Wikipedia defines social bookmarking as “a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online.”
Not a bad idea, right?
Simply put, social bookmarking is an ideal way to store or share articles that you’re interested in, but I think most of us understand that part. With the Internet exploding with information and incredible amounts of data being shared and transmitted daily, it only makes sense that services like these exist. (Personal Sidebar: It’s not uncommon to have over 25 tabs open on my browser at any given time just by finding interesting articles in my Twitter timeline. My computer hates it, but they’re all articles I find relevant; this is why I bookmark!)
Social bookmarking has another powerful use that you’ve probably heard of: Search Engine Optimization. The opportunities to drive SEO efforts for your brand and website are plentiful and should be utilized. Here are several advantages:
- Backlinks — Due to sheer traffic volume of social bookmarking sites, search engines have turned them into a virtual playground for their crawlers and robots (insert visual of crawlers and robots on swing sets). If you include the link to your post or website, and include keywords in the mix, search engines will make that thumbs up to bump you in the rankings. Sounds simple right? It is. They do all the work!
- Traffic Generation — If you think social bookmarking is niche or doesn’t matter in the scheme of things, think again. According to Mashable, StumbleUpon (one of the largest bookmarking sites around) receives over 1 BILLION stumbles a month. That’s 1 billion websites being discovered by people who have similar interests or are searching for things that you’re writing about.
- Indexing — One of the fastest ways to get webpages indexed or visited by a search engine is to submit to any of the popular social bookmarking sites. Google will eventually find your data, but the added push of throwing the link out there is like bait that lures a search engine. Using the added indexing leverage will only assist the above two advantages.
Successful social bookmarking takes minimal time. Having your team quickly bookmark blog articles or websites that are relevant to your brand is merely a step. Adding social sharing widgets to your blog is something that takes little skill to setup on mainstream blog platforms like WordPress. Since you’re driving traffic to your website anyway, why not give your visitors the option to increase your ranking?
Here’s an example of our Cookerly PeRceptions traffic increase when we recently increased our social bookmarking presence:
As you can see, when it comes to your brand, remember that social bookmarking is a tool that should not be overlooked. The numbers speak for themselves. Digg it?
As senior vice president at Cookerly, Mike Rieman specializes in building and maintaining relationships with the media and has an excellent track record of landing significant placements in print and broadcast media including USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Money Magazine.
As design director at Cookerly, Tim serves as the creative lead in the development of branding campaigns, print collateral and digital media for clients across a broad range of industries, including consumer, professional services, healthcare and technology.
As vice president of Cookerly, Sheryl Sellaway uses her extensive corporate communications background to lead consumer PR efforts, deliver strategy for marketing programs and share expertise about community initiatives.
This info makes me have more confidence that my driving school website may still be able to get to the top of google for Driving lessons.
You never know when one of your articles or blog posts may go viral! That’s a social bookmarking/SEO dream. Just keep it up, and it’ll definitely pay off in the end!