'Net Features : reddit

SEO: The International Language of Success

Mike Phillips — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:00:00 GMT

If there's one characteristic that all cultures share it's the quest for information. So, it should come as no surprise that the most heavily trafficked websites across the world are search engines. Whether your business is one of providing information (such as a news site or blog), a service provider (software or app developer) or e-commerce (selling tangible products), it is important to appeal to searchers and the search engines by capitalizing on the information that people want. This means finding trending topics and searching for the right keywords -- whether for use in blog post titles, social media updates, or marketing and advertising copy.

As Web professionals we have great opportunities in international markets, as the Web has few borders. In addition to standard keyword research as it applies to your industry, addressing those topics of interest to audiences worldwide can place your brand in front of potential consumers across the world. With that in mind, below you will find a few websites where the world goes for information. These are valuable resources for finding what's buzzing on the Web and the information people care about. With this information, we can craft our content and products to relate to anyone, anywhere.

Use these resources to find possible keywords, content ideas and inspiration for expanding your business across borders. Each of these websites provides information relating to world news and politics, finance, entertainment and sports, and more. When crafting content, remember that searchers are not just looking for text -- videos and photos are among the most visited sources of content online, worldwide.

Twitter.com: Alexa Rank 9

Twitter is one of the most popular websites in the world and provides an excellent opportunity to find the most current worldwide trends. Take advantage of the "Trends" option that can be sorted by country and region.

Percent of site traffic
US 36.8%
Japan 10.4%
India 6.1%
China 5.1%
UK 4.2%

Regional Alexa Traffic Ranks
Nigeria (80)
US (98)
Canada (110)
Japan (131)
UK (145)
South Africa (151)
Egypt (161)
Venezuela (171)
Australia (196)
Italy (222)

BBC.co.uk: Alexa Rank 40

The BBC does an outstanding job of covering world news. Of course, most of the traffic comes from the UK but the BBC also attracts audiences from all over the world.

Percent of site traffic
UK 34.1%
US 15.7%
India 4.7%
Canada 2.5%
Japan 2.3%

Regional Alexa Traffic Ranks
UK (5)
Ireland (12)
Nigeria (13)
Pakistan (16)
United Arab Emirates (18)
South Africa (20)
Finland (22)
Canada (33)
Australia (34)
Sweden (36)

CNN.com: Alexa Rank 48

CNN is most widely used in the United States and Canada but spans across other countries as well. The CNN International edition is handy. CNN's Facebook integration can show what those in your network find interesting.

Percent of site traffic
US 61%
Canada 3.8%
India 3.0%
Japan 2.3%
UK 2.1%

Regional Alexa Traffic Ranks
US (16)
Canada (22)
Nigeria (35)
South Africa (36)
Philippines (39)
Malaysia (56)
Netherlands (65)
South Korea (67)
Thailand (68)
Australia (71)

Reddit.com: Alexa Rank 143

While Reddit is decidedly bent toward the offbeat and humorous side of the Web, it does provide many sortable categories (such as world news, politics and technology) that can be useful for finding trending topics. Reddit also has a sizable international audience.

Percent of site traffic
US 46.2%
India 12.2%
UK 5.0%
Canada 4.8%
Pakistan 3.1%

Regional Alexa Traffic Ranks
Pakistan (51)
US (54)
Canada (54)
UK (94)
Philippines (102)
India (103)
Australia (113)
Romania (129)
South Africa (158)
Bangladesh (184)

Reuters.com: Alexa Rank 220

Reuters is another news site that provides many different editions, accessible through an easy-to-use drop-down menu. Choose a section then use a translation tool to discover what's trending in that particular part of the world.

Percent of site traffic
US 36.8%
Japan 10.4%
India 6.1%
China 5.1%
UK 4.2%

Regional Alexa Traffic Ranks
Nigeria (80)
US (98)
Canada (110)
Japan (131)
UK (145)
South Africa (151)
Egypt (161)
Venezuela (171)
Australia (196)
Italy (222)

Finally, if you have time for some browsing and/or blogging, don't forget about Blogger.com (Alexa Rank 7) and Tumblr.com (Alexa Rank 59). It can be difficult to drill down to find what you want in these sites but they are both extremely popular with the international community. Also, while not yet as respected as sources of content by search engines, they provide some opportunities to network and to get content in front of a very large and diverse audience. Setting up blogs through either of these sites is very easy and practiced by some very large media properties, including The Economist.

Blogger.com: Alexa Rank 7

Percent of site traffic
US 19.5%
India 10.0%
Brazil 5.6%
Indonesia 5.1%
Spain 3.6%

Regional Alexa Traffic Ranks
Indonesia (4)
Malaysia (4)
Bangladesh (4)
Greece (5)
Nigeria (5)
India (6)
Spain (6)
Pakistan (6)
Philippines (6)
Venezuela (6)

Tumblr.com: Alexa Rank 59

Percent of site traffic
US 36.1%
Japan 6.0%
UK 5.0%
Brazil 4.4%
India 4.0%

Regional Alexa Traffic Ranks
Philippines (13)
Singapore (26)
US (32)
UK (37)
Canada (37)
Brazil (41)
Chile (42)
Mexico (45)
Australia (45)
Venezuela (49)

Abandon Digg Day Update

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:10:00 GMT

Digg users apparently deserted the site in droves for Reddit yesterday according to data from Web analytics company StatCounter.

