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Seven social bookmarking tips for webmasters
by David Leonhardt
Published on this site: March 24th, 2007 - See
more articles from this month
In a previous article, I itemized the five ways (perhaps there
are more?) that webmasters can benefit from the social
bookmarking craze.
I explained exactly how their websites can
benefit from:
- Repeat visitors
- Viral social bookmarking
- Viral linking
- SEO-friendly links (from social bookmarking sites)
- SEO-friendly links elsewhere (as a result of links on social
bookmarking sites)
Now let's look at what steps you, as a webmaster, can take to
increase your website's benefits from social bookmarking.
- Make it easy for your visitors to social bookmark your website.
This means offering them as many options as possible. You might
want to use a multi-bookmarking service, such as the free script
that I developed called TheBookmarketer:
http://www.seo-writer.com/tools/bookmarker.php
It also means making the bookmarking links easy
to find, usually at the top of the page or at the base of an article.
You can see
this in action at the top of
http://www.thehappyguy.com/happiness-secret.html or
at the bottom of
http://www.wv-travel-directory.com/directory/0-world/222-
luxury-travel/view.html
- Bookmark your pages yourself.
Yes, this means
signing up for accounts at several bookmarking services. Choose as
many or as
few as you wish, but remember that when it comes to marketing
your website, the more venues the better.
Do I have to remind you to
call your mother? This would be an excellent time. "Hi mom, How
are you doing? Yes, I know it's been a while by the way, do you
Digg?" Don't be shy; ask
family and friends to social bookmark your pages, too.
- Swap bookmarks
with others who also want their pages bookmarked.
For instance,
if you search Google for "Grab the Bookmarketer for
Your Site", you will find other websites that are actively
courting social bookmarks. All you have to do is offer to
bookmark some of their pages if they bookmark some of yours.
It's a lot like a link exchange, except that it plays out on
other websites. Now some social bookmarkers look askance at such
joint ventures, and some even think that webmasters should not be
promoting their websites at all.
- Participate in the social bookmarking
site.
There are some services that don't feature much participation;
others are very
participatory. Where you have the option, develop a large
friend's list, so that you can easily share bookmarks. Bookmark,
tag or comment on others' bookmarks. Being a good citizen gibes
a person credibility in the community even the online
community.
- Bookmark other pages that already link to your website.
Don't
just bookmark your own pages; bookmark those that link to yours.
Choose especially pages that are relevant, that do not compete
directly with yours and that list very few of your competitors.
Let's face it, if traffic to all those pages goes up, so does
traffic to your website. And if link value goes up to all those
pages, so does link-value to your website.
If you have a list, ask them
to bookmark any new page on your website that you want to generate
traffic to. And speaking of
new pages.
- Have outstanding content.
If your content doesn't stand out,
the
best you can do is your own contrived bookmarking. Sure, that
can help, but it's nothing compared to the power of thousands of
people bookmarking your web pages because they think it's just
awesome!
- All the social bookmarking and SEO tactics you employ can
massively help to market your website, but without great content
your chances of success are pretty slim. Put up the content,
make it easy for people to social bookmark your website, bookmark
some of your own pages and encourage anybody you know to do
likewise.
David Leonhardt is an SEO marketing consultant
http://www.seo-writer.com
Read his blog: http://www.seo-writer.com/blog This
article is based on a blog post at http://www.seo-writer.com/blog/2007/02/12/how-webmasters-harness-social-bookmarking-for-success-in-2007/
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