Business Promotion Through Social Bookmarking Sites

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search and manage bookmarks. It is popular among people with affiliate marketing programs as it drives traffic & back links to the website.

Social bookmarking sites allow you to do 2 main things:

· Manage the bookmarks on-line, where they can be accessed from any computer.
· Conduct searches for information based on other people's findings rather than search engine's.

Why to use social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is getting very popular with the Internet Marketers. In addition, of creating brand awareness and increasing profit, social bookmarking have other benefits as well like -

· It can be accessed from anywhere & everywhere
· It makes it easier to search data as it is organized and categorized by the user
· It allows user to search data, which are not necessarily indexed by search engines
· Search is made easier as it facilitates ability to tag web page / site
· As user voting plays an important role in getting a high vote, chances of appearing in search results are increased
· Social bookmarking sites get the natural links i.e. if people like your story, chances are they will publish it in their forums, blogs etc. with your website URL. Hence, your website will get the natural links.

Importance of social bookmarking from SEO point of view

From an Internet marketing perspective, this is useful because it drives traffic to a web site in two ways:

· Direct click-through from the social bookmarking web sites.
· Through the search engines, as links from social bookmarking sites will help raise your search engine rankings.

Popular Social Bookmarking Sites

· Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking site' which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. Delicious has more than 3 million users and 100 million tagged items. It allows user to tag his stuff as well as find other people's stuff. User is also provided with an option to either set his bookmarks to private or public. Public bookmarks are visible to everyone whereas private bookmarks are visible to people who are in your network. Delicious is a free site and can be used by anyone who has an access to the Internet

Reasons behind Delicious's popularity

. Make it easy to share resources with peers, friends & others.
. Allow you to quickly bookmark the pages.
. It gets simpler to submit your links to a web site, blog, Facebook, etc.
. Helps to keep your content focused on your primary topic, which helps you to effectively brand yourself.
. Discover more cool links like you already have.

· StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is the Internet's only web discovery service that allows people to discover great websites recommended by others with similar interests. It was founded in 2001, based in San Francisco and backed by the same investors as Google and Facebook. More than 20,000 advertisers are using StumbleUpon to promote products and services. It has more than 7.4 million users and receives 425 million recommendations per month.

Reasons behind StumbleUpon's popularity

. It rewards the best article.
. It does not ban the best sites.
. It has more positive pages.
. It allows more diversity of interests.
. It is easy to use and has better quality of comments.

· Reddit

Reddit is a social bookmarking and news site. It was founded in 2005 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. It allows users to submit articles, vote on them, as well as get engage in discussions. From SEO point of view, Reddit can prove to be an essential site as the article / websites voted up to the front page usually receive a great deal of traffic and can easily see over 10,000 visitors within the span of a day.

Reasons behind Reddit's popularity

. It offers more transparent results.
. It allows popular stories to stay at the top of the front page for a longer period of time.
. Reddit's new restricted feature allows anyone to view the content, but only invited members can submit, comment, or vote.
. It has greater homepage personalization

How to increase number of repeated visitors

Here, are tips to increase traffic and number of repeated visitors to your site.

· Set your goals - It is mandatory to keep in mind your main focus. Know the right section to post the article offering educative content. Also make sure that the title you choose is captivating and exciting, so that the visitors are compelled to visit your site. The article should be meaningful and precise.

· Offer high-value content - Ensure that the content you stumble is of high-value for the users to spend time on your website. Avoid spamming in groups or forums because it may bring huge traffic in the initial stage but after sometime, it would simply fade out.

· Promote your brand effectively - It is essential to make it look informative as well as appealing.

· Bloggers have been at it an average of three years and are collectively creating close to one million posts every day

· Update the site frequently - We generally visit sites that offer a wide range of information on daily basis. Hence, one should always update the content to build users interest in the business. We generally visit sites that offer a wide range of information on daily basis. Hence, one should always update the content to build users interest in the business.

· Build relationship - Send some good stumbles to your friends. Reply to the stumblers who rate your content positively through discussion groups, help forums and inbox.

· Ask for Feedback - Make it a habit to ask for the feedback from your readers. Take comments and suggestion seriously and always strive to improve the quality of your content.

I am webmaster of RedAlkemi. Founded in 1986, RedAlkemi.com has steadily grown to become the industry leaders in Search Engine Optimization, delivering measurable online results through Search Engine Marketing strategies, Social Media Marketing, and Website Design and Development. With over 400 clients across the globe, 20 business partners, multiple challenging projects and a motivated team of +130 professionals, RedAlkemi has carved a niche for itself in the field of Search Engine Optimization.

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