Seo Bookmarking

Bookmarking occurs when you want to remember or save a specific link to a site or blog post and you save it on your computer’s memory. Most of you do this regularly with your browser. If you’re using internet explorer, you’re saving web pages to your ‘favorites’ list, and if you’re firefox fans you have a bookmark list.

Social bookmarking allows you to “share, organize and search through bookmarks of web resources” – to quote Wikipedia’s definition of the term. You’re not sharing entire files, you’re sharing references to them, or links. You can usually add a short description and tags to your bookmark to describe what the bookmark’s content is about. Tags are a method that has been developed on the net to inform users of the subject and content of a specific entry, bookmark, post etc.

For example, if I were to bookmark this post on Digg.com, I’d add the following tags, SEO, Wix, social bookmarks, optimizing Wix websites etc.

Different bookmarking websites provide different features. Most of them let you add comments and many provide RSS feeds to their list of bookmarks drawing attention to the different bookmarks, or links, available on their site. Social bookmarking sites are a great place to come across interesting content and it also a great way to get noticed online and get traffic to your website.

How does it work?

You create an account in a social bookmarking site. There are lots and lots of bookmarking sites out there and I will also provide a short list of ones that have been getting lots of great feedback from users at the end of this post. Don’t try to sign up for all of them but choose a couple you are comfortable with and which you think will be useful for you.

You can browse through the different bookmarks already available, also in categories and subjects that are relevant to you and add comments to it. Usually the bookmarking site will have the option of marking a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Participating in the site is actually important so you distinguish yourself as a legitimate user, as opposed to a spammer.

Posting on your own

Once you’ve got your bearings, it’s time to post your own bookmark. Add a description in the same way you add a description to your Wix website. This is important for both the users and also for the search engine – which will crawl the site and see your link. Add tags to your entry and when adding links, place them in anchored text – if possible. Different social bookmarking websites provide different features and capabilities. Not all of them will allow for anchor texts – but I recommend you use those who do. Why not give yourself a bump.

Will this help my website in the search engine results?

The question actually is: will this improve my page rank (PR)? The answer to this is basically a derivative of the answer to – will these links give me link juice from the mother site? The answer is, depending on the popularity of your bookmark. Digg adds a nofollow tag to each outgoing link until that bookmark surpasses a certain level of popularity – determined by the amount of diggs to that site.

Also, the idea behind this system is that people who like your bookmark will bookmark it themselves on their own pages, doubling, tripling and quadrupling the amount of FREE back links to your site, sometimes in a matter of hours.

Also, because SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) are so closely knit together, you’re benefitting one by improving the other and vice versa. In the worst case scenario you are improving traffic to your site thanks to all the people who are discovering it through the highly digged, voted for and ranked bookmark which you posted. In this case, it’s a win-win situation.

At some point you’ll find the traffic from your bookmark slowing down, but that’s okay too. At this point, this old link will have been cached by Google (and the other search engines, let’s not forget them completely). You can enjoy this link just like any other back link to your website – and in particular from a reputable link-juicy website, which affects your PR, which in turn affects your ranking in the search results.

The Keys

Social bookmarking isn’t a new toy in the SEO playground and search engines are very aware of the spamming attempts made on them from this direction and have already been acting to minimize the advantages of spamming techniques. So don’t spam –

• Think quality and take the time to create something that will really draw people to your site.
• Adding an endless stream of links will simply diminish the effectiveness of each of the links and will flag you as a possible threat and spammer.
• Don’t bookmark every page of your website but consider the pages that are useful and bookmark them from time to time.
• This shouldn’t be your single strategy to SEO, but rather viewed as another tool in your toolbox.

Lists:

As promised, a short list of popular bookmarking sites. You can always check their popularity on Alexa and even by reading some feedbacks in different forums that deal with it. A short search in Google on the subject of bookmarking can keep you busy for a while – trust me.

• Digg.com – Google’s own.
• Del.icio.us – one of the very first bookmark sites, launched in 2004.
• Stumbleupon – recommended by many for its stable traffic
• Reddit

Furthermore, you can always take a peek at Wikipedia’s list of social bookmarking sites

Have Fun!

Step 1:

Start searching for keywords relevant to your business and location. Try all the combinations you can think of. For example, if you were to search for a pizzeria in New York, you may use several different combinations.

What you’re looking for is a list of competing and closely related businesses. Imagine you were one of your clients, what possible combinations might you be using to find the service or product you’re looking for?

Step 2:

Start making lists of the businesses that are consistently getting top rankings. The more keywords (word combinations) you try, the more listings you will become familiar with. Get to know your virtual surroundings. For the best results I suggest you get a few dozen listings from your research. You can start a spreadsheet to follow the different data you’re about to derive from each of these listings.

Step 3:

Explore each of these local business’s online profile. Don’t click on the name of the listing, visit the reviews by clicking on the reviews link next to the listing. Each page listed here is a page with information about the restaurant, reviews and information that Google found about the place.

Step 4:

Scroll down the page to the “More about this place” section. This is where you’ll find a wealth of links to websites that contain information and mention the restaurant. This is your goldmine, as you can probably find lots of great places to get listed yourself.

Each of the website’s listed here is a website that Google is crawling for information on that restaurant. You can visit many of these websites and list your own Flash website. Make sure that there is a consistency in your listings, that the phone numbers and address are consistent and true. Google places as much emphasis on quality as it does on quantity, so if you’ve listed yourself in a million places, but those websites are irrelevant or the information on them is irrelevant you’d be doing yourself a disservice.

Even if you don’t care about being listed in local directories but you care about promoting your website, this is a good tactic, as it will bump your website up in terms of ranking. Google will see many good website’s pointing at it and it will consider your website more relevant important.

Step 5:

If you’re feeling particularly industrious you can do the same thing for the “reviews” and “user content” sections. Here you’ll find many more links. Do this process thoroughly and you will reap what you sow. Don’t think small. I recommend you try to get between 50-250 listings, even if it takes you a few days, and of course depending on the level of competition in your field and your area.

Many of you often ask me how to get the search engines to crawl your website more often. Well, the simple answer is that you need to get your website noticed. That means, generating as much traffic as possible and having as many good and established sites pointing at yours, drawing the search engine’s attention to your web page.

Here’s a summary of his key points:
If your facebook profile is completely public, then Google can register the page rank and use it to transfer what I like to call ‘link juice’ to your website. Of course, if your profile isn’t public then Google can’t register the page rank and then this link won’t the same weight and value. It has standard marketing value, but in terms of SEO, you might want to consider opening a public profile specifically for promotional purposes. It’s just a very powerful tool.

Twitter usually adds no-follow to its outgoing links to prevent spamming so its links aren’t as relevant to the SEO cause. Check out his video to learn more on this subject.