What is it?
Social Bookmarking is sometimes referred to as Web Marketing 2.0. For search engine optimization purposes, it refers to a system for the public to see which “headlines” of content are the most popular
across the Internet. For example, the website Digg.com displays the most popular articles/stories on it’s home page and a visitor has a chance to “like it,” or “Digg it,” which further boosts the popularity of that article. If you are wondering why this is important for SEO reasons, imagine that are a search engine for a minute. The search engine indexing program (spider) will frequently index these high value (PageRank for example) websites and they are able to easily tell what the public is most interested in. As a result, when a related search occurs, the engine will reward this article with a higher placement in the search results. Basically, social bookmarking is a great way to build inbound links (backlinks) to your website.
How do I do it?
There are many popular social bookmarking websites, to include but not limited to: Mixx, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Diigo, Blinklist and Google Bookmarks. You can sign up for a free account and begin bookmarking pages on your website or blog posts you may have written. Be sure to use catchy headlines when creating your stories as they entice someone to want to learn more about your story. Word of caution: Don’t spam! For example, don’t submit the same story to 25 bookmarking sites. I like to submit my best articles to the highest ranked sites like this: 1 story: 1 site. For less important work, they are submitted to the lower rated bookmarking sites. Also, be sure to use the social media plugins available which allow the user to more easily bookmark your work.
Get started!
As you can see, social bookmarking is a good way to boost popularity of your content and to also build high value backlinks to your website. In addition, there is no substitute for quality content! Take your time and create content which can be of value for the reader and you will be rewarded with higher traffic and visibility in the search results.
About the Author: Rhett DeMille, the owner of PalmettoSoft, is a leading search engine optimization consultant located in the Florida and Greater Carolina areas.
