Social bookmarking sites have been some of the largest traffic makers in the past 3 years. Major players like Reddit, Digg, and the new Chime.in offer instant access to hundreds of new stories, multimedia, and news updates every second for an online browser. This style of “instant information” has become very popular with high speed and fast paced internet users throughout the world. Reddit is showing their popularity by being currently ranked #47th for traffic on Alexa's top United States websites.
So what does social bookmarking offer to your blog?
Web presence, brand awareness, social networking, and search engine optimization all come to mind when thinking of the benefits from a smart social media campaign. All of these sites have millions of users and are an easy outlet for your blog, small business, or corporation to reach out and engage with your niche, market, and peers. Unless your selling pet rocks or blogging about Alpacas, you'll find hundreds of topics and posts going on that are relevant to your website in some way. Start engaging with your peers and the current top posters of the site, this helps establish your profile as authentic and you don't just want to spam or post links constantly. Reputation management needs to be your guide as you interact online and represent your website by submitting posts and adding comments.
When you first create a profile and get online, look at the conversations that are going on in the top posts, main pages, and popular browsing areas. Notice how the leading topics contain a “hook” or catchy phrase/tagline that immediately brings a reader in. You want your title to announce to your readers a few things: the theme, an emotional grab, and hopefully some imagery or video. Youtube has proven how important media is to improve the user quality of a post or page on the web.. If you can get original images and videos make sure to use them, you'll have a lot more chance at getting your bookmarks to go viral and become incredible link bait for you.
What are social bookmarks?
- 150 or less character title
- 200-750 word descriptions
- Image and Video uploads
- Add URL for source of content
How do they help your SEO campaign?
- Gain strong backlinks to deep pages on your domain
- Keywords in titles, descriptions, URL
- Submit bookmarks to relevant categories and keywords, improving your authority and association with specific niche(s)
- Top sites have 10,000's of browsers per category which can be converted into traffic for your website
- Diversify your campaign with at least 10 social bookmarking sites
- Don't just rely on search engine traffic, get additional traffic from all the sources you can
What NOT to do!
- Â Don't spam!
- Never post your main domain more than once per site, link to inner pages/posts
- Always fill in all title, description, and text fields completely
- Keep it unique, mix it up
- Don't ONLY post your domain, link to other interests and sites around the web so you don't look like some automated spammer
What are some social bookmarking sites?
- Scrolldit
- Digg
- Diigo
- Brightkite
- Newsvine
- Faves
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- Delicious
It is vital to any search engine optimization campaign that you include social media networking. Bookmarking is an easy way to get started into new conversations and engage with online users immediately. You don't need 15 likes, you don't need to write a few essays worth of content to get any views, all you need to do is to comment on others work and submit your own. Honestly it can be very entertaining to browse these sites as well, get involved and have conversations that have worth about your market, industry, products, etc. You can establish some solid reputation on the top sites by doing this and gain a lot of bonus traffic from comment readers. Just remember to take the time and effort to add worthwhile substance when submitting your own content, think about what the end-user appreciates and is looking for.
This is only one part of a diverse internet marketing campaign that you should be trying to update and optimize every week for your sites. Google expects to see consistency in your blog releases, social media connections, and distribution of original content. Keep writing new pages and posts, design and create custom video and images, then be sure to integrate all of your unique and original work online. Regular social bookmarking can do just that, improving your social signals for Google and eventually increasing your rankings. Also, do not forget to do some serious keyword research on your niche, market, or industry, before writing content and submitting to social bookmarking sites around the web.
Thanks for the great list. Social network has now become an indispensable part of Internet marketing.
Hence the reason why Google included their plus 1 service, as they realized the importance of social media sites for bookmarking and recommending content. The most important thing to note, as you mentioned, is that you need to present your content in an engaging and captivating manner so as to get folks to share it.
Cheers!
