Social Bookmarking Tips for optimising your Online Website Development

September 28th, 2009

Social bookmarking is a relatively new phenomenon. While we can look back to the mid-to-late 90’s for a predecessor, social bookmarking didn’t spring onto the unsuspecting world until the forerunner site Delicious appeared. Social bookmarking sites gather together information, articles and blog posts which are stored, organised and managed according to relevancy, or tags.

Some people have defined social bookmarking as search engine marketing with a human touch. The information is seen as relevant due to the fact that it has been provided by a human being, rather than assessed for relevancy by a robot and through search engine algorithms. As the people who interact with social bookmarking sites often allocate points to the content according to relevancy and usefulness, this human touch is re-emphasised.

Social bookmarking is viewed as a great SEO tool for online business, as it feeds off the networking capabilities of the web. The most popular sites have huge numbers of avid followers who are essentially creating a new trend by receiving their news on any given subject or niche online rather than through the traditional methods of old. Social bookmarking sites may be linked and an RSS feed established, creating an aggregate of news which can be delivered in a virtually effortless way.

While it’s not applicable in every instance, most of the time you can create back links to your site by placing URL’s into your content. There are quite a few social bookmarking sites out there that have a “no follow” policy, which means that the managing personnel invovled attach tags to your links that neutralise any SEO advantage you may have otherwise achieved. However, this certainly doesn’t keep people from clicking through to your website, or even becoming a possible valuable customer or client, but it does mean that you won’t receive any benefit in terms of the search engine ranking for your website page.

If you’re savvy about your online marketing and website development, you can use social bookmarking to great effect. Put meaningful content out there with valid and informative material, and people within the social bookmarking arena will rate it highly. Sharing of content is actively encouraged, and as a user’s network is informed of the existence of your content, the potential to go viral appears.

Make sure that your marketing message is subtle, as with any Internet marketing initiative. Blatant advertising is frowned upon, but relevant links when displayed in a soft-sell way will result in an increase in visitors. Make sure that you accurately attach your tags or keywords, to ensure that your message can be found within this vast Internet world!

There are hundreds and hundreds of social bookmarking sites, and you should try and include a plug-in within your site to allow people to easily and quickly bookmark your content. Sites such as WordPress make this very easy for you. RSS feed aggregators essentially summarize blogs and content and allow users to categorize things they find of interest into one easy to find place.

Social bookmarking should be an essential part of an overall Internet marketing and SEO strategy.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a highly qualified Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps businesses and individuals accomplish every detail of their professional aspirations. Want to discover more about these insightful online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Today!

Related Articles:

Leave a Comment