SEO Tips and Best Practices for Tumblr Blogs – WebFX
If your business markets to a young demographic, you’d be wise to look into the microblogging platform. Tumblr hosts 200 million blogs, which post a collective 80 million posts per day. If you count both registered and unregistered visitors, the site gets 300 million unique visitors per month.
That being said, simply creating an account likely won’t be enough to get users to find you. Doing SEO for Tumblr can be a huge help, and can help you build a strong following of potential customers.
If you’d like to speak with a specialist about Tumblr, you can reach us at 888-601-5359.
How does Tumblr work?
If you’re completely unfamiliar with Tumblr, it’s a microblogging platform. That means that users can post text, photos, videos, and other content to a short-form blog. They can also follow other users and see updates in a news feed much like other social platforms.
Microblogging has gained popularity over the last few years, as people don’t want to deal with the hassle of setting up a blog and then finding ways to promote it. Instead of sharing links to posts on other sites, users’ posts are immediately shown to their followers.
Another important distinction to make is that unlike many social platforms, Tumblr is more about self-expression than it is about connecting. Yes, Tumblr connects users. But a user’s Tumblr provides a more detailed snapshot into his or life than a profile, as they post videos, content, images, and memes that resonate with them.
For users who are only on the platform for personal purposes, creating and curating content is the only goal. But if you want to use it for marketing purposes, you’ll need to put in some work to make sure that people can actually find it. That’s where SEO for Tumblr becomes important.
The advantage of working with Tumblr
Aside from the fact that it can allow you to reach a young demographic, Tumblr has the advantage for marketers of dofollow links. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it means that links from Tumblr carry SEO value—which isn’t the case for many social sites.
Platforms like Facebook and Twitter automatically make all of their links nofollow. This means that while they look and function like regular links to users, they do not have any impact on your search engine rankings.
This means that posting links to your site on Tumblr could potentially boost your rankings in search engines. And not only that, but users can “reblog” posts, or post them to their own page, which means you can have dofollow links on a variety of Tumblr blogs. This can lead to a great deal of exposure for your website.
click here to see the entirety of our infographic on why tumblr matters to marketing!
3 tips on SEO for Tumblr
While Tumblr’s dofollow links do offers a unique advantage, it doesn’t offer all of the built in tools for on-page SEO like WordPress and other popular platforms. This means that you’ll have to do a little bit more of the work on your own.
So how can you get started?
1. Check your title tags
Much like a regular web page, each post you make on Tumblr has an individual title tag. By default, it will usually just be the first few words of your post. In order to increase the chances of your posts and Tumblr being found in search engines, customize these title tags much like you (hopefully) do on your regular site.
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2. Create custom URLs
The default URLs for your Tumblr posts will be long strings of numbers, which isn’t ideal for SEO. By clicking the gear-shaped icon in the top right of the post creator, you can create a custom URL for each individual post. Format these much like you would on your regular site as a best practice.
3. Aim for reblogs
I mentioned earlier that Tumblr’s links are dofollow, even on other users’ blogs. Because of this, it will benefit you to have as many people as possible reblog your posts and share them with their own followers.
The best way to do this is to spend some time getting to know your audience. This will make it much easier to meet their preferences and make them want to share your content with their friends and followers.
Other best practices
As you work on your company’s Tumblr blog, there are a few other considerations to keep in mind. Although these won’t necessarily directly impact your SEO, they will certainly be useful in building a following. This can lead to more reblogs, which will affect your SEO.
1. Use hashtags
Many Tumblr users find new content with the site’s built-in search function. This can be a great way to get found, as long as you properly tag your posts.
Unlike search engines like Google, Tumblr does not use advanced algorithms to deliver search results. Instead, it relies on the tags users put on their posts. Because of this, adding tags to your posts can be extremely effective in getting new users to see your content.
That being said, make sure that they are actually relevant. If you’re a tech company, don’t just tag your posts with words like “cats” or “pizza” just because you think Tumblr users are searching for them. They are, but you’ll only irritate the users who are shown your content when looking for something completely different.
2. Keep it simple
Don’t go overboard with SEO on Tumblr. This might sound strange coming from a page written entirely about optimizing on the platform, but keep in mind that it should be used to connect with users and generate brand awareness. While it can be useful in attracting new customers, you won’t do yourself any favors by focusing solely on keywords and tags.
Instead, focus on providing interesting and useful content. This is more in line with Tumblr’s style, and will help you build a following.
Are you ready to start an SEO campaign for your Tumblr blog?
Although Tumblr is very different from other platforms and will take some getting used to, it is certainly worth looking into. Its young demographic and dofollow links present unique value to marketers, and with the proper SEO for your Tumblr, you can attract new customers and clients.
