prices. In fact, with my limited budget, I could manage to get a link building campaign that would run for three months, collecting over 500 one way links or more, directory submissions to 1000 directories, and they promised to write articles on any topic you suggested provided it’s under the sun.

Funny isn’t it? Of course DP forums isn’t the right place to find quality people, but if you are ready to do a huge compromise on the quality, you can find some really damn cheap vendors there.

The point I’m coming to is that, it’s alarming to see how many companies work today under the SEO umbrella. They do everything from A-Z, at damn cheap prices. I’m not sure if they are a good bargain but the fact is that many clients prefer them and the money is rolling. As a matter of fact, there were many situations personally, where I had to suggest another cheaper service because the client is adamant on the price. Many clients are happy that way too.

There are many guys around, both freelancers and professional teams who are ready to do custom packages for you. My advice to people who are looking to hire SEO’s and SEMs is that

- Never go for a company who promises everything, it’s highly likely that they don’t have the expertise.
- Never go for damn cheap prices, the service too would be of less quantity and you can’t question it.
- Never go for companies/freelancers who does not have a proven track record/references.
- Never go for the “look” of the site, appearances are deceptive.

But having said all these, there are real good talents too out there. It’s just that they aren’t either seen or talked about. Just google for SEO companies in your locality and you’ll get enough of them.

There’s a new company around that offers some very good services at competitive prices. Nitin Jain is the man behind the company and his company offers everything from link building to social media management. Pretty interesting.

They have an attractive services range and though I haven’t tested them, it sounds like they’re promising what they can deliver. Nitin believes in credibility publicity and has also offered an affiliate program here (No, that’s not my affiliate link, you know I never do that exercise).

Why I selected Nitin, is because he has been in contact with me for quite some time and I think he’s passionate about whatever he’s doing and that should reflect on the services. I’m not sure if they’d be able to pull off everything from link building to directories to digg to blogging…sounds like a little too much to me but, he says those services are put up there because there may be people who are interested in them and he don’t want to lose out.

I wish there are more people like him come up and start their own services companies like Submit comfort. My only concern would be that they should maintain the professionalism that will match the quality of their services. There are many other services like Submitcomfort, that are lost in the sea of frauds and wannabes. If you know one guy or a company, do let us know and I think rather than shooing them away, talk about them and find out as to who’s genuine and who’s not.

Hey easy.. take down that frown on your face. This article is nothing about any black hat SEO techniques. Well, it has got shades of grey, but it is fair  and it is completely legitimate.

Hmm, let’s put it this way. It’s about manipulating the SERPs to your advantage using the SERPS itself.

Example: You have a keyword that you want yourself to rank high on. Unfortunately, there are lot of established sites which rank high for that particular keyword. So, the chances of you breaking into the top is bleak and it may take several trial and error methods and indefinite time.
But you have this cool new way by which you can simply break into the top 1, 2 or 3rd position and if you wish all of them for the same keyword. Sounds interesting? Hop on!

I’ll call this method “Carbon Copying SERPS”.

It goes like this. Take the keyword for example “free wordpress themes”. This keyword has a high traffic volume.

If you do a search on Google for “free wordpress themes” then it would give you all the established sites on the SERPS. Please don’t mistake when I say established sites.

I mean the ones, which has an advantage of

- having it’s content propogated more quickly,
- having the maximum number of incoming links,
- having more references on anchor texts with the keyword
- with an older domain name etc.

To beat them in a short span of time is difficult.

And you have a fairly new website for which I assume that the following points are ticked off.

- Is indexed on the SERPS.
- Has a decent level of authority for content.
- Has good content and some fair amount of link juice.

Now, what we would do is go to all the established sites, and research on what their content is. See if we can trace a pattern out of it.

Have they provided images?
Have they listed the themes in numbers?
Have they done SMO?
Have they written enough textual content? If yes in what pattern?

Research on as many as the metrics as possible, mostly on site optimization metrics. Because this is the only area where you’d be doing some homework.

