Integrating the Facebook Like button Increases traffic by 50%

It’s a surprisingly easy way to boost traffic and all you need is a simple piece of code. With a traffic rank within 200, you know you can trust TypePad when they say that integrating the Facebook like button increases traffic by, hold your breath, a whopping 50%. That’s just the average. It can go as high as 200% or more for some people.

How traffic comes in from FACEBOOK

The way it works is pretty simple. Somewhere above or below your article, you integrate a like button (click HERE to see how). A reader, who stumbles across the article and happens to like it, might just click on the easily visible ‘like’ button. When he does that, the article is posted as a shared link on his profile. His friends see the link and, since it has been shared by a trusted friend, they click on it, increasing traffic to your site.

Going VIRAL

Provided your article is good, it will spread like wildfire. Imagine a reader shares it. We will assume he has 130 friends, the average number of friends a Facebook user has. Out of those 130, 3 of them read the article, like it and share it further. So now, assuming each of them has 130 friends too, your article has reached 390 more people. Carry this chain a little further and it is easy to see how you can get thousands of visitors because of the ‘like’ button. Of course, most members who actively read blogs and share links on their profile have more than 130 friends.

FREE marketing

The best part about this is that it’s free! You don’t need to pay anyone to click on the ‘like’ button. Readers will readily share your content if they find it useful. Never before have readers so happily marketed someone else’s site for free.

Win LONG TERM readers

A well designed site is all you need to keep readers coming back to you again and again. Further, if a group of friends find your site interesting enough to discuss amongst themselves, they will be sharing your links over and over again, resulting in steady, long term traffic.

What RESEARCH found

TypePad, a blogging platform, followed traffic changes to more than 1500 blogs after their owners added the ‘like’ button in the sidebar. Over a period of time, Traffic went up by 50%. TypePad continued research by allowing 2400 bloggers to integrate the button at the bottom of every post. This time, traffic shot up by a collective 200%. That’s a lot of additional visitors!

traffic graph on TypePad

Eric, a reader of Mashable.com which published the report, says, “The ‘Like’ button has worked wonders for my film publication. We had respectable numbers before we implemented the button but since we’ve added it to our articles our traffic has doubled in only a month!”

Oh, and more than 900 people ‘like’ the report Eric has commented on. Care to bet on what percentage their traffic shot up by?