If you’re thinking of starting a Tumblr for your company, or already have one and just need help optimizing it for search engines, feel free to contact us! Our talented team can help you start using the platform to generate brand awareness and reach an entirely new audience today.
How to Use Tumblr for SEO and Social Media Marketing – Moz
The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of introduction to Tumblr
There are so many social media platforms out there today that online marketers have to be concerned about when promoting content online, that it can be easy to overlook some of the important ones.
Tumblr is one of those social networks which is often overlooked, but which has tremendous potential for SEO and social media marketing. I myself was slow to adopt Tumblr as a social media platform, but once I started using it I became hooked by its power and simplicity. Hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll feel the same.
In this post today I will be covering 1) What Tumblr is and how it works, 2) The benefits of Tumblr compared to other social networks, and 3) Actionable advice on how you can use Tumblr for online marketing, including specific content ideas.
Sounds good? Let’s get started.
Why should I care about Tumblr?
Before we get too far, let me provide some stats about Tumblr which should help put things into perspective:
130. 5 million blogs on Tumblr, as of August 201328th highest traffic site on the web according to Comscore300 million unique monthly visitors according to Yahoo50% of Tumblr users are under the age of 2553. 5% of Tumblr visitors are female
As you can see, the numbers are massive. There are now over 130 million Tumblr blogs (known as “tumblrogs”), which makes Tumblr the largest hosted blog platform on the web, compared to the 70 million blogs hosted on It has 300 million monthly visitors, basically 15% of all Internet users. And it has a demographic that is unique in that 50% of the users are under 25, many of whom are teenagers (whereas teens are reportedly ditching Facebook in droves).
Big brands have taken notice of this too. In May, Yahoo purchased Tumblr for $1. 1 billion (the largest purchase of a consumer Internet company since Google bought YouTube), and many of the world’s largest brands already have a presence on Tumblr.
Clearly, if you’re not on Tumblr by now, you’re falling behind the curve.
What is Tumblr?
So what the heck is this Tumblr thing anyway? It can be hard to describe Tumblr because it combines the functionality of many different kinds of sites.
The way I like to think of Tumblr is as a cross between WordPress and Facebook– Tumblr has all the blogging functionality of a blog platform such as WordPress, but also includes all the features of a social site such as hashtags, following, sharing, and liking. Tumblr is similar to Pinterest in many ways, except instead of multiple boards you have a single blog.
So although Tumblr is one of the most popular blogging (or microblogging) platforms on the web, it goes beyond just being a blog and allows users to share and like each other’s content, follow other Tumblr blogs, and discover new content through hashtags. It’s a blog platform with built-in social functionality and incredible viral potential.
The benefits of Tumblr
Ok, so now we have a better idea of what Tumblr is and why it’s important, but what are the benefits of Tumblr compared to other social networks and blogging platforms? There are 5 key benefits:
1) Dofollow links
First the biggie. Links from Tumblr, unlike most other social networks are dofollow. Tumblr is at its core a blogging platform, and you have full control of how your tumblrog appears, including using dofollow links on your site.
Where things get interesting is when you consider the social aspect of Tumblr. Tumblr has social sharing functionality (called “reblogging” in Tumblr parlance) built right in, and if you have a popular post it will be reposted to many other tumblrogs.
The thing is that each of these reblogs is a dofollow backlink to your original post! That means if you have a post that is reblogged 100 times, your tumblr blog just got 100 dofollow backlinks! For even more fun, you can include a link within the post itself. By doing so, both your original post on Tumblr, and the site linked to within the post will receive the backlinks.
Just imagine if every time your content got shared on Facebook, all those shares were dofollow backlinks. Wouldn’t that be nice? With Tumblr, this is the case. The same is also true with Google+ (Pinterest also recently dofollowed their links), but Tumblr has a more active user community and it’s much easier to have your content go viral on Tumblr.
Of course, you will want to be careful about what kind of anchor text you’re using in this post-Penguin world, but if you’re looking for some easy, dofollow backlinks, Tumblr is the place to get them.
2) Great content discovery
Another great benefit of Tumblr is that it has a great content discovery system built into it, thanks to its use of hashtags. If you’re ever looking for great images or memes, try searching Tumblr for the hashtag, and you’ll find some good material.
The great thing about Tumblr is that people actually use hashtags for content discovery (unlike, say, Facebook). This means that by using relevant and popular tags, it’s super easy for your content to get discovered on Tumblr, even if you don’t have many followers.
I have literally created brand new tumblrogs from scratch, and received dozens of reblogs for my content, even though I had zero followers. And remember, on Tumblr reblogs are dofollow backlinks. This is definitely not the case on social networks such as Facebook, where your content probably isn’t going to get a lot of love unless you already have a large number of followers.
