Should You Consider Social Bookmarking Links?

On the surface, social bookmarking is a simple concept allowing individuals to save bookmarks to websites they find interesting or useful.  These links can be tagged with keywords and shared with other users.  Some popular examples of this service include Digg, Stumbleupon, and Del.icio.us.  Although this trend may seem relatively uncomplicated, the wealth of benefits it can offer your web presence can be quite surprising.

The search feature on a social bookmarking site may seem similar to that of a standard search engine such as Google.  However, there are noticeable differences that may help your site get noticed.  Search engines build their content indexes by sending out automatic bots.  These bots capture keywords and base relevance and rankings on algorithms.  By contrast, links in a social bookmarking site are submitted and tagged by real people who are able to tag links based on content instead of the number of times certain key words appear.  This provides a more descriptive classification.

But just how well does this drive traffic to your site?  It isn’t uncommon for sites that make it to the front page of a social bookmarking site to have such a large and sudden increase of traffic that the performance of the website suffers.  This is sometimes referred to as the Digg Effect.  This traffic can also help your Search Engine Optimization by driving your page rank higher.  In addition to the quantity of traffic, the quality of traffic is generally better.  Since bookmarks are tagged more effectively, you are more likely to reach your target market. 

Social bookmarking sites track the links each user accesses.  You can use this information to understand the demographics of those who visit your site.  This data will show if you are reaching your target market.  This information may also reveal new markets that are interested in your business.

Although the benefits sound intriguing, there is one caveat.  You must have content that your visitors find extremely valuable or interesting to rise in the ranks.  If your content is up to par, adding links that allows users to easily submit your content to social networking sites may be an excellent simple and inexpensive investment in your online strategy.
And of course, if you found this post valuable or interesting, please use our links to share this page with your favorite social bookmarking site.