What Is Social Bookmarking? How to Use It to Increase Website Traffic

Social Bookmarking is a popular off-page SEO technique that SEO specialists use to strengthen a domain’s credibility and build backlinks for their websites. It can also increase website traffic, improve keyword rankings, build a brand and support a business’s growth on social networks. Let’s look at what Social Bookmarking is with MONA Media today.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social Bookmarking is a method of bookmarking web pages and sharing them on social networks. It also lets users share with friends on search engines by classifying pages with keywords. Bookmarked pages can be classified with keywords (tags), and users can browse the list of bookmarked pages by keyword or use a search engine.

Benefits of Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is not only a tool for saving and sharing web pages. It also brings important benefits to businesses. Here are the main ones:

• Promotion and more traffic: Social Bookmarking is a very effective way to promote a website. By sharing useful, engaging content on social networks, you can bring visitors from those communities to your website. It also promotes your website, brand and services indirectly.
• SEO optimization: Social Bookmarking can play an important role in optimizing SEO. By placing direct links to your website on bookmarking sites, you can build many quality backlinks and help search engines index your site faster. This improves your keyword rankings, and also increases traffic and the chance that people find your website on the SERP.
• Building brand awareness: Social Bookmarking gives you a great opportunity to raise your brand awareness on social networks. By sharing content related to your products, services or field, you can attract the attention of potential customers and build their trust in your brand and business.
• Reaching potential customers: Social Bookmarking can help you find and reach potential customers. With the right keywords, you can target your core customer group and win their interest through the content you share. This increases your chances of attracting new customers and widens your customer network across many platforms.
• Viral potential: If the content you share through Social Bookmarking is engaging and high quality, it can become popular and be widely shared by other users. This benefits your business and your brand.

How to use Social Bookmarking

To start using Social Bookmarking, follow these steps:

Step 1: Register an account

Choose a popular Social Bookmarking site with a steady user base, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or Pinterest. Once you have chosen one, register an account and save your username and password so you can keep using it later.

Step 2: Share content

After you log in, you can start sharing articles and images from your websites on your profile on the Social Bookmarking site. The simplest way is to copy and paste the URL, title, description and keywords (tags) into the site, then click “Post” or a similar button. Your link will then be bookmarked on major Social Bookmarking sites and more customers will get to know you.

Common mistakes when using Social Bookmarking

In practice, businesses can make some common mistakes when using Social Bookmarking, and should avoid them to get the best results.

• Unengaging content: A common mistake is sharing content that is too thin and unengaging. Users may lose interest and skip your information. To avoid this, make sure the content you share is useful, interesting and valuable to the community.
• Reposting duplicate content: Another equally serious mistake is reposting duplicate content on many social networks, or many times on the same one. This can be seen as spam and lead to penalties from search engine algorithms such as Google’s. To avoid it, share varied content and do not repeat it too often.
• Choosing unsuitable categories: Another mistake that makes Social Bookmarking ineffective is choosing categories unrelated to the content you are bookmarking. Putting content into the wrong folders can reduce its value and reach. Make sure you choose folders that are accurate and relevant to your content.
• Overusing automation software: Another mistake is overusing automation software to bookmark. Using it to blast out website links in bulk can create spam and reduce the value of your bookmarks. Use automation tools with care, and only when truly necessary.

Using Social Bookmarking effectively for your website

In Vietnam today, Facebook has become an effective advertising channel for individuals and businesses. Used properly, Social Bookmarking not only helps you find customers but also sends more potential customers to your website to buy, use your services or lift your keyword rankings.

Here are some tips for using Social Bookmarking more effectively for your website:

• Build quality content aimed at the right customers. Create content that is eye-catching, engaging and matched to the interests and needs of potential customers.
• Make every post unique. Avoid repeating content so it is not treated as spam. Each post should offer its own distinct value.
• Make sure your website’s title and description display in full on social networks and highlight the main issue and the appeal of your content.
• Post on different social networks. Use several Social Bookmarking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to publish your posts.
• Engage with other posts in your field. Study your competitors and keep up with new trends so you can interact and share information with the community.
• Add social features to your website. Use like and share buttons to encourage users to interact with and share content from your website.
• Keep your content on social networks up to date to attract users’ interest and interaction.
• Run events, promotions or contests to encourage users to share content from your website.
• Always engage and reply when users leave comments or questions on social networks.
• Add clear calls to action to encourage readers to share your content.

Risks of Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking brings benefits, but it also carries risks that can hurt your website’s performance and reputation. One of the most important is being flagged by Google as a spam account.

Here are some actions that can put you in the sights of Google’s Zebra algorithm:

• Posting or sharing the same links over and over on social networks.
• Link spam in comments or in shares to groups unrelated to the content.
• Posting many links on your own wall while giving no useful information to readers.
• Using social networks only for SEO purposes, without contributing to the community..
• Impersonating the identity of an existing account.
• Joining forums and groups, or using fraudulent tricks to inflate your follower count.

Best Social Bookmarking sites

Facebook

Facebook, one of the world’s leading social networks, is a place that connects people all over the world. Users can share personal photos, personal information and status updates, and interact with others. They can also share links to websites on it, which opens up another way to spread important information and content.

Twitter

Twitter is a notable social network that gives users a free platform to read, write and update short messages called “tweets”. Tweets work like tiny blogs, limited to 280 characters. They spread quickly and can be shared among friends or publicly with everyone. This lets users share information on and off the platform, creating a lively social environment full of interesting updates.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network built for businesses and individuals to keep professional profiles. Recruiters can easily find and review these profiles to identify candidates for open positions. Job seekers, in turn, can easily find information about businesses and the job opportunities they care about.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a distinctive site for sharing and discovering photos. It lets users post images and organize them into collections. On Pinterest, users can create many different boards by event or personal interest. The platform is meant for saving interesting images found while browsing and pinning them to boards, creating a creative, visual space.

Reddit

Reddit is a varied site that combines entertainment, news, forums and more. It is an open community where members can debate, discuss and share any topic they are interested in. On Reddit, users can post text, images and video directly, and can also share links from other platforms.

Digg

Digg is a site for posting news and sharing articles from other blogs and websites. Users can submit a URL with a short description to this social site so the Digg community can see and share it. This helps the shared websites spread and get promoted.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it is a free social site where you can create an account and share the interesting things you find with the world. It lets you collect content from many sources and share it on your own page, and it also integrates with other social networks, opening up more ways to connect. It is a strong platform for businesses to build their online presence.

Slashdot

Slashdot (/.) is a news site focused on technology and engineering. It is known for the interaction between news items and comments from its user community. Users submit all the news and comments, and editors review them. Other members also play an important part by viewing, sharing and rating the quality of posts on a scale of 1 to 5.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a social networking platform that also works like a personal blog. You can share your thoughts and post multimedia content such as images and video. You can also connect with and follow friends, building a wide network through Tumblr, much like other social networks.

>> See more: Popular social networking sites today

In this article we have looked at the advantages of Social Bookmarking such as saving time, convenience and fast information sharing. We have also seen that Social Bookmarking can be used as an effective marketing tool and for building a social network.