Social Bookmarking Strategies for making the most of your Internet Website Development
Social bookmarking is a relatively new phenomenon. While we can review the late 90′s for a worthy predecessor, social bookmarking didn’t leap onto the scene until the herald site Delicious showed up. Social bookmarking sites gather together information, articles and blog posts which are stored, organised and managed according to relevancy, or tags.
Some individuals have labelled social bookmarking as search engine marketing with a personal touch. The information is seen as relevant due to the fact that it has been provided by a human being, rather than assessed for relevancy by a robot and through search engine algorithms. As the people who interact with social bookmarking sites often allocate points to the content according to relevancy and usefulness, this human touch is re-emphasised.
Social bookmarking is viewed as a great SEO tool for online business, as it feeds off the networking capabilities of the web. The most famous sites have incredible numbers of active followers who are essentially establishing a new trend by getting their news on any particular subject or niche online instead of through other more traditional methods. Social bookmarking sites can be linked and an RSS feed set up, thereby creating an aggregate of news that can be delivered efficiently with very little necessary effort.
While it’s not applicable in every instance, most of the time you can create back links to your site by placing URL’s into your content. Some social bookmarking sites initiate a “no follow” policy, which means that the operators attach tags to your links that effectively negate any SEO advantage. However, this certainly doesn’t keep people from clicking through to your website, or even becoming a possible valuable customer or client, but it does mean that you won’t receive any benefit in terms of the search engine ranking for your website page.
If you’re savvy about your online marketing and website development, you can use social bookmarking to great effect. Put meaningful content out there with valid and informative material, and people within the social bookmarking arena will rate it highly. Sharing of content is actively encouraged, and as a user’s network is informed of the existence of your content, the potential to go viral appears.
Make sure that your marketing message is subtle, as with any Internet marketing initiative. Blatant advertising is frowned upon, but relevant links when displayed in a soft-sell way will result in an increase in visitors. Make sure that you accurately attach your tags or keywords, to ensure that your message can be found within this vast Internet world!
There are hundreds and hundreds of social bookmarking sites, and you should try and include a plug-in within your site to allow people to easily and quickly bookmark your content. Sites such as WordPress make this very easy for you. RSS feed aggregators essentially summarize blogs and content and allow users to categorize things they find of interest into one easy to find place.
Social bookmarking should be an essential part of an overall Internet marketing and SEO strategy.
Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an Executive Virtual Assistant who assists businesses and individuals with achieving their professional goals. Want to find out more about online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!
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