The Concept of Social Bookmarking

The concept of sharing online bookmarking dates back to 1996 when the itList was launched, followed by the development of WebTagger by the Computational Sciences Division at NASA in 1997, while the term “social bookmarking” was coined by Delicious, a social bookmarking web service in 2003. In simple terms, social bookmarking refers to the use of social bookmarking websites to submit links to online resources, articles and websites of your interest, for other users to find information that they are looking for in the same niche, and are therefore considered by some as “intelligent search engines.” By means of social bookmarking, internet users are enabled to store, organize, manage as well as search for category-wise bookmarks to various online resources. Some of the highest rated social bookmarking sites include Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, Tweetmeme and FARK. The significance of social bookmarking for SEO continues to be a widely discussed topic amongst web enthusiasts.

Effectiveness of Social Bookmarking for SEO

For new bloggers or website owners, social bookmarking is probably one of the first strategies used in order to start getting exposure. What Social Bookmarking primarily does is that it increases your website’s visibility, thereby generating higher web traffic. Also, it enables faster indexing by search engines, because search engines spiders constantly crawl the high ranking social bookmarking sites, and index new information from time to time. Social Bookmarking enables you to widen your market by touching base with customers and potential clients at an international level. The higher your level of interaction with fellow niche bloggers in addition to the supreme quality of your posts, the higher are your chances of forming a community and creating an authority site.

Social Bookmarking Strategies in the post-Penguin Era

Well, it is certain that the importance of social bookmarking in the post-Penguin realm of SEO has taken a dip; however, social bookmarking continues to remain a popular off-page optimization and link building strategy, primarily owing to the fact that it definitely drives in higher traffic to your site. Of course, one needs to be a lot more careful now in order to ensure the diversity of your social bookmarks, so that search engines spiders do not detect a repetition.

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Tips

1.    Always choose the correct social bookmarking sites which are high authority. The Google guidelines clearly state that low quality directory or bookmark site links will only have a negative impact on your SEO. Therefore, conduct extensive research before submitting your links to any social bookmarking site.
2.    Ensure that your content is well-crafted, original and appealing to your end-users. This will maximize the chances of end-users recommending your site to their friends.
3.    Submit only an accepted number of articles onto these submission sites as flooding could result in penalization of your site.
4.    Integrate your social bookmarking strategies with social networking for the best results. Social Bookmarking needs to be an integral part of your Social Media Optimization Campaign. Start liaising and networking with people in your niche and start exchanging links with them. It is safe to go by the 80/20 rule, wherein you share 20 percent of your links and 80 percent of other links, in order to avoid getting spammed by the bookmarking sites.
5.    Considering the huge number of categories on social bookmarking sites, choosing the right category is very important, lest your high quality article gets submitted in the incorrect niche and ends up remaining unnoticed by your target audience.
6.    Your headline should be catchy enough to arouse interest and attract the attention of the end users. Most bookmarking sites require you to submit a short description of your article as well. Make sure the description does justice to your article.
7.    Choose your topic wisely, based on what your niche readers would love to read about. There are certain topics that have higher chances of pushing you to the top as compared with others. For example, a topic like “How to gain 500 followers on twitter without following back for free!” will definitely create a buzz.
8.    The timing of your submission is again critical and needs to be based on the timing of your target audience. For instance, if you are looking to target clientele in the US, you need to post your article based on their standard time for maximum viewability. If you submit the article at an incorrect time when your target audience in the particular time zone is asleep, it would get pushed behind by other articles by the time they wake up.
9.    When it comes to social bookmarking, you need to be interactive. Give a timely response to comments on your posts, and try to strike up interesting conversations. Similarly, post comments on other blogs and make endeavors for mutual cooperation.
10.    Automated submissions are a strict no-no, as it will only negatively impact your SEO. Always submit your articles manually.