Now goto your blog and start designing .

- Design a layout that gives maximum leverage to on site optimization factors.
- Make a list which is SEO friendly. (Food for thought*)
- Make a list of all the best sites on the SERPS, offering “Free Wordpress themes”.
- Give them thumbnail images or snapshots.
- Write SEO friendly textual content on the list for the thumbnails. (Again food for thought*)
- Use extremely attractive headings. (Food for thought*)
- Package it really well.

By now, you should have a SEO friendly website, with a SEO friendly design, with the best content on the selected keyword, with the best compilation and the best copy.

Now go to and fro on the content, MAKE SURE there is no duplicate content on the copy at all. Redraft the content and make it a attractive package.

Now, submit the article to the social media sites. Digg, SU and the like. This is easily said than done.
In fact, to be honest with you, this is the catch of this trick. There is no guarantee that everyone who did the above steps exactly will make it to the top unless they do the social media part correctly. I can even say, one who does the social media submission part correctly will win.

Some interesting points here.

- You might have designed a great copy, but you suck at SM. You lose.
- You have extremely good content, something like the WIkipedia, there is no Viral marketing flavor in your copy. You still lose.
In fact, the offsite optimization part of the game will be taken part of the Social Media while you sit back and relax.

So, essentially what you’ve done is -

Selected a keyword, picked the best sites that has ranks high on it, studied the pattern, created a list from it, made excellent on page SEO factors to support it, fed it to the demons !

So, it’s not all that grey as I suggested right? And there is a bit of that retarded SMO thingy too. Having said it, I’m not sure if this will work for all keywords. It does for certain type of “numberable” content though.

Wondering what’s it?

Well, at DailySEOblog, I’ve tried my best to keep away from personal stuff. Simply because, I never wanted to disturb my readers and clients. So this idea of starting a new personal blog clicked! For a writer, getting an opportunity to write is like getting high on hashish. And that’s why all of us like blogging isn’t it? We can create platforms of our own.

So I have a personal blog now. It’s Manikarthik.com, and you’ll see a lighter side of me there.

I’ll be sharing jokes, travelogues, places and basically all the interesting stuff. If you’ve been bored listening to my SEO, SMM, marketing bhashans, come over to my personal space (well, not really personal right?). It’s like inviting you all to a Saturday night get-together at a favorite food joint.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the feed.

OK, So what about the money..Mani ?

I’m giving away $250 this season, and there’s a competition you can win. It goes like this.

It’s going to test your SEO link building and offsite optimization skills. So only the best-hardcore SEO’s who think they are really game for a battle need to take part.

The subject would be my personal blog, (which is brand new).

What you have to do

1 - Pick a keyword of your choice that is suitable for the website. It could be something like Mani Karthik, SEO India, Best SEO India, well, it’s your choice to select what you are comfortable with. You can use SEO tools to pick the keyword but make sure it’s relevant to the site.

2 - Let me know what keyword you’ve selected through comments here, so that everyone knows about it. (Don’t email please). You might want to pick keywords first so that there is no duplication. Each contestant will be assigned a single unique keyword. Incase there are more than one contestants for a keyword, variations of the keyword will be assigned to you by me.

3 - You have a time of maximum, 60 days. Ending March 29, 2008 you have to submit your results as to what is the position the site have achieved, because of your efforts, for the particular keyword that was assigned to you.
Of course, the progress of the competition will be monitored through out the schedule.

Points to note.

- Based on which keyword ranks me higher, the winner will be announced. For example, if the keyword, “Mani’s blog” ranks higher than any other keyword, it would be announced the winner.
- Incase there are more than one keyword that ranks number one, for instance both the keywords “Mani Karthik” and “Mani’s blog” ranks number one, the winner will be decided on the quality of the keyword.
- If it’s confusing still, it will be open to readers to select which is the best keyword.
- Keyword selection is totally up to you, but it should be related to the site and should be approved by me prior to the start of the competition (in comments).
- The results will be checked on Google.com and not any regional domains.
- Prize money will be sent through paypal ids only.
- There will be no control over the onsite optimization factors for the contestants. I’ll be making regular posts on the blog during the competition time.
- You can adopt any white hat strategy you like like reviews, link building etc. As long as it’s not black hat, it will be approved.
- Contestant should provide details of link sources on demand, though it may not be necessary.