I agree… Google had to get on the band wagon with Social bookmarking as they realized how big it was getting! 🙂
Speaking of Google Plus, make sure to connect your Google Plus profile with your blog/website. Promote your authorship and original content.
that’s exactly why I love creating content and sharing content on social networking sites and elsewhere on the World Wide Web 🙂
Nice post. There’s no question that social media is just as important as any SEO attempts these days. If your content never gets shared, it probably won’t rank high.
Darren
The key to a good Social Bookmark is in the quality of the account making the submission. The fewer (to an extent) and the more relevant each bookmark is, the more powerful the backlink becomes. (that’s probably not the technical term for how it works, but that’s what I have experienced) so this is what you need to do.
* Create Accounts on 20 – 50 High Ranking and preferably do follow sites.
* Keep these accounts spam free, that is – only bookmark relevant and quality sites (apart from your own of course)
* Each time we create a new page or post on our site we will bookmark it with these accounts.
Good points Shamelle, it is worth taking the time and building your network of social media sites. Some times it can seem tedious, but Google is always looking for social signals throughout the web and you’ll see positive results over time.
I like your submission. I have tried few social bookmarking sites but your list is very helpful. I am able to know about new ones.
Thanks a lot
Social Bookmarking is definitely an important part of the picture when it comes to getting your articles found. Even if you don’t receive direct traffic many of these social bookmarking sites give do follow links. While this is not enough to your backlinking strategy in toto, social bookmarking is definitely an important part of the equation.
Hi Steve,
I’ve noticed many people who use social bookmarking just for do-follow links not interesting in sharing interesting stuff and hence they’re increasing spamming in some way.
That is why it’s best to create new and unique content that is specific for each distribution channel your using for SEO. Write a media heavy (image/video) post for social bookmarking, add catchy titles and a good hook for more views. Or, create a long, deep text post with simple images for press releases and article sites.
Now a days it isn’t worth it to spin content, so create unique contributions for each website your submitting too.
Once you learn how to use Social Networks to your advantage, you can take control of that power and use it to build yourself and your site/blog’s reputation to the required level that you can then use to generate a high income online.
I’ve only heard of Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg, the rest are new to me, thanks for sharing Mason, gonna check them out. 😀
as a newbie i really see the change between using a social bookmarking and nothing at all…
thanks for this superb learning..
I also really like social monke. It is a great bookmarking site.
A lot of the popular ones take a ton of promotion to get traffic from these days but they can be a major source if you can get it on the home page. Guess you could always buy a featured listing.
Hey Mason,
Social Bookmarking is one of the backlinking strategies I run for all my sites. Not only can it provide decent backlinks, you might gain direct traffic from the sites as well. For backlinking purpose, I highly recommend to use automation tool to do the submission of at least outsource it for a cheap rate, else it will be a painful job. If you target for viral effect, it might good to just submit to 2 or 3 sites such as SU, Digg, Delicious…
Cheers,
Ming
Great tips Mason. I especially like the list of social bookmarking sites.
It’s always good to diversify. Thanks.
i think traffic and visitors are very important for a website to get traffic from social bookmarking.with out have any traffic + visitors social bookmarking is not work .i think may i correct . nice points 🙂
Social bookmarking really played a big part on generating traffic for you site. If we are just eager enough to extend our effort it will surely pay off at the end of the day
I find SU really great for social bookmarking, even though some people have often used it for spamming. It just sheds a bad light on all of us who try to use it properly. The only thing I want to say about social bookmarking, especially SU and Twitter, is that good content often goes unnoticed in favour of the people who’ve got a large following.
I suppose the thing to do is to get a large following yourself 🙂 This is not possible for everyone, unfortunately. Like you said (and I totally agree). Social bookmarking can give you the opportunity to get all your stuff from one place through interlinking. Google + is great for that.
Its tough to be the leader in views/followers on the ALL of the top social media sites, so I always try to pick one focus. Right now Chime.in is providing some extra traffic for one of my niche sites, I joined early and create new content just for the Chimes.
