Social Bookmarking Software » social bookmarking tips

The Importance of User Generated Tags, Votes and Links

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:47:17 +0000

Social bookmarking is here to stay. As long as people want to share their favorite links with other people, bookmarking sites will continue to stay in the business. And now with search engines keeping a tab on them, they have become indispensable SEO tools.
Publishers of all kinds of websites benefit from social bookmarking: you can introduce the sites of your own or the sites you like to people of similar tastes and interests, thereby driving traffic and getting backlinks.
While some social bookmarking sites like Propeller.com give Do Follow links, some others use the No Follow attribute. But the use of No Follow shouldn’t discourage a webmaster trying to rank high in search engines. After all search results are determined by several factors with link popularity being just one of them. The user generated descriptions, tags, titles and categorization also play a very significant role in determining a site’s rank in search engines. As you probably know when you add a webpage to a social bookmarking site, you give it a description and specify some tags and categories. These user generated tags and descriptions are considered honest and unbiased because they are created by the public. And because of this reason search engines put too much value on them.
Why does Google monitor bookmarking sites?
Monitoring social bookmarking sites like Del-icio.us and Stumble Upon help search engines in many ways. As many bookmarking sites allow voting, search engines can measure the quality of sites by monitoring bookmarks. The sites that get the highest number of votes in a particular category will naturally be the best sites in that category. Since search engines are trying hard to see which websites are actually the most useful, they have started relying very much upon bookmarks. Furthermore, through social bookmarking search engines can very often discover new sites or web pages.
It is true to get the best results your site needs to be bookmarked by multiple users across multiple social bookmarking sites. But that doesn’t mean that you have no role to play. You still need to give your site some exposure on these sites by being the first to bookmark them. Unless users get to see your site, how will they bookmark it? This is particularly true of new sites that haven’t started getting many visitors. There is also another advantage to being the first person to bookmark your site – you will be able to give search engine optimized keywords as tags. As long as these tags are appropriate other users will not bother to change them.
Now that you have discovered what social bookmarking can do to your site, you will definitely want to give it try. Most people want to but many are unable to do it because they are short on time. If you are one among them you will be glad to hear that automated bookmarking tools are available. They don’t cost much and in most cases your gain in terms of increased traffic and higher search rankings will be considerably higher than the initial investment.

How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:43:29 +0000

Sites like Digg and Stumble Upon are capable of sending thousands of visitors to your site within a span of a few hours – You only need to feature on their front page. Many people believe that getting visitors through social bookmarking sites is not easy. Yes, it is a bit difficult. But you can considerably improve your chances of success by following these tips.

Write a catchy headline
This is very important. Your listing will go unnoticed if you didn’t write a catchy headline. Your headline is the first and in most cases the only thing your users will see. So it should make them want to click on the link.

Provide a meaningful description
Your headlines may have been impressive. But a bad description will still prevent users from clicking on your link. The description must be interesting. But don’t use lies and false facts to draw attention. Keep it brief. Most users won’t bother to read anything over 100-150 words. So keep it short.

Write good content
Your success on social bookmarking sites depends on your chances of getting bookmarked by other users. So write good content that is both useful and interesting. This will make people want to bookmark it.

Make it easy for others to vote / bookmark your site
Allow your visitors to bookmark your pages. All you have to do is put a bookmarking button at the end of the article. If your users like your content, they will add it to the respective bookmarking sites. The more bookmarks you receive, the more visitors you will get.

Have Related Articles / Popular Articles
Social bookmarking sites will bring in a lot of visitors. But they won’t return unless you have more interesting articles on your site. Cross-link the pages on your site so that your visitors will find all interesting content. Traffic from social bookmarking sites will get you more subscribers to your RSS Feeds and newsletters. So put them in a visible place on your site.

Respond to comments on your stories
Now that your page has made it to the front page, you are bound to get some comments. Respond to them. And if you can don’t hesitate to post comments on other stories you find interesting. This will help you make friendship with other social marketers and will ultimately prove beneficial to you and your site.

Prepare your server for the expected traffic
Being on the front page of a social bookmarking site will drive a lot of traffic to your site. Make sure that your server is capable of handling the sudden influx of visitors. You will look really silly if you attract a lot of visitors and are not able to serve them because your server crashed or you exceeded your bandwidth.

Use automated submission tools
If you have tried social bookmarking before, you should know that posting links requires a lot of time. You can save a great deal of this time by using automated submission tools. But before you choose one, make proper enquires. Talk to other people who may have used the tool. If they are satisfied, you will probably have no reason to be dissatisfied.