Every few weeks or so one of my sites gets an onslaught of traffic from StumbleUpon. Though it’s always fun to see a huge surge in traffic the truth is the traffic from StumbleUpon is worthless. In general web visitors are quick to click but when those visitors originate from StumbleUpon they’re supercharged!
As proof, on a given day for Bizak I received 585 visitors from StumbleUpon – those visitors averaged 1.11 pages per visit and averaged only 6 seconds on the site. In comparison this blog sent Bizak 87 visitors who averaged 5.43 pages/visit and over 8 minutes on the site.
I’ll take less, but more qualified, traffic any day of the week. StumbleUpon just proves the point that more traffic doesn’t always mean better. If you can’t monetize that traffic and if you don’t know who your visitors are then they’re nothing more than inflated statistics.
We always struggle with the same issue. It can be justified to try the ’shotgun’ approach on the lower probability that you get a returning user. A lower success rate, but a higher number of visitors COULD be a valid approach, but is generally probably more useful for broad based content sites.
Protoscopic
Make sense. 100%
A visitor to your blog visit a site you recommend, because he/shy trust your judgment.
It’s a personal, 1 on 1 suggestion.
That is why the visit to the website takes longer.
While on Stumbleupon, it’s randomized and not a personal/private suggestion…
Stumbleupon is a great tool for a quick scan/update on “what is hot”. That is it, nothing more.
But from a SEO perspective, it helps bringing traffic.
Amit