Hi Mason,
I’ve tried few social bookmarking sites but not getting any success from it. I don’t get any like or any traffic this seems like really time wasting and efforts.
I mean what’s the correct way to start as you have told that you should comment and like other’s bookmark first and start building some relation so that means it’s going to take huge amount of time before seeing any result and chances are that you only get untargeted traffic as people would comment and like your bookmarks as you’ve done that same.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, and don’t feel that I’m trying to hurt you anyway… I’m just want to learn.
Yup, it is a lot more competitive out there now a days and you have to be able to put in the time and energy to be successful. It won’t happen overnight, but you can definitely gain more followers and helpful SEO benefits from consistently utilizing social media sites over time. Look for the main leaders in your niche/market, and get involved in their conversations and posts.
Social bookmarking is necessary as much as social networking. Though I am not too much into social bookmarking but now I have to do it as you have pointed out some really helpful points for SEO.
Thanks for the list, I was using Bookmarkdofollow and Delicious but something seems wrong with both sites, so out with the old and I’ll try Reddit and look at Chime, thanks.
A good article on social bookmarking!
Thank you a lot for you sharing and so kind to provide this list. I could find useful information never know before.
Reddit is insanely picky about its links though. Stumble upon is good so far. Twitter and others are a flop for me.
Thanks everyone for the great input & thanks Mason for the list. I can see how using it can help establish a strong presence.
Social bookmarking is a great way to rank high…great info 🙂 funny quotes
I beleive that sooner or later social networking and bookmarking will be the best way to generate organic traffic with mass backlinks that don’t get flagged. The recent updates of Google Inc.’s algorithm have been starting to show that, giving little credit press release and creating pagerank evaporation.
Social media is definitely something you should explore, not only for traffic but also to build some connections
Social bookmarks are definitely something a webmaster needs to look into. Better yet, finding a way to make those links viral is the way to go. But it’s certainly not easy to achieve.
Hi, thanks for your list! social bookmarking does work and something that has to be done
Facts are true.Social Bookmarking helped me a lot during the times when organic search results went down.
Social bookmarking helps becasue bookmarking sites has really good traffic.
Hi there! Thanks for these tips. I just want to say that Delicious is not so good at it was before their update. It is not so convenient and there are many users who are banned. Probably it’s their temporary problem. I hope so )
social bookmarking helps to rank up your blog in search engine and moreover at the same time we get backlinks from that social bookmarking sites. 🙂
most of the social bookmarking are nofollow, choosing do follow social bookmarking sites will boost up your ranking within 15 days, i have experienced it personally. if you cant bookmark each and every post daily,then buying onlywire type of packages can help you to great extent.
Hey Mason,
I have been recently bookmarking some sites, articles, videos, and posts. But I did not know that it would give us the authority unto them. Another knowledge for me, and it worth my time reading this article of yours. Thanks.
Actually I was not aware about the huge benefits of the social bookmarking and I will definitely increase social bookmarks in future. Thanks for the excellent post.
Well, i helps me a lot and i usually submit the blog post on my main website and submit the blog links in the social bookmarking with same title. it helps me a lot in getting backlinks as well as indexing the pages more faster.
Scrolldit
Chime.in
Brightkite
Also thanks for the above three, i never stumbled with any of them:
~Aansy Stone
great blog!!!! i live social bookmarking mainly because it helps bookmarking sites and has really good traffic.
Yup, the internet is changing, fast! There’s a new way of doing things online, the social way. I for one am quite happy about the sudden boost of social media and networking in the past few years. I think it has brought a lot more non-tech people to the internet. More to market to, more human eyes to eradicate spam and more reason to keep upgrading the online world!
Social bookmarking plays a huge role in your blog too! There are actually a lot of them.
Agree!!! I used social bookmarking to help rank up my sites and it never fails me… HAIL to Social Book Marking Sites!!!
