Many of us who have been doing the hybrid search/social game for long enough remember what it was like to discover Tumblr. I got in pretty early and was able to get Social News as one of my Tumblogs, a pretty decent subdomain that is (unfortunately) completely underutilized and really just focuses on my Instagram pictures. That doesn't mean that you have to sit around and let Tumblr not work well for you.

SocialMediaToday community contributor Mark Scott posted an interesting piece about using Tumblr as an SEO tool. While there are things in there that aren't 100% correct such as the concept that all "links you add to all posts on your Tumblr blog are do-follow links" (some are nofollow), but otherwise he gives very sound advice about how to use the platform for something that it's frankly not very good at for its own self: SEO.

Yes, it's a great SEO tool and yes, it's possible to optimize a Tumblog to do well in search, but it's the benefits that it can bring to other websites where the real juice can come into play. As a supporting site, it's great for search as long as the content is strong and you're able to build up a decent following.

Here's what he said on Social Media Today:

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 default.

Read More: Social Media Today