If you haven’t noticed the popularity of social sites on the net, you’re either very busy or dead. Social media sites have been popping up in greater numbers all over the net over the last decade, and the more successful sites have been attracting participants in greater and greater numbers. There’s no way that the average site can compete with sites like Facebook, but the average site can certainly learn from social media.

One of the things that social media sites have brought to prominence is the strength that social influence has on the net. Basically, if something is shown to be popular, it is popular. This may sound like circular logic, but it’s not. Being seen to be popular is an entirely different thing to actually being popular. This is something that can seriously affect your site.

For example, say your site attracts traffic in the tens of thousands in a day, but you haven’t done any off-page campaigning to show this. Anyone visiting your site will be able to perceive it for the quality site it is, but they won’t be able to detect that it’s a huge hit just by looking at it. That is, unless you leave them signs that allow them to detect your popularity.

Here are just some ways you can demonstrate your site’s popularity:

*Traffic stats: The most obvious way to show your popularity is to publish your traffic statistics. Usually it takes a big traffic count to impress.

*Subscriber count: This is a more meaningful statistic, as it reveals people who are willing to link themselves to your business. There are some extremely attractive subscriber count plugins that you can easily slip in to your pages.

*Members online count: This demonstrates that not only do you have subscribers or members, but they are active. Internet users are aware that people join sites and immediately abandon them. Proving that your membership is active shows you are currently popular.

*Social bookmarks: Being Dugg, Sphinned, etc, is a sure sign that your pages are popular. Social bookmarking takes a little extra effort to gather, and it’s a good idea to consider a separate social bookmarking campaign.

*Comments: This is a very solid sign of popularity, but it can be a little more difficult to fake. While people are easily impressed by solid numbers, it takes a significant number of comments to establish your popularity. It can be difficult to get your site users to comment, but doing things like publishing a ‘comment of the week’ encourages users to participate. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about encouraging comments on your site.

*Awards and membership badges: There’s nothing like an award to show the approval of your industry. Membership of a club is also a sign of acceptance by others. If you’ve got these things, use them.

Showing signs of popularity is important for SEO because it attracts return traffic and, more importantly, inbound links. Everyone wants to link to people who are popular. Demonstrating your popularity can have a big impact on your off-page search engine optimisation.

Get Involved