So, there you go.

Time to prove you SEO skills and test out what you’ve learned over the years form DailySEOblog. This is going to be a litmus test for all of you SEO’s/SEO wannabes out there. I’m sure only the best would win, and if I find your work really worth it, you’d even get into a contract with me. So make sure you win the contest at any price!

The current stats of the blog are as follows.

- Not indexed on Google.
- No incoming links.

So what are you waiting for? Get set…go !

Vishal has a doubt on linking strategies.

Google does not show any backlinks for his site - www.b2cjewels.com. He has submitted articles in forums and directories, he has also ensured good interlinking of pages.

So he’s wondering why the links are not showing up.

The second question is - while interlinking pages, is it better to link with the complete URL (www.example.com/url.htm) or just the pages - ..url.htm?

Well, Vishal, you have backlinks indeed. Search for google blog search and you can find 8 links to your site.

Seems like you have attempted to backlink from lot of expired domains or spam sites, I really don’t know how this could’ve happened, it could be spam robots who picked up your URL, or had you submitted them yourself? It is not looking good either way.

What you really need to work on is get contextual link from related authority sites. A few of them that comes in regularly will do the trick. I also noted that your site is up from 2005, so it’s high time you had some good quality incoming links.

Now, regarding the internal linking, the types of links you referred to are respectively called Absoulte links and Relative links. Absolute links will carry the whole URL with it while the relative links will carry only the respective correct path. See more info here.

In SEO, I prefer Absolute linking even though both are the same in Google’s eye. But using absolute linking is better because,

• It is easier to manage as there are less chances of error/broken links to appear when moving documents/pages.
• There are more occurrences of your domain name in the code, which is good.
• It is more recognizable to visitors and are likely to bookmark, provided the content is worth it.

So, go ahead with more absolute links, and directory submissions. Bit if you are really looking forward to a solution to your back linking problems, you should try article marketing and more contextual authority links.

These days, importance is given to link building than anything else in SEO metrics. Out of the various factors considered today as must have’s for SEO, link building stands out. At the forums and discussion boards, there is always someone who’s looking for outsourced SEO’s who can work on link building for their site. Many are preferring cheap SEO’s too. Hmm, though it looks murky, I’m not of the opinion that link building should be outsourced to any cheap SEO.

If you take a look around, you’ll see that out of all the bloggers, only a few say less than 10% even consider outsourcing link building. The majority of them handle it themselves. And they are good at it. May be there’s something you can learn here.

1. Link building is not tough as it seems like.
You have no clue why your site is getting a better PR, or a better position. That doesn’t mean that your link building campaigns, if at all any, has gone wrong.
Probably it means that you’re not doing it right. I’ll get to some tips of how to do link building successfully down the article.

2. Link building is not easy as it seems like.
Having said that, it’s not something everyone can focus on. Many of us do a one man job at the site, writing content, tweaking template etc. In between all this, link building goes out of focus and remain down the priority list.

3. Link building is not about commenting and directory submission alone.
Many of us count link building practices limited to directory submission and commenting. Well, honestly that’s only 10% of the whole process. There is a whole lot more in link building. Let’s see further.

Let’s clear some common mis conceptions about link building.

Last, day I asked a question, what are your link building methods?

And the common answer many agreed on was that - Exclusive content and natural linking will help you more than anything else. 

Josh Spaulding says that, since he deals with niche sites, he believes in natural linking though he submits his blog to directories.

Josh is right. If you have a niche site, and if you haven’t marketed in properly, it is highly unlikely that it will get noted by others and hence the link building will be fairly okay while not helping the site much. In such cases two things can help.

