Don’t Forget the Link
Back in January, Aaron wrote about the corrosive effect that Twitter is having on marketing online. Because Twitter links are no-followed (and often TinyURLed), sites like Google never see the links that people tweet. There’s also a very temporal nature to Twitter that, as Aaron puts it, makes the content “here today, gone today.” Since then, he’s even gone so far as to say that he’s going to cut back on social networking because of negative effects like that.
Last week, Darren and Rand had a very similar discussion at the SMX conference in Sydney and discussed why people were now tweeting far more often than they were blogging. Are we more interested in building up our own image, and linking to others takes away from that? Are there just not as many people blogging now as there were a few years ago? Or is it simply that links we would have blogged a few years ago simply work better as tweets now?
It’s an interesting discussion made immeasurably more interesting to me over the past few weeks as I’ve gotten to see a real-life example.
Tweets vs. Links – Some Real World Stats
On March 18 I published “How to Sell a Website for $1M,” and links to it instantly began to be passed along — both on Twitter and on other sites. The exposure has been relatively equal on both, so it has been fascinating to see the difference in results.
Here’s a graph of the traffic from each source over the first 19 days:
(The Twitter traffic includes all traffic from twitter.com and friendfeed.com, as well as traffic marked “direct” over and above the average before March 18.)
In the first 19 days, Twitter sent 23% more traffic than the Links did. However, you’ll notice that the Links traffic never goes to 0 like the Twitter traffic does, so the Links are still sending traffic — enough so that they’ll eventually surpass the Twitter traffic.
Why Links Win
And that’s why Links win: they send more traffic, in a couple of different ways.
Links are permanent. That means that on large sites like SEO Book, they’ll send some level of traffic for months, if not years. They don’t disappear into the ether like tweets do.
Links are also the ultimate deciding factor in what pages rank well in Google. More links means higher rankings, and higher rankings means more traffic.
Thus, even though you may get tweeted very widely, links will always send more traffic in the long run — both from people clicking through and from the rankings boost they give your entire site.
That’s not to say that tweets aren’t fantastic — they definitely are — just that links are that much more fantastic.
Share the Love
What this means is that although link love has always been important, it’s now even more important than it has ever been. If you want to do something really nice for someone, tweet their link. If you want to go even further, though, link it to it from somewhere permanent.
And what you’ll find over time is that the people you link to will be more likely to link back to you. It’s human nature. I go out of my way to link to people who have been good to me, and I know others do the same.
It’s a good deed that often comes back around.
Jeremy Knauff
April 10, 2009
at 11:48 am
Dead on the money! We’ve seen links from certain sites drive a tremendous amount of traffic right off the bat, but even years later the traffic keeps coming, though in smaller amounts. Twitter on the other hand, not so much. Twitter traffic is more like crack, quick and intense, but short-lived. **Disclaimer: My knowledge on that comes form those cheesy after-school specials that used to be on TV when I was a kid
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) most people are lazy, and simply drop their links into Twitter and go on about their next task for the day. That creates opportunities for those of us who are willing to put in the effort
Melanie Phung
April 10, 2009
at 2:35 pm
I posted this article to Sphinn rather than simply retweeting you, so you’d get a link out of it
Shane
April 10, 2009
at 3:27 pm
You’re the best, Melanie!!
Jim
April 10, 2009
at 5:16 pm
Spot on Shane, the graph was a great visual as well.
I wonder if in time google will start looking at twitter and looking at the number of retweets a url gets and starting to factor this into things.
Similar to wikipedia, if a link has been on a page for some years then chances are its a good resource and deserves link juice.
Sphinn is another one, do we link to the sphinn thread? comment there or here? as for Diggbar dont get me started
More credit needs to go to the original source.
Tweeted and this will go into my weekly link building roundup
Shane
April 10, 2009
at 9:21 pm
Thanks for the kind words, Jim! I think Google will stay on top of it. It actually wouldn’t surprise me to find out that they’re already incorporating some kind of factor for tweets. If they don’t stay on top of it, you can bet that someone else will jump in there and leap ahead of them like they leaped ahead of Yahoo!.
needmoney.com
April 14, 2009
at 6:14 pm
Hey there, just found your site; I like it and am going to add it to my “to read” list.
With regard to twitter/linking I guess see them as complementary and not competitive. I’m pursuing both strategies. Cheers!
Weekly Link 15th April
April 15, 2009
at 5:24 am
[...] Agent: 50 Content Ideas that Create Buzz SEOmoz | Whiteboard Friday – Domain Trust and Authority Don’t Forget the Link » Ask Shane.org YOUmoz | The Small Business Link Building Guide: Get Your Own House in Order Link Loopy, Part 4: [...]
Shaun
April 17, 2009
at 2:34 pm
Wow, Shane — I love your site. Seriously, this is the best “build an online business” website I’ve seen thus far. You treat internet marketing like a business rather than a “Total Income Solutions!”
I’ve certainly subscribed.
Any pointers for my site?
Shane
April 17, 2009
at 3:27 pm
Thanks, Shaun! I appreciate it.
I’m not a fan of the big AdSense block that dominates the top of each article (and the homepage), but it may be working great for you like I know it is for others. For me, it just cheapens a site and puts it into the realm of squeeze-as-much-money-out-of-the-visitor-as-possible. Of course, I’m not the typical visitor either, though, so I may be in the vast minority.
The biggest thing, though, is that I would encourage you to just keep doing what you’re doing. Your content is great, and that’s a great niche to be in. Continue to set yourself apart with valuable content, and you’ll continue to attract readers.
I would either join and/or host a regular blog carnival, too. There are a ton of blogs in your niche who would participate, and the host always gets some great traffic and links.
Melody
April 19, 2009
at 9:53 pm
Twitter is having a corrosive effect on online marketing simply because it has gotten so easily spammed with nonsense as the rest of the social networking sites..
Duane
May 6, 2009
at 11:45 pm
So very true with twitter condensing links and with the nofollow tag used it doesn’t really produce much traffic or links backs. The only traffic I’ve noticed is from direct or in other words people who visit my tweet and click.
The $10,000 Business Boost Contest » Ask Shane.org
May 7, 2009
at 8:28 am
[...] contest, with a list of all the prizes and their links, will get 10 entries in the drawing (because links hold more power than tweets). (Be sure to send a trackback or leave a comment below with a link to your blog entry so I know [...]