Can You Get a Lot of Traffic from Sphinn?

As you know, Sphinn, a social news site for lovers of search engines and Internet marketers, was launched last month. My personal blog has been featured on the main page twice and I've only gotten a combined 165 unique visitors from Sphinn.com as the referral.

Apparently, I'm not alone. Matt Webb, aka SEO Honolulu, at Cre8asite Forums, noticed in his analytics that he had a surge of traffic, but the traffic was actually from StumbleUpon, and not Sphinn. I actually recall stumbling upon that site that day. Thus, I'm not surprised.

I've been asked already if it's worth it to submit content to Sphinn and if there will be a good traffic flow to blogs or articles that are submitted. Given my experience and Matt's, I think that we're just watching a baby grow up. As Chris Winfield says, it's still brand new (less than a month old!), but the early adopters can shape it and word of mouth will drive additional traffic to it.

Sphinn is certainly in its infancy and the traffic is not going to blow you away by any means. I think one of the main benefits to it (especially for newer people to the industry or bloggers) is exposure. I came across your blog directly from Sphinn after seeing a few different interesting posts on Sphinn by you. Its also always good to be part of a community from the beginning (if you believe in it and think it will be successful) as you can help shape it.

I personally vouch for Sphinn, not because I help moderate the forum there, but because there is finally a site for people who have a true interest in SEO, SEM, social media, and search to find a community of like-minded individuals where you can actually feel at home. Matt McGee agrees. If you haven't visited yet, I encourage you to do so.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Like The Story? Vote For It On Yahoo Buzz! Or On Sphinn!

posted Tamar Weinberg in Social Search at August 6, 2007 9:42 AM Comments (8)

Comments

From a site like Sphinn, the question is not the quantity of the traffic, but the quality. Sure, having a story appear on Digg.com is going to attract a lot of users, 99% who will hit the back button in seconds, and some who may link to your site from their own blogs, StumbleUpon brings in constant and surprise traffic...

but Sphinn brings in 100% targeted traffic, since its readers are search marketers, which makes it all so important as a quality traffic source.

Posted by Loren Baker at August 6, 2007 10:38

Of the 6 most recent additions to my RSS reader 5 are for blogs I discovered through Sphinn...

Posted by Gidseo at August 6, 2007 11:47

We've dappled lightly with Sphinn and received 568 visits. For the same time period we received 4,186 visits from SU, where we also "dapple). More important was the focus of Sphinn traffic. We're already made new industry friends from Sphinn, presumably the right idea :) .

Also, we take the time to scrape and collate who is Sphinning and commenting on who's post for later outbound linking in our own blog.

Especially endearing is the "diggbait" mentality for SEM related topical headlines. How fun is that!

Posted by Marty at August 6, 2007 14:59

Sphinn brings trageted traffic even if its only hundreds of visitors instead of thosands.

Posted by Sujan Patel at August 6, 2007 15:21

I've gotten quite a bit of traffic from Sphinn. Here's my stats for July, of which Sphinn was around about two weeks:
http://flickr.com/photos/vanessafox/1030920669/

Posted by Vanessa Fox at August 6, 2007 15:50

You can't expect the site to explode the first month its live. Even when Danny launched SEL, it took a while to catch on. When he posted his SEL stats for the first couple months, you could see how each month got better and better. Many readers praised him for showing those stats. It's somewhat reassuring to know that it even takes Danny Sullivan a little while to build traffic. Seems like now he has a new column starting every other week. SEL turned into a success and I'm sure Sphinn will too.

Posted by Drew Stauffer at August 7, 2007 09:02

David, the key is, Sphinn still sends intensely targeted traffic.

As a search blogger, I know that a decent amount of traffic from Google News, Yahoo News, Digg & Stumble Upon is FABULOUS for building impressions for ad sales and unique users for showing off stats, but the majority of that traffic is somewhat worthless, spending little time on the site and leaving in a jiffy.

Sphinn users stick around, subscribe, comment and remember your site AND your face. If anything, Sphinn is somewhat of a virtual SMX/SES, since the search industry does not have much of a centralized place to connect outside of conferences besides the forums, webmaster radio 1990's style chatroom, Facebook and blog comments. Sphinn fills that void :)

Posted by Loren Baker at August 7, 2007 22:29

Yup that's really true social bookmarking stuff and forums like sphinn and digitalpoint really help in generating good and longterm traffic. It also provide a good range of backlinks which ultimately boast up PR of your website.

Posted by No Name at June 27, 2009 06:02

Can You Get a Lot of Traffic from Sphinn?

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