1. Directory submission and  2.Social Media Optimization.
If you submit the site to some quality directories, it is likely to get some attention and traffic(Not all does give it, you have to chose wisely).It would help you get some Google juice atleast, again it’s only a better alternative to waiting for your content to get noticed.

Social Media Optimization is the thing! If you are clever enough to create a remarkable(in the right sense of it’s meaning) article, which is likely to get noted by others, then things happen really quick! People notice your blog and favour it with links. Just what we wanted.

Nitin Pai is of the opinion that, natural linking is the best way to get links.

Here too, the uncertainty in when you will get the incoming links and attention is something that will put us off.Again, SMO will help you out here.

Rajan and Mohan is also of a similar opinion. They say that the content itself will bring you links if it’s exclusive.

So what we can learn from this discussion is that taking into consideration, the uncertainty and ambiguity in waiting for the spotlight to feature your content, taking a step forward and creating those killer, viral articles optimized for the social media, would help you more than anything else in building links.

• Agreed that content is king and exclusive content will bring you natural links but optimizing your site for the social media is the right weapon to hunt for links. It’s a fool proof strategy. Waiting for natural links to come is vague.
• Links from commenting does not help you get a higher page rank.
  I heard some one say that he builds couple of links a day through commenting to ensure that his page rank is better the next update. It’s a wrong idea. Commenting on blogs can only bring you traffic, and backlinks on Yahoo and MSN but not Google, unless if the blog is “Nofollow” free.
• Links from forums don’t help you at all.
  I know many of you will disagree with me on this. I can explain.
  Just answer the following questions and you will agree with me.

  - How many links can you gather from a forum?
  - If you are getting signature links at a forum, many others would. Isn’t it?
  - If all of us link to our sites from one single forum (or as many which provides sig links), wouldn’t Google put them all in one bracket ?
  - What’s that you’ll get from a forum that other’s don’t?

  Do you get my point now? From my experience, if you rely solely on forum links, they don’t give you any exclusivity at all. If you know of a forum that allows signature links, probably everyone will. Though it carries some weight, when everyone starts getting incoming links from common domains, they does not give you that edge over others. This is more applicable in the case of sites that fight for positions on the SERPs. For the small time amateur blogger, who just needs an incoming link for the sake of it, it works fine.

So the point here is that, handling link building campaigns yourself may not give you the desired effect because you are not specialized in it. But if you are very clever, there’s nothing stopping you. From my experience, hiring a so called “cheap SEO” doesn’t serve the purpose if you are looking for quality links. Many of them I know rely on forum links, directory submissions and at the most article submission. Beyond all these traditional methods, I’ll rank Social Media Optimization as the right weapon. If you can find someone who’s good at it, he can give you quality links than a cheap SEO. Remember, links are not just about numbers, it’s also about quality. Fifty incoming links from forums/directories is equal to five quality contextual incoming links.

I think the Social Media Optimization strategies are a bit overdone these days. Honestly, I don’t enjoy the typical “24 steps to make you famous” articles at all. They lack the quality factor in them. Everybody is too focused on numbers and the overall quality of your work is just ripped off for the sake of getting a stumble or that pinch effect on your traffic.

My favorite tool in Social Media is undoubtedly Stumble Upon. I just love the tool and is quite an experience using it.
I started using the tool earlier this year and it’s been a very enjoyable experience overall. I normally stumble blogs and articles along with interesting funny photos etc. The beauty about the tool is that it gives you surprises, all the time!

You get so absorbed with the tool that your number of stumbles automatically goes up and you never keep track of it until one fine day someone alerts you about it. You go on adding friends and one day you reach the 200 friends limit.

When do I use Stumble Upon?

