We all know that SEO is not an exact science. It is a social science.

The ulterior objective of any SEO activity is to influence on other people’s behavior. More specifically, we want them to perform an action on their end that will benefit our search engine rankings. Just like a War General plans for his troops to move according to his plans, you need to influence your visitors to perform the actions you want.

The War General has the easy job. He says, they do. The tough job is on you: you need to influence and persuade.

You want your visitors to:

• Link to your website from their website
• Bookmark your pages
• Vote for your submissions on social media websites where the exposure an article gets is directly proportional to the amount of votes a submission achieves
• Subscribe to your updates

Do you agree so far?

Good - but it can get more complicated than that. In other words I hope you make it more complicated than that because if you don’t you are missing out big time.

The bullet points above show a very simplistic picture of how you should graph your People Influencing Strategy.

Let’s look at the following case study:

My last post had viral elements that made it a Stumbleupon success. I am receiving a steady stream of traffic from Stumbleupon.

I am a bit annoyed that even though I am receiving all this traffic, I am not getting anything out of it. They are not subscribing, they are not converting, they are not commenting on my blog. All they do (and I don’t complain) is thumb up my blog on SU and some of them review me.

I guess this could result in some links and there’s always added value that I won’t be able to measure right away, but I’d like to take better advantage of the situation.

This is what I would do in this situation - Part I (The General Outline):

Analyze your post and the stream of traffic carefully and try to find out what exactly made it viral.

You need to know what is it about your post that made it a SU hit. Was it the use of an image? The headline? The humor? The quality of the research included in your post?

Decide what you want to do with them.

Get them to subscribe? Vote you on Digg? Fave you on Technorati? Join your group on Facebook? Befriend you on Mybloglog? This step is crucial and it will be a direct consequence of your conclusions in step 1 above.

Once you know why they liked you and you know what you want from them, get them to do what you want.

Craft a little message specifically for them. Give them more of what they like. Ask them to do something for you.

They are reading you because they think you have something worth their time, so some of them will do what you ask.

This is what I would do in this situation - Part II (The Example):

Analyze your post and the stream of traffic carefully and try to find out what exactly made it viral.

Let’s say my post had a wonderful eye pleasing image of a beach sunset. I took this picture with my camera when I went surfing to Brazil with my school mates. The picture captured the essence of the moment, the sunset, the surfers still going at it, you can almost listen to the swaying sound of the sea if you close your eyes for a sec.

I think it’s pretty obvious what drew the attention of SU surfers to my post. So what does this tell me about my audience?

They like beautiful inspiring pictures, especially those that have to do with the beach and with surfing.

They may also be keen on surf and possibly have an affection for outdoors in general.

Decide what you want to do with them.

Given what I know about them, I will figure out what can I get these people to do for me. Let’s see, here are some ideas:

• I could recommend them my Flickr group where I added more pictures like this one.
• I could tell them about Sojjo and get them to sign up and befriend me.
• I could just tell them that I will keep making posts like this one so they better subscribe or bookmark my blog before it gets lost in their temp folders (right - I wouldn’t phrase it that way)
• I could ask them to link to my site if they have a blog. If they do I have some goodie for them that they will like.

Once you know why they liked you and you know what you want from them, get them to do what you want.

This is up to you and how you decide it’s better to execute the ideas above. Usability rules apply. Write a little message where you know they’ll see it and won’t spoil their experience. Or make it a graphic. Or make a Youtube video and embed it on your sidebar.

It’s up to you how you deliver your message. Just make sure it fits your audience.

In case you missed that last bit: Make sure it fits your audience

So next you check your stats and you find out that you are receiving a new stream of traffic from a unique source ask yourself if you are taking full advantage of this. Understand what they want and why they are looking at your blog. Crack that code and move your troops in the direction you want. Get this right and you’ll be able to make people do what you want (Vote your stories on Digg, join your groups on social network sites, the possibilities are endless.)

Now if you consider this post was worth reading, I need to ask you for a favor. It’s not money, don’t worry. Do you see that blue button a few centimeters down, to your right? That’s a Sphinn button. I want you to click on it. If you don’t have an account on Sphinn you can sign up for one in less than one minute. It doesn’t hurt one bit. Once you are logged you’ll be able to click on that button and vote for my story.

Alternatively you can use your Stumble Upon toolbar and review and thumb up this page. Once you did this I want you to look at the top right corner of this blog (you may have to scroll up) and click where it says Full RSS Feed

Sigh… it feels good to act like a War General

By the way, do you need a linkbait writer?

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