Social bookmarking is a way of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs online. You might have the best product in the world, but if you can’t generate the traffic you’ve just got a nice website on your hands with no customers. Even if you have a loyal mailing list you will still need to constantly update this by attracting new online visitors.
There are many options for making connections on social bookmarking sites. To find the best you need to take your time and surf around. Once you have researched the best way to start is to set up some social bookmarking accounts that you can use regularly.
StumbleUpon is one of the most popular of the social bookmarking sites which is both powerful and easy to use. First you need to create an account and then create a toolbar interface. All that’s left to do is click on the Thumbs Up icon in order to recommend a website. This can be done for any websites you own and you can also ask your friends to give you the Thumbs Up. In addition to these ratings you can also add comments (known as discoveries) about your website.
Powerful advice: Do not stumble the same site too many times. Vary your stumbles across a number of different sites. I have had accounts ‘banned’ by StumbleUpon. They don’t really tell you why they have banned your account but I think it was for stumbling the same site too many times.
Can you Digg it? Sounds like a line from a 70s song, but it is actually a very popular social bookmarking site. Digg works very much like StumbleUpon in that users are allowed to push up the ratings for a particular site so that it reaches the front page. If you can make it to the front page you will be presenting yourself to thousands of potential visitors and more and more people will start hitting your site to see what you are all about.
Clipmarks markets itself as “scissors for web pages.” This site lets you submit items that are transmitted to the Internet – including to an iPhone and to Facebook. It provides a one stop shop and can save a lot of time.
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Start off by installing plugins for your browser. These allow you to carry out a multitude of functions such as clicking once to submit your item to many sites in one go. In order for this to work, you will need to join any social bookmarking sites you want to use. Once that is done, you can use OnlyWire to carry out submissions to these sites.
You will need to ensure that visitors to your site know how they can rate your site. It is not possible to bribe or reward them for bookmarking your site. This is the social bookmarking equivalent to stuffing the ballot box.
You can publish links to bookmarking sites as a gentle and polite reminder to your visitors. Don’t be coy about submitting any updated information to these networks yourself. You will just need to ensure that you do it in such a way that it doesn’t appear as spam. If you tell people what you have got and where they can find it there is a good chance they will pass this information on to others.
One tool I use regularly for my personal book-marking and can recommend is Book Marking Demon.
Book Marking Demon allows you to automatically bookmark websites to over 100 book-marking sites in minutes and best of all without spamming.
As a result of using Book Marking Demon, my sites backlinks vastly increase within days.
Hi Andrew,
Interesting, and I’m shameful to say I’m not familiar with the Clipmarks and OnlyWire. Thanks for introducing them and will give it a browse. How would you differentiate them from Delicious, Reddit etc? Is there any aspects that we should be considering before choosing which bookmarking sites to be used?
Thank you for sharing the info. Looking forward to your reply.
@wchingya
Social Media/Blogging
Ching Ya’s last blog post..How To Track Your Retweets In Twitter (pt2): 6 URL Shorteners with Stats Tracking!
Ching Ya,
Thanks for commenting. Once you sign up with OnlyWire (free), it allows you to auto-submit sites to numerous social booking sites in one-go (and that saves a lot of time).
Clipmarks is slightly different to some of the others because it allows you to syndicate your postings to Twitter, Facebook, Stumble…so again you are only submitting to one place but other social sites are automatically posted to.
Andrew
Thanks for your submission to the Forty- Seventh edition of the Blog Carnival: Blogging. Your post has been accepted and its live:
http://thatsblog.com/blog-carnival-blogging/blog-carnival-blogging-forty-seventh-edition
-ThatsBlog.com
yes this post is very true, i personally use BMD to meet my target. Cheers
hey thx for sharing this nice post, i wonder how much does this BMD cost ?? Can you give it to me for free 😉
.-= sussane´s last blog ..Why parents have gray hair: joke =-.
BMD costs $147 so unfortunately I cannot provide for free.
Andrew
I use OnlyWire for social bookmarking. I’ve wondering as well if there are any negative implications (in terms of traffic) of bookmarking your own sites.. What do you think?
————–
Andy Michaels
http://www.andy-michaels.com/
.-= Andy Michaels´s last blog ..Dean’s Opening Up His Coaching Program!! =-.
I don’t think there are any negative implications (in terms of traffic) when bookmarking your own sites. However, the social bookmarking sites do monitor activity and you could be banned if you keep bookmarking your own sites. Try and get others to bookmark for you, first.
Andrew
Thanks for sharing this nice blog with us and it seems like that social bookmarking only the way for increasing website traffic for any website…I prefer to social bookmarking submissions manually but we can also use Socialposter.com and Onlywire.com.
Thanks, it is really nice post
Abhishek
I have used Onlywire.om but not Socialposter.com – thanks for the tip.
Andrew
And also there are many more sites like this. Mr Wong is also good.
Terry,
Good one – I’ve used Mr Wong before – you can get good backlinks form that one.
Andrew
Im amazed at how often I see social bookmarks at the very top of Googles rankings. One I often see is JumpTags so you might want to check that out if your keen on the idea – you can use onlywire to submit to several social bookmarkers at once – its a tool i’ve used for about a year now and find it really useful.
.-= Fred @ Flintstones Costumes´s last blog ..About Us =-.
Fred,
Thanks for the tip – JumpTags.
I often use OnlyWire as well – great little tool.
Andrew
.-= andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..How You Can Win $6921 In Prizes When Two Social Media Business Players Get Together =-.
I love clipmarks, If I’m not mistaken I’ve got around 70+ links over that website that is pointing to my domain. What I love from it is its unique bookmarking way where in we can clip some part of our website and it will be the content for our entry in clipmarks.