Normally, I use stumbleupon when I want to get surprised! I know that there are lot of information available on the Internet about anything and everything, but where is all this catalogued? A directory? Come on, scrolling through a directory and finding content is the last thing I’d do to get surprised! LOL

Stumble Upon comes in handy at these times. I think it is the most disciplined human edited database of ONLY the most interesting webpages on the internet everyone has access to.

It also comes in handy when I’m running out of ideas. When I’m using it I’m pretty sure that the next stumble that I’d have is going to be better than the one I’m on right now. It takes me to the best pages every single time.

Why do I use Stumble Upon?

I prefer Stumble Upon to any other social bookmarking sites because of it’s quality. I think the SU community is very quick to respond to junk, than in any other social bookmarking site, so finding unworthy information is a rare possibility. The SU community itself is a factor that makes SU a great place to be.

Tips to make your Stumble Upon experience pleasurable

So, have you been using SU recently? If not, I strongly recommend you to go about it right now. You can find my profile here, don’t forget to add me as your friend.

If you have been using SU, I have the following tips to you to making it a pleasurable experience.

- Don’t do it for numbers please
One grave mistake we all tend to do (especially marketers out there) is to use SU for generating traffic alone.
Agreed, that SU is a great place to get traffic but please understand that it’s quality first. If you focus only on numbers, the SU experience is going to be painful for you. Instead, use the tool in it’s true sense. To share and to enjoy the internet.

- Network widely
Stumble Upon is a social networking tool combined with social bookmarking, so the more the networking the more pleasurable the experience! From my experience I understood that being an island on SU is like being a dumbass, it works well only if you network well. So appreciate others talk to them and review their stumbles. It’s fun believe me!

- Don’t self promote
Never ever do this. Well, I don’t think it’s against the TOS, but it definitely does not give a good picture about you to others. It’s other’s job to decide if you are good. You cannot self proclaim it can you? I’ve seen quite some webmasters do this for the sake of getting popularity, and sometimes if it’s a real good article the SU community will forgive you, but it’s really stupid for someone to ONLY submit his content. This normally happens wit marketers who use SU for only marketing purposes. You can easily make out these guys from their profile. They’d probably have 5 stumbles out of which 4 will be theirs and they’d only have joined a few months back, plus no reviews, no fans what so ever.

- Promote quality, avoid junk
Being a SU user, it’s your duty to promote quality by “thumbing up” a good article and it’s equally important to thumbs down a bad article. Because you don’t want your friends to see terrible webpages, but interesting ones. SO use the tool sensibly, thumbs down what you don’t like. There’s nothing wrong in it, it’s for the good of the community.

- Share and review
The most interesting factor about SU is that it helps you to share and review right within the tool. It may be available on other tools too, but I don’t think people get involved with it as on SU. So do share your thoughts on the stumbles, say your mind in the profile page about a stumbler or his stumbles, review people, it all helps in the betterment of the community.

- Stumble daily, make it a routine
Beginners would find it bizzare. But at least a month old stumbler would agree wit me on this that the more the stumbles the better the experience. So stumble daily and uniformly, make it a routine. It helps you in the long run. 

- Enjoy the small things in life like funny pictures
SU is a great place to find funny pictures on the internet. I mean, we all get those email forwards that we never really check, but imaging when you have an entire list of those pictures and you find it yourself? Interesting isn’t it? SU helps you to enjoy the small things like this, a picture, a video that will make your day.

- Stumble through your friends
This is a personal favorite of mine. I have a group of friends who are probably the best I found on SU. And there’s an option on SU to stumble only through your friends stumble. It’s highly possible that whatever they have stumbled would be of interest to me. So rather than doing a general stumble, do a stumble through your friends (or anyone of them) and it helps you to share things.

- Explore all categories and types
There are some interesting categories on SU like videos,pics,blogs etc that will help you to stumble pages by category. Rather than doing a general stumble, do stumbles in categories for example, stumble pics only. This will enrich your SU overall experience.

What you should not do at SU

- Never self promote
- Never spam
- Use pseudo ID’s

That’s about it. Have a great Stumble Upon experience !