Social Bookmarking Sites

Posted on 09. Dec, 2009 by admin in Training

In addition to networking sites, there are many websites that are designed for the sole purpose of sharing links with other Internet users. These resources are called Social Bookmarking or Tagging sites and they can be a great way to drive targeted traffic to a number of websites.

Social Bookmarking is exactly what the name implies. It’s a way for users to store their bookmarks or favorite links online, and in most cases publicly (hence the ‘social’). Why would you want to do this?

Two reasons:

Most bookmarking sites have a high Google Page Rank, making them great sites to link to your sites from for SEO purposes.
More people are turning to social sites like this to find resources they are looking for. And once you add your sites, other users can see it and if they like what they see they will add some or all of your links to their list! This could mean BIG traffic. This is a simple process. You just register with a good bookmarking site and then start adding your favorite links to your list.

Most bookmarking sites require you to download a toolbar that allows you to instantly add a site to your list as you cruise the web. And of course your first step after registration would be to add all of your personal web pages and blog posts to your list.

Note I said all of your pages and posts. Don’t just bookmark your home page and leave it at that, really leverage these resources by adding all of your pages for the world to see.

Something you should seriously consider when you have a good selection of sites bookmarked on the web is finding other people (perhaps some of the contacts you are now making via social networking sites!) to join you in a bookmarking network. Here’s how this would work:

You find ten other people with websites they want to drive traffic to and form a network. Then all of you agree to bookmark each other’s websites using the top social bookmarking sites!

Ideally once a handful of people bookmark your sites others will jump on the bandwagon and start visiting your sites and adding them to their lists. Pretty soon you can have lots and lots of people checking out your site, joining your mailing lists, and even buying your products.

There are a number of good social bookmarking sites to choose from. Here are three of the most popular which I highly recommend you join and start using right away:

Diigo
Delicious
Mixx

Check these out and get registered. Also there are two other sites I’d like you to keep in mind.

Digg is a news site that works very much like a bookmarking site in that it is user fueled. You’ll see when you land on the page a number of new ‘stories’ that were posted by members and then ‘Dugg’ by other members.

You’ll find Digg buttons on Squidoo lenses and Blogs all over the web, and now you know why. This is a heavily trafficked site and having your article Dugg by its users is a great way to brand yourself and drive traffic to your site. To Digg one of your web pages or blog posts, all you do is (once you have an account) enter a title, short description, and add your link. Then select a category and confirm your submission.

If you submit something interesting other users will come across the story and Digg it as well. A word of caution here – do not post spammy adverts on this site or you will be flamed and even marked as a spammer for all to see; only use Digg to bookmark quality articles and stories from your blog and other web pages. You should also know that Digg places the nofollow tag on all outbound links so it’s worthless as an SEO tool. Use this site only to brand yourself and drive traffic.

OnlyWire calls itself ‘The only bookmarking service you’ll ever need” and for good reason. This site is a hub of sorts that allows you to use one interface for bookmarking your pages on 16 social portals!

I recommend signing up at OnlyWire and joining each program listed there. Then you can simply add a special link to your favorites and use that link in the future to bookmark a page on all of the sites listed with OnlyWire!

However don’t be surprised if you find some of the sites you try to join through OnlyWire are down. Just skip them and go on to the next one, although you will have to enter something in the field for each site so if you find one that is offline just enter a generic username and keep going.

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