.-= Janice@chiropractic social media´s last blog ..How to Build a List with Video Marketing =-.
Jancie,
A great share – thanks.
Andrew
.-= andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Blogging Guide: Blogger tips 1 – 4 (video) =-.
Im a big fan of clipmarks too, im surprsed at the price of BMD though i think i will cary on without it, a bit our of my price bracket Andrew but a great blogg, hats off to you! Thanks
Thanks, Ally.
BMD is a agreat tool but I can understand your views on the price. For me it is worth it, as it speeds things up.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..The Power of Blogging and Politics =-.
Andrew,
This is great. I’m starting to learn the importance of backlinking and using social bookmarking in my backlinking plan.
I had never heard of “Bookmarking Demon” so I’m going to have to check it out. Looks like it’ll save some time.
Thanks again,
Jason
.-= Jason@Real Estate Agent Marketing´s last blog ..Internet Leads for Agents – Big Scam or Goldmine? =-.
Jason,
it can save a lot of time – but it can also take a little while to master.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Working From Home: The Pros and Cons =-.
I have been using Only Wire but had a few problems which they could not seem to solve. Have been trying SocialADR where other people bookmark your site. It seems to work well but I am waiting to see what the results are like.
.-= AndyN´s last blog ..Streaming Video Hosting Facts =-.
Thanks for all the great tips Jason! Unfortunately I’ve used one Dutch social bookmarking site a bit too much. They’ve banned my account. What should I do? Create another account or politely send an e-mail to them? Cus I’d love to go on with my social bookmarking strategy…
Thanks in advance!
I bought a site not long ago and when I started to submit new posts (it was a blog) to social bookmarking sites I found a few of them had banned the URL. Presumably the previous owner had been a bit heavy on promoting it this way at the expense of participating in the site with other bookmarks. The OnlyWire plugin in excellent for this because if you are bookmarking for SEO then all you have to do is to remember to hit the OnlyWire button on your browser as you’re surfing the net and you’ll get heaps of sites on your bookmarking account that aren’t self promotion and you’ll be doing the right thing by them.
James
I have used OnlyWire before but not recently. Perhaps I should start to use it again.
Andrew
I use onlywire in bookmarking articles. But in some bookmarking sites, the article does not appear and I have to log in to the site. In some cases, onlywire work fine.
Hi,
I use ping.fm but. It is free but limited and doesn’t support all platforms.
Will try onlywire, because it sounds good what your write.
Looking forward to receive your newsletter.
Tom
Tom,
Let us know how you get on with OnlyWire.
I hope you like my guide. Any feedback would be welcome.
Andrew
Very useful tips. I would like to add one: Apply a bit of networking to you bookmarking accounts. befriend or follow other stumblers, diggs etc
That makes it less likely that your account gets banned. It is also useful to create “real” account profiles with a photo and some information.
Mike
Mike,
Nice tips – I totally agree!
You should get a Gravatar!
Andrew
I have just been searching for different ways to get social bookmarking done … faster and easier. I knew there were certain tools, but I were missing a list. So I am glad I found your list 🙂 I think I will give onlywire and bookmarking demon a try.
Frauen
Good luck…I hope they work for you.
Andrew
Thanks for the tips. My G search was about how to use bookmarking without getting banned, now I have an idea.
I’m probably going to get Bookmarking Demon, I just don’t want my work to be deleted.
Hello Andrew, this is my 1st visit in your blog. Quite interesting article you have shared with the readers. But don’t you think that after launching Google Penguin auto submitted can be harmful for your niche? If you can concentrate in quality than quantity, then I think that will be good for your site. 🙂 Anyways, thanks for sharing. I think once I will try this tools. Best of luck. 🙂
Kendell
BDM only uses authority sites to backlink from so I don’t believe it will be harmful to your site even with the Penguin update.
Andrew
Thanks for your article! Manual social bookmarking really works to improve your site’s ranking. Some of its benefits are:
1. Social signals from quality social bookmarks. Google LOVES it!
2. Get your site/url indexed in a short time.
3. It is Penguin friendly as long as you don’t spam to HUNDREDS of bookmarking sites.
You can outsource social bookmarking tasks at Fiverr, as there are plenty gigs that will bookmark your URL to 15-25 social bookmarking sites for $5. I would recommend one express gig from a seller named “norbwinslow” who manually bookmarks your URL to 21 PR4-PR8 social bookmarking sites. He also pings your site and share it on Facebook and Twitter (great to index and gain variety of backlinks).
There are few great sellers too, such as ecnarret and fvchamp, but norbwinslow has provide more extras and bonuses, which makes a difference for me. You can also do it yourself by creating 20 accounts from high PR social bookmarking websites, and bookmark all your sites and backlinks 😉
Seth
or you can do it yourself…very quickly…using BookMarking Demon!
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
From the above social bookmarking sites mentioned, only book marking demon is new to me. I would love to give it a try. That social bookmarking site seems to be so promising. Pretty rewarding to you huh?! Impressive, it is!
Hey Andrew,
before i say anything about this post i want to tell you that i like logo of your blog very much. very creative and funny thing.
social bookmarking is not an alien thing for most of the bloggers as they know benefits of social bookmarking very well. You covered all things smartly in your post.
i have to thanks you like ever. well done.
🙂
Jess
Thanks, Jessie.
Social Bookmarking is here to stay!
Andrew
Doing social bookmarking can definitely boost the overall SEO factors for a website. There are countless social bookmarking websites over internet but we should try to pick up high PR and relevant websites for social bookmarking.