Search Engine Optimization

Social bookmarking refers to posting links to your website content on websites that store, organize, and manage bookmarks, such as Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Propeller.    Some claim that social bookmarking helps you achieve high search engine rankings in a short amount of time, but is it really worth it?

To put it simply, yes.  Social bookmarking is worthwhile because it increases the number of backlinks to your website.  Link building is one of the most important SEO techniques out there, and for keywords with moderate to low competition, social bookmarking can quickly improve your website’s search engine rankings.  To ensure that your social bookmarking efforts actually complement your link building strategy, use only social bookmarking sites with the dofollow attribute.

Another benefit of social bookmarking is that it widens your audience.  Social bookmarking allows you to publicize your website’s content in order to attract more readers.  If your content is well received, you could get more bookmarks from other users, and ultimately, more links.  If your website or article gets bookmarked many times and reaches the top page of a bookmarking website, it could bring hordes of traffic to your website.

Generally speaking, the traffic that you get from social bookmarking websites isn’t high quality.  Users of social bookmarking sites usually click on the links, take a quick look at the content, and then leave.  But their bookmarks make a difference because they give your website more authority in other people’s eyes and help you build a larger following.  The more people there are who know about your site, the more likely you are to receive visits to your website from potential customers.

Tips for Maximizing Your Social Bookmarking Efforts

Make sure you insert a link to your sales page or product page in your content.  While it’s essential to write great content in order to promote your website on social bookmarking sites, if your ultimate goal is to get more customers and sales, you should casually link back to your sales page in your article, as well.  Don’t submit content to social bookmarking sites that is a blatant sales pitch, but don’t create good content just for the sake of creating good content, either.  Your content should serve a higher purpose.  If you include a link back to your sales page or product page, potential customers who are interested in what you have to offer will click through.

To make your social bookmarks easier to find and to help them rank better for target keywords, make sure that you add relevant keywords and keyword phrases to the bookmarks in the form of tags.  Some social bookmarking sites allow you to include an unlimited number of tags.

You can make it even easier for people to share your content on social bookmarking sites by adding share buttons to your content.  If you use a blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger on your website, you can upload a plug-in that adds share graphics to your website.  All that your readers have to do is click on an icon in order to bookmark your article or blog post on a social bookmarking site.

Just be cautious about bookmarking your content excessively on social bookmarking sites.  Spamming bookmarking sites could lead your site to get penalized by the search engines, which would defeat the whole purpose of your bookmarking campaign!