Sites

When a site named “del.icio.us” has its own Wiki page, you may understand how important Social Bookmarking has become. Some of the sites are “do follow” and some (including Digg) are “no follow”. That has generated a lot of discussion on which sites to use for bookmarking.

Does it matter whether a Social Bookmarking site is “do” or “no” follow? A backlink may be affected but your site’s url and title is still displayed on the bookmark sites. There are thousands of websites built for bookmarking. You go to a site and sign up for an account. You are asked to verify your email address and then you can set up a profile.

Favorite

There is a form where you will add your “favorite” sites by url, and can pull an image from the site to add there if you want. You supply the title of the site (containing targeted keywords) and a short description of the site you are bookmarking (again with keywords in the description). Lastly, you can add “tags” which are keywords and keyword phrases that you target to the site you are bookmarking.

Once the form is completed you save it and that bookmark shows on your profile where anyone can see it….including those important search engines.

Caution: Don’t create bookmark accounts and only add a bunch of your own urls to all of the sites. Mix in some other websites you like and slowly add your own url’s into the mix. If you create new accounts and just slam in all of your sites you will devalue your own recommendations.

Bookmarks

Once you have several bookmarks showing when you view your profile page you can increase exposure by sending “friend” requests to others. Find profiles that have some interest for you and click on the friends link. Your new friend can comment on the url’s you added and you can make comments on url’s in his profile.

Social bookmarking adds backlinks that search engine spiders love to follow and can help your new site or blog move up in ranking. This is where the debate about “no follow” versus “do follow” links has exploded. When Digg recently converted links to “no follow” many marketers abandoned use of Digg for bookmarking. Though it’s true that search engine spiders may not count a backlink from a “no follow” bookmarking site, the link still exists and can still pull interested visitors to your site.

By Hand?

If you are bookmarking by hand it might make sense to abandon use of the sites with “no follow”. However, most who routinely bookmark their sites and the sites of other marketers use programs to speed up the process. SocialMarker is one and there are others available as both free and paid versions. If you are the type who must fully understand every method of promotion you use by all means do a Google search and find the discussions raging about bookmarking sites. It may change your tactics or may leave you totally confused. In the end, it may not matter all that much.

Learning online marketing with you,

~ Julie