3) Content testing ground
Another use for Tumblr is as a content testing ground. If you do a lot of social media marketing, you probably have tons of memes and images that you are considering posting to your Facebook page, or you if you create your own memes you may have different variations of a meme that you might want to test.
One of the ways that I like to use Tumblr is as a testing ground for new content that I’ve created. Tumblr’s dashboard is chronological like Twitter vs the more curated approach of Facebook’s news feed, and the upshot of this is that you can post a lot more content at once to Tumblr than you would want to on Facebook. Tumblr fans are more forgiving of less-than-outstanding content because they can simply scroll past it, similar to how users browse Pinterest.
This makes Tumblr a great place to post a lot of content to find which pieces perform the best. Then you can take the most popular pieces and repost them to your other social media profiles such as Facebook. And all the content you produce on Tumblr has a chance of being discovered later, thanks to the use of hashtags.
4) Microsites
Tumblr is the most popular microblogging platforms on the planet, which also makes it an ideal platform for setting up microsites. You won’t get the same amount of flexibility as you would with say a self-hosted WordPress blog, but tumblrogs are quick to set up, simple to manage, and free. And if you want to switch from using a subdomain to your own domain name, it’s easy to switch to a domain name you own in the Tumblr settings.
Using Tumblr for microsites is a great way to build up a collection of web properties with decent PageRank that you can then point back to your main site. If you consistently post high quality content, it’s easy to get these tumblrogs to PR2 – PR4 within a few months.
Microsites are also a great option if your main brand is super serious, and you don’t necessarily want to associate it with memes and other silly content that does well on Tumblr.
5) Branding Last, but certainly not least, Tumblr is another tool in your arsenal to promote your brand online. In addition to the other major social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr provides another opportunity for you to establish your web presence. It’s another chance for your to engage with fans, build relationships with potential customers, and get your brand name out there, especially if you want to target a younger demographic. As the online marketer Pat Flynn always says, the best marketing strategy online is to Be Everywhere.
Content ideas for Tumblr
Hopefully by now you’re convinced of what a great opportunity Tumblr is for link building, content marketing, and branding. You may have even gone ahead and created your own tumblrog. Good work. But what kind of content does well on Tumblr?
Tumblr, like most other social sites, is a visual medium. That means that captivating images and pictures will do better on Tumblr than long form text. If you’re already conducting successful social media campaigns on sites such as Facebook and Google+, then reusing the same content you’re posting there is a good strategy.
If you want some specific example of content to post on Tumblr, here are 4 types of content that I’ve found perform extremely well Tumblr:
1) Memes
Memes are my favorite type of content to promote on social media. Memes are just the ideal type of content for people to consume and share via social media channels, and they’re viral almost by definition. You can have a lot of success just by curating funny memes related to your niche that you find across the web, but the greatest potential lies in creating your own. If you want to try your hand at making memes with some serious viral potential, check out this post I wrote for the Moz blog.
2) Photos/illustrations
As with Pinterest and Facebook, compelling images are some of the most popular pieces of content on Tumblr. This is especially true since there is a huge userbase of teenagers with attention spans that are shorter than even most Twitter addicts.
Creating great photos isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible to do if you have a access to a DSLR. Even if your camera equipment isn’t up to snuff, apps such as Instagram can take your ordinary photos and give them a vintage feel that appeals to the teen and hipster demographic.
Drawings and illustrations also do very well on Tumblr, and if you have an in-house graphic design team, definitely leverage that. Even if you don’t have graphical talent, you can go to sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, and DeviantArt to get custom artwork created for you that’s specific to your niche.
If all else fails, you can just curate other people’s photos and artwork and see some results, but always be mindful of any copyright issues, and give credit where credit is due.
3) Quotes
Quotes are an amazingly easy type of content to create that surprisingly few marketers are taking advantage of. Quotes are great because they’re simple to create, even if you don’t even have any graphical talent. Just take an inspirational quote, put it over an attractive image (or even just a plain background), and you suddenly have a piece of content that can go viral not just on Tumblr, but on sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+ as well. It’s super easy.
4) Animated GIFs
Like Google+, Tumblr allows you to use animated GIFs in your posts. These are incredibly popular with Tumblr users.
Now, creating animated GIFs is beyond my abilities, but it’s really simple to just take existing animated GIFs, add a clever caption to them, and post them on your tumblrog. Instant backlinks, guaranteed.
When my client asks me why their rankings fluctuate every day, I’m like…
For a great example of this, check out the This Advertising Life Tumblr. It’s an incredibly funny site, and has a PageRank of 5 to boot. You can easily find great animated GIFs to use by searching Tumblr for tags such as “animated GIF” or simply “GIF”. There are also sites such as ForGIFS which contain nothing but funny animated GIFs.
