The exponential growth of Web 2.0, Community-based and Social
Networking sites and their associated operations targeting high
audience volumes has opened an interesting new channel for
promotion of your website, but submission of relevant content
from your site can sometimes produce surprising results.

Assuming the basic tenets of SEO are followed, if your site is
relevant and on-topic, can be categorized, is user friendly and
holds the users interest, these encyclopedic sites can be a
useful source of relevant site traffic from users who are more
than happy to pigeonhole themselves into convenient categories,
often filling out foot-long profiles for the privilege of
participating and meeting people with similar interests. Being
moderated and used by humans, however, you may find traffic to
your site coming from unexpected sources, as users tag your site
with labels you may not have thought of. Some analysis of the
links to your site from referrers such as Digg, del.icio.us,
reddit etc. can be a Garden of Eden of new ideas, because they
come from real users and reflect the way they view your site
content, rather than the way you want them to view it.
Careful analysis of how real users tag your content can help you
in (at least) two ways - firstly as a dynamic, evolving
Thesaurus, providing you with a constantly rejuvenating crop of
free-association keywords to promote and pepper your site with,
and secondly as an honest wake-up call that perhaps your articles
are straying off-topic. A little reflection on this over time can
help you hone your content and may in some cases open new avenues
of promotion, and its all free, and provided by your users!

Cross-pollination of tags and labels

Users of Community-based sites can often be somewhat insular,
and once they have found a niche on one particular site may tend
to focus their concentrations on that site to the exclusion of
others. This can mean that users of one site develop their own
specific jargon over time, and terms which are relevant but
rarely used on one site are commonplace on another. By nurturing
and sowing these 'seeds' and using them in your site (even to the
point of word substitution if this is appropriate), you can open
up less-traversed paths (excuse the tenuous garden analogy),
perhaps to fertile new territory. Simply adopting some of the
language of your users can be enough to inure you into their
group, much as a gardener who takes the time to learn the
taxonomy of her favorite plant family gains an insight into the
relationships and subtle variations in the various strains of the
plant unattainable by any other means.

So make the time to take a stroll through your Google
Analytics backyard from time to time, even if its not your
specialist area - it can be a refreshing and insightful journey.
Amongst the weeds and wildflowers you may well find a Narcissus
papyraceus (White lily) or Hymenocallis liriosme
(Texan Spider Lily) you never knew you had!