Build Blog Traffic - Social Network Groups and Fan Pages

SEO Tip #2

Finding new traffic on social networks

All social networks have groups that are intersted in a topic. These groups behave much like forums with discussion boards and members join the groups since they are intersted in a specific team or player.

Bring them better information! That's what they're in the group for in the first place.

The same for social networks. Each network (Orkut, MySpace, Facebook) has a group page or fan page for the most popular team and clubs - in every language. We've had some success during the Euro in driving users from Facebook groups (the national team group pages range anywhere from 200 - 50,000 members) to our MatchCentre. We even had a Netherlands fan start his own (very biased and entertaining) live blog.

So, just as you should look for relevent forums, add links to OleOle blog posts and specific upcoming MatchCentre pages from groups. Don't have a MySpace or Facebook profile? Make one.

Add yourself as a friend on OleOle's MySpace profile. http://www.myspace.com/oleolefootball

Become a Fan of OleOle on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/OleOle/19770964736

Join all the relevant team / club / player groups you can on each network and see what's going on, then add to the conversation.

Spend some time on a social network, join the club and team groups, and take part in the discussions there. Link to relevent, timely content on OleOle. The more timely the news and the more enticing you make it, the more traffic you'll generate.

You need to build up some credibility, so add other information besides links. Make jokes. add real comments, become a respected participant. Do it every day!

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Build Traffic to Your Blog - Post Inbound Links on Other Sites

Blog Tip #1

We're all working towards the same goal - making OleOle the largest, best football site on the internet, so this blog is an open comment forum for hints, tips, tricks that we can all share.

The more we help each other promote individual blogs, the faster we'll get there.

There are a few things you should be doing EVERY DAY with your blog posts on OleOle. The OleOle Football Platform is built from the ground up to get the right content to the right football fans, but we;re growing the site - we need to get fans to visit us from other sites, including Google.

As a blogger on OleOle you need to focus on promoting your blog at least this at least 25% - 50% of the time it takes you to write your posts.

Background

The OleOle platform is constructed around Topics, which are players, clubs, teams, leagues, etc. Each topic main page is hub for everything that has to do with that topic - photos, wallpapers, news, history, and blogs. The topic main page (see Real Madrid for example) is the easiest to promote in search engines because it is entirely about that one topic. Your Real Madrid blog post will appear in the Recent Blogs section of that page as soon as you post it, as long as you assign Real Madrid as a topic. If visitors land on the main page, they'll have the opportunity to read your post. In essence, its easier to promote one page about Real Madrid than it is to promote 100 separate pieces of content, so when you promote that one page, you're helping to promote yourself, too.

Inbound Links

Posting links on other sites that go to OleOle. Inbound links help OleOle tremendously with getting new visitors to the site who click those links, and they also help our search engine optimisation strategy (which in turn drives new visitors).

To get traffic from other sites, you have to visit other sites and be interactive there, too. Any site, especially football sites, that allow you to post a link to your blog or to OleOle is a great target for your activity. A link to OleOle can provide value in 2 ways: first, anyone on Site B that clicks it will be brought to OleOle. No surprise there. BUT, that link can also add value to the page it links to, moving it higher in Google's search results. Inbound links increase the popularity of that page, and Google values inbound links very highly when considering where that page ranks in results. And of course the higher your blog is listed in Google results, the more visits we'll get from searchers.

Some sites (like ours and most forums and good blogs) mask 3rd party links with a 'nofollow' tag in the HTML so Google spiders won't, like it says, follow that link.

You can do this yourself too:  BBC.

So sites with nofollow links won't help you with SEO because the link is basically invisible to Google. If you're using Firefox, download and install this plugin http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/ and turn on 'Highlight No Follow Links' to see if the link is a No Follow link or not. Try to find sites that don't mask links!

Here's a recent example: A Harry Hotspur post about David Bently rumours received hundreds more visitor just from one single post on the BBC website forum. Someone (maybe Harry himself?) posted a link to the blog post as an alternate point of view of what was being discussed on the BBC site. And clearly other BBC users were clicking on that link. It was posted in such a way that it wasn't marked as spam or removed by a moderator - helpful, relevant content. Obviously, you or I don’t want to spam boards with OleOle links, but when relevant and useful to visitors on that other site, this is a good way to get quality traffic. Unfortunately the links are No Follow on the BBC forums, so they don't help with SEO, but if other people link their blogs to Harry's post because they refer to him or quote him, that certainly does.

Tip #1 - post links on other sites to good, relevant content on OleOle - blog comments, forums, wherever you can.

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Social Network Commotidization

We'll look back at Facebook and think it's cute.

Charlene Li from Forrester is really on top of things. She's watching the convergence and commoditization of social networks happen in the very near future. All the talk of Facebook and MySpace and how they're huge and growing and which one is going to "win" is irrelevant. Like cars, there will be many different companies and types, allowing you to do different things - each will have its own unique aspect. And like cars, where you can move your cellphone / PDA / address book from one to the other, your profile on social networks will be portable.

Her blog point to the fact that social networks are starting to be commoditized. It doesn't matter which you pick, they'll all allow sharing of contacts. Its just not that hard now to create a network to keep track of friends. OleOle's position as a social media platform elevates us from that discussion - people are coming to OleOle to share a passion - to discuss a Social Object. Making friends is nice, but it’s the commitment and passion and interest in the sport that brings them together - the same way it does in the real world at stadiums, pubs and in front of the TV. OleOle is a publishing platform - publishing the views and opinions of football fans in the way that they see fit. We've got the environment and infrastructure to do that in an organized way - and enable discussion instead of just pushing information one way.

What's OleOle's position on OpenSocial / Data Availability / OpenID / Data Portability? YES, we will build for these protocols (maybe when they're standardized a BIT more) so users don't need to create a separate profile on our site - they can login with the profiles they've created other places. The purpose of our site is great content, not being the sole location for personal information.

That's something the big social networks like MySpace are starting to grapple with - what unique social objects can they add to differentiate themselves? And what social objects will get people clicking on ads? It's tough because of the complete heterogeneity of the user base - there is no commonality other than people have friends.

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"You Can Never Underestimate The Passion of the Fans"

Ever!

That's what Philadelphia found out recently as the city was chosen to support the next MLS franchise in 2010.

These "Sons of Ben" were apparently a deciding factor in choosing the city for a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise. The Sons of Ben is a supporters' group with more than 1,600 members.

"You can never underestimate the passion of the fans," said Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. "You can't measure it. The Sons of Ben have been waiting for soccer in this area for so long. Now they have it and they're going to be loud and give this team a true homefield advantage. Believe me, this group's excitement and desire had a lot to do with why we're here announcing this franchise."

Thinking forward a few months to the UEFA Euro 2008. OleOle wants to make this competition the pinnacle of online interaction from fans at the matches, and those that can't make it to the matches.

How can OleOle capture this passion, this fervor? How is football - even in the USA (the least football-oriented country in the entire world) - how is it that this sport incites such passion?

Can it be bottled? Canned? How can we capture even a a piece of that passion online for the Euro? That's the magic that OleOle needs - we don't have it today, we might have it tomorrow as we overhaul the site for the Euro, but what are we missing? What is key to the overhaul? What kind of things can we pull from our readers, fans and from the competition itself? Its more UEFA Euro news, than facts and scores...its the drive to get fans to contribute, to interact, to talk to each other.

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