Wrap-up
Tumblr is one of the largest social media and blogging platforms in the world, yet it is often ignored by online marketers. Hopefully this post has showed you why you should add Tumblr to your marketing mix, as well as provided you with concrete content ideas you can use to drive success on your tumblrog.
I have built dozens of Tumblr blogs over the past year, and I can guarantee you that if you use the content ideas above, and post on a consistent basis, you will be able to build up a large following on Tumblr and build some strong backlinks to your sites, as well as promote your content and build your brand online.
If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments or hit me up on Twitter. You can also check out more of my ramblings on my blog. This post was adapted from a presentation I delivered at SMX Toronto.
Ten Ways in Which Your Tumblr Blog Can Help in SEO
Tumblr essentially functions as a secondary blog you can use solely for the purpose of SEO. You can send optimized links back to the main website, allowing your website’s reach to expand and incoming traffic to multiply. What makes Tumblr great for SEO is the inbuilt promotion and SEO-friendly features that it comes packed with by are 10 simple ways in which your Tumblr blog can serve SEO functions:1. It allows you to easily customize your domainTumblr facilitates easy customisation and integration of domain names. You can customise the URL of your account and, given the priority that search engines attribute to domain names, it is a good idea to do so. What’s best is that the customization procedure is simple, easy, and can be found right at the beginning, during the process of setting up an account. 2. Lets you define custom URLs for individual posts Not only can you easily customise your domain name, you can also define the URL for posts on your blog. With the “set a custom post URL” option under the tags box, Tumblr lets you optimize the URL to fare better in search results. 3. Provides “do-follow” links in all posts The links you add to all posts on your Tumblr blog are do-follow links, allowing you to increase traffic to your website through shared links. For example, when setting up an account, fill in the About section with interesting and inviting content. Post this, and with Tumblr you can add a link in the About content that links back to your website. 4. You can have custom HTML postsHTML codes are the most search engine friendly and with Tumblr you can post in the actual custom HTML format. 5. Allows you to optimize Alt and Title AttributesWith Tumblr you can optimize the Alt Attributes for images to fare better in search results. Similarly, with easy customization options for Title Attributes, Tumblr helps you rank higher in the search engines results page. 6. You can optimize posts with keywordsTumblr allows you to add keywords as tags to your posts. This helps in improving page ranks and ensure that your blog post appears at the top of search results, provided you effectively identify keywords that work. 7. Allows you to promote yourself and improves visibility Tumblr features several promotional elements that are very conducive to SEO. With the ‘Reblog’ option available with each post, your content can be shared easily across several platforms. Then there is the ‘Like’ option. When you “like” a post on a certain blog, Tumblr adds a note accompanied by a link to your Tumblr account, on the blog that featured the post. 8. Drives traffic towards your Tumblr posts The Keyword tags discussed earlier, along with all the other features of Tumblr make it an effective platform to enhance virtual visibility. If you are looking to increase traffic to you websites, back-linking blogs on Tumblr to your main website could prove to be the perfect solution. 9. Helps discover great content Tumblr has a great content discovery system wired in its frame. With the availability of hashtags for searching content, you do not need to have a number of followers for your content to be discovered. Great content on Tumblr can get discovered and shared a number of times, despite having zero followers. 10. Benefits of both Facebook and WordPress Tumblr packs the blogging functionality of WordPress and the social features of Facebook allowing you to optimise your main website for increased search engine ranking using a wide array of content and content sharing features. You can blog about anything right from marketing tips and tricks, and real estate information to the weight-loss benefits of green coffee bean extract, and then simply add do-follow links, and optimised keywords to achieve a higher ranking on search results.
Frequently Asked Questions about tumbler seo
Is Tumblr good for SEO?
Tumblr essentially functions as a secondary blog you can use solely for the purpose of SEO. … Tumblr facilitates easy customisation and integration of domain names. You can customise the URL of your account and, given the priority that search engines attribute to domain names, it is a good idea to do so.Nov 2, 2013
Is Tumblr good for backlinks?
That means if you have a post that is reblogged 100 times, your tumblr blog just got 100 dofollow backlinks! For even more fun, you can include a link within the post itself. By doing so, both your original post on Tumblr, and the site linked to within the post will receive the backlinks.Sep 18, 2013
Is Tumblr good for marketing?
Tumblr is a great site that you can use to market your brand online, and provides tons of opportunities to establish and grow your brand presence. Many brands have slowly recognized the power of Tumblr as a marketing resource, and have started adopting it as a platform for their businesses.Apr 16, 2019