Hi Mason
Got to agree that bookmarking is an essential part of anyones SEO strategy. Some of the sites I use are Delicious, Jumptags, LinkaGoGo to name a few. I usually bookmark most new posts after a day or two, this gives nice links to my inner pages.
@ Ileane,
oh okay. Sorry about that. I automatically assumed it was okay, as I do that sometimes on Lisa Irby site. I’ll slow my role..LOL (smile)
I don’t mind a link if it’s relevant, but in that case I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with the conversation 🙂
I understand where you’re coming from with that. Being that the post was about YouTube, that was the reason why I had included the link in the comments section here. Maybe I should’ve searched for a more relevant link on my site that was YouTube related, but now I know just leave the link in the website box section…( smile)… LOL!
🙂
I have a quick question about social bookmarking sites. I know that only wire helps to syndicate content to stop social bookmarking sites for free, but they have a limit now it’s only 300 before you have to pay. I know of ping.FM, but I don’t know how to set up custom API triggers, in order to have pages from any website or blog sent to top social networks, like only wire does it.
Do you think Ping.FM is just as effective or more effective than onlywire? And, if you do have experience with setting up services on Ping.FM, how does one go about potentially setting up the API custom triggers properly? 🙂
Thank you so much for your time and helping me to progressively move forward on this “social bookmarking” topic 🙂
after reading more of this post on social bookmarking and building up your online reputation, I just had to double back and stated it was definitely a good read here 🙂
Yes, after much experience online through trial and error, I too have learned that reputation building in a positive way can pay off when especially focusing on commenting on others’ work. In addition, I also noted that posting frequently and distributing content to top social bookmarking services is also a way to get genuine instant traffic, back links and improved search engine optimization, while not relying on just search engine traffic alone, like you said 🙂
For three years social bookmarking remains to be one of the best SEO strategies on the web.
Noel,
You mentioned three years of social bookmarking success. Are you referring to your site using social bookmarking for three years? 🙂
Thank you for providing this knowledge because I often wondered about the value of social bookmarking. I’m going to look into this.
Excellent article and it is very useful to use social bookmarking for making the authority site.
So thankful that i have read this great article about social bookmarking, I’m working those sites that you have mention, posting websites specially digg.com is my favorite. Social Bookmarking are easy to post what you want to share.
A good way for sites or articles to get known is submitting to social bookmarking sites, so submitting should be as easy as possible for your visitors.
Nice post. I haven’t tried Chime.in yet, and the reviews I’ve read about it are a mixed bag, at best. I liked the old Mixx and was a bit annoyed to find it up and gone and completely revamped. Oddly enough, many of the social bookmarking plugins still have the Mixx button available as an option. You’d think that — being in the business of social media — they would have figured out that it went bye-bye. Perhaps they were confused by the “We’ll be back!” message Mixx had up.
Social Bookmarking is known by the bloggers who make blogs. I’m looking forward to it when I do read of that. I have a lot of things to read about for future purposes.
social bookmarking is definitely the way to go if you’re looking to meaningfully build your online visibility 🙂
This is a great post. I’m a loyal fan of reddit. I really love their democratic system of up-voting and down-voting. Thanks for this post.
Great post! No doubt, social bookmarking sites are really helpful when it comes to traffic. But with so many social bookmarking sites out there, I wonder if there is an ideal number of sites that you submit to in order to generate more traffic for your blog or website?
Thank for your post. I’ve been an SEO trainee for 2 days now. This information is such a great help. Please post more SEO techniques.
Thanks for this excellent post! Actually i’m only considered Delicious! Now me got reddit like lot of incredible networks
Good overview of social bookmarking. I am starting today!
I’ll appriciate any good idea.
Thanks for the tips Mason! Social bookmarking sites not only help to improve SEO but these are also useful for driving targeted traffic to your website. Cheers!