The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats conducted a special analysis of Digg versus Reddit only and reports that, comparatively, Digg traffic to the StatCounter network of 3 million websites plummeted on Monday to 7.6% as opposed to Reddit’s 92.4%.

“The market share between Digg and Reddit tends to fluctuate but on Monday Digg fell to its lowest point compared to Reddit since our tracking began,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Users are voting with their mice following the launch of the new Digg site.”

Monday had been named as “Abandon Digg Day” by some users. “It wasn’t so much a ‘Black Monday’ for Digg as a ‘Redd Monday’,” added Cullen.

The data is based on 15 billion page views across the global StatCounter network of member sites. StatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, includes Social Media in its StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool for media, analysts, bloggers, researchers and members.

Quick Response: Reddit Rolls Out Faster Search

Linc Wonham — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 03:30:00 GMT

Responding to user complaints about its search accuracy and speed, social news aggregator Reddit has launched a new search engine. The company outsourced the project to a search business called Flaptor — which counts blogging platform WordPress among its clients — and Reddit’s new hosted search product is called IndexTank.

The faster engine allows users to search for posts in real time by title, text and author’s username. IndexTank also enables Reddit users to limit their searches to self-posts and specific “subreddits”, but comments to posts are not searchable at this time.

Earlier in the week, Reddit announced its new premium membership service, and the site’s improved search functions will certainly be a strong selling point for Reddit Gold. Reddit is similar to social news aggregation site Digg, and claims about 8 million unique monthly visitors per month.

The State of Content Submission Sites

Mike Phillips — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:14:00 GMT

Content submission sites can garner a fair amount of traffic for a website. So it's good to know where your content stands the best chance of reaching the widest audience. Compete.com has returned new traffic results for March 2009, and the numbers suggest that most of these sites are doing extremely well, meaning they are still viable - if not essential - places to market brands, products and services. Of course the first focus should always be on your company, but you will want to take advantage of free promotional services.

Digg.com remains strong, getting more than 36 million visits per month, according to Compete. For the year, traffic at Digg is up 71.5 percent. The attractive part of Digg is that it is widely used, both in and outside of the Web professional industry, meaning that you have a good chance of making an impact with consumers, not just fellow marketers. The down side is that the very structure of Digg caters to those with connections and those who know how to make the system work for them. Otherwise Digg can take a lot of effort and time to be truly effective.

Twitter is far and away the fastest growing network online, both in terms of traffic and overall industry buzz. The site is up to 14 million uniques per month, up from 8 million last month (a 76 percent increase) and up more than 1,200 percent this year. There's no denying that Twitter is an important place to submit content, or at least have a presence. Be sure to take advantage of URL shortening services like bitl.y, cli.gs, or budurl to track how (and if) your content spreads through Twitter.

Then there are the rest. There are may niche content submission sites and some of them may hold real value, depending on your industry or focus. But for general purposes it makes sense to focus on those with the widest reach. Below is a chart from Compete.com analyzing five popular submission sites and their current traffic data: Newsvine, Propeller, Mixx, StumbleUpon and Reddit. (Article continues below)

Reddit holds the overall edge, in both traffic numbers and growth, closely followed by StumbleUpon. It's also interesting to see that Reddit has a very steady growth pattern, usually indicating a site with staying power. Also note that all but one of these services (Propeller) is experiencing growth. And while the numbers of any of these sites might suggest it's simply not worth the effort in comparison to Digg or Twitter, it could be argued that while these sites are growing, now is a good time to get involved and stake your claim.

It should also be noted that StumbleUpon, while used as a submission site by many, is not necessarily intended to be a content submission site. It might fall under the category of content discovery. And, for that matter, Delicious.com could fall into that category as well. Delicious had over 1.8 million unique visits in March, a 13 percent boost from February 2009.

Submitting content to these sites and establishing a reputable presence (including networking and making influential friends) can take an extraordinary amount of time. Sometimes too much to be worth the return. Therefore, it's always important to use your analytics to closely monitor the returns you are getting for your efforts. If you see that site visits from one particular network are resulting in high bounce rates, limited time-on-site or any other factor detrimental to your overall goals, don't be afraid to jump ship. Or find the network(s) with the highest return toward your goals and focus on those instead.

reddit Opens Up, Allows Full Customization

Mike Phillips — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:28:00 GMT

While larger voting sites such as Digg and recently-released Yahoo Buzz keep their properties closely guarded, Reddit is taking the exact opposite approach, hoping to capitalize on its 300 percent growth since May.

Taking dead aim at its competitors, reddit now allows users - and publishers - to fully customize their own reddit communities. You can modify the CSS and use custom CNAMEs. Style the community, the logos, and point your own domain to your new, custom community. This could be a fantastic way to really engage your site visitors and have them engage with your site and your brand - even if you have to endure some third-party advertising on your custom voting site.

Depending on the success of the reddit experiment, we could see many more social networking/voting sites start to open up to private use. Revenue shares, third-party app inclusion ... Mixx, are you listening?

As an extra bonus to get started, reddit is running a contest for custom communities - grow the largest audience in one month and get a free Macbook Air.