Using Social Bookmarking to Promote Your Website
Social bookmarking is just one of the aspects of Web 2.0, a new movement in online content. In Web 2.0, participation is key. Visitors to your website become participants. Communities collaborate together. And most importantly, being an Internet “social butterfly” can pay off big time.
What is social bookmarking?
Social bookmarking began as a way for people to keep their bookmarks accessible online and share them with other users. Bookmarks are given “tags” to label and organize them. The tags describe the main topic of the content. For example, this article might be tagged “website promotion,” “social bookmarking” and “tagging your articles.”
Many social bookmarking sites also have a community format. Community members can rate the value of the links. When a lot of people think the link in valuable, the rating of the link goes up.
Social Bookmarking and Traffic
Search engine optimization will always be important when it comes to driving traffic to your website. But the power of social bookmarking is quickly becoming apparent. Smart webmasters and bloggers use social bookmarking sites to get new visitors.
Social bookmarking, unlike SEO, is based on personal opinion. Humans, instead of algorithms, determine what is important. If you have a popular topic, and submit your links to a social bookmarking site, you’ll get traffic.
Submitting your website and articles to social bookmarking sites are also a powerful way to create “backlinks” which can help with SEO. Backlinks are links from other sites to your website. “One-way backlinks” occur when a website links to your site, but you don’t link to them. Search engines weigh one-way backlinks more heavily, because they weed out the people who just trade backlinks to increase their ranking.
When you use a social bookmarking site to link to and tag your article, you are creating a one-way back link. If you use all of the most popular social bookmarking sites, you’ll have dozens of one-way backlinks instantly. The search engines will automatically see your website as valuable, and rank it higher than others.
Social bookmarking is a valuable tool for increasing your website’s visibility and search engine ranking. Before you start using the bookmarking sites, you’ll need to create valuable content to share.
How to submit your site to Social Bookmarking Sites
Most social bookmarking sites will require that you register for their service. This is normally free and just takes a few minutes. After your register, you’ll be able to submit your links.
While a lot of people just submit their homepage link, it can be valuable to submit other pages as well. If you have a blog, submit each entry. If you have a traditional website, try to post new articles on a regular basis and submit them. Remember, the bookmarking sites are all about sharing information.
Valuable Content
Since social bookmarking relies on humans, and not computers, to determine the value of a link, you’ve got to provide them with valuable content. You really shouldn’t be in the business of creating spam content anyway and here is more pressure to create something of value on your website.
While you are using the bookmarking sites to drive traffic, your article or link should be helpful and informative on your subject matter. Make sure you’re offering helpful information.
Easy ways to create content
If you’re not normally creating content for your site, or you’re feeling stumped, try making a valuable list of information. If your website deals with cooking, you can offer your readers and the social bookmarking site a list of the best ways to make chicken. Or if you have a blog on changing careers, you can list the top five interview questions and appropriate answers.
Even if your website is totally devoted to selling a product, there are still ways to create articles that are valuable to social bookmarking communities. Giving a list of tips is an easy way to create valuable content. You can give the top 7 reasons why product A is better than product B. Or the top 3 reasons your readers need to try out a service.
Tagging your entries so people can find them is an important part of the social bookmarking process. Once you know how to tag properly, you’ll be seeing lots of traffic to your site.
Tagging
Before you start labeling your submission with whatever tags pop into your head, do a little research on each social bookmarking site. Type in your potential tags and see what comes up. Read through the content that is under that tag, and try to see if your content fits the bill.
You can also look at other peoples’ tagging strategies to get ideas for additional tags. If you see that a lot of people who are using the tag “home based business” are also tagging their articles “work at home,” you should use that tag too.
Don’t try to plaster your submission with dozens of semi-relevant tags. Make sure your tags actually reflect the nature of your website. This way your submission will be more valuable to the social bookmarking community.
Where to Submit
There are lots and lots of social bookmarking sites out there. If you had the time and energy, you could submit to each and every one if you wanted to. But if you’re looking to streamline the process, there are a few big sites you should know about.
Each of these services has their own page rank. When you submit your content, the page rank will be transferred onto your website. Before you submit to any social bookmarking site that is not on this list, be sure to check page rank first to see if it is worth it.
Del.icio.us – This is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites. It has a whopping page rank of 8 and can be found at http://del.icio.us/
Digg – Digg is a valuable website that takes individual articles. The users vote on the most popular content, and it is displayed on the homepage. Digg has a page rank of 7 and is located at http://digg.com
Reddit – Reddit is similar in function to Digg. It also has a page rank of 7 and can be found at http://www.reddit.com
Increasing your popularity
You can encourage others to rank your content on these sites easily by providing links to them directly from your website. This can be a great way to instantly boost the value of your content.
There is a utility called “Socializer” available at http://ekstreme.com/socializer that will help you encourage ratings. You’ll get a small bit of code to add to your site. This code generates a unique link for each of your pages. When a visitor clicks on the link, they are automatically able to add your page to a long list of social bookmarking sites. If you use Wordpress, you can get the same function from a plugin called “Sociable,” available at http://push.cx/sociable
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