Learning Internet Marketing 107 - Social Bookmarking

There are five critical steps to optimising your website's position for search engines. They are blogs, video online, social networking, social bookmarking, and content sharing sites. The previous articles in this series have been on the first three individual strategies to promote your business and to improve your search engine rankings; blogs, video online and social networking. This article will discuss the next of the five critical steps; social bookmarking, as the strategy that will accelerate the dissemination of the information from the first three strategies used on your website.

Definition

Social bookmarking is defined as a method for Internet users to store, organise, search and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet. It is the same as having favourites on your browser but instead of just having them located individually, the bookmarking will gather them according to particular groups or associations. Visitors can view these bookmarks in order of date or by category or tags. The links are then saved for sharing or later referring to. Social bookmarking is an efficient and sustainable way to share resources.

Social Bookmarking as a Strategy

All other strategies previously mentioned in this series have all been virtually stand-alone but essentially all feeding back to your blog. Social bookmarking accelerates the dissemination of information through the use of back-links to your site and in particular to your blog. The more back-links you have to your site the higher the search engine ranking of your site.

Some of the more popular social bookmarking sites include Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit and Del.icio.us. This list is by no means exhaustive and for a comprehensive list just do a search for social bookmarking.

The way to best utilise social bookmarking sites is to go to register and setup the various sites individually. Even though this may be time consuming initially, once done they can be set and you virtually forget them. Once setup and in place they accelerate the dissemination of information automatically. You only need to upload one video, for example and it is immediately sent out to all your setup sites. The explosive effect of this is multiplied exponentially when the search engines start noticing the numerous entries for just one video. Your rankings will also explode.

The viral effect of just one video or comment or link from your online video or other social networks instantaneously goes to as many sites as you have setup.

For maximum efficiency and sustainability always have your sites categorised according to their groups or topics. This way if you have multiple sites for each category then if all of your friends or family are registered with all these sites they will all received the same message or video or link. If you are using various categories of business associates then none of your prospects will ever miss out on that vital message or link, irrespective of which sites they may be registered with.

The best way to track you social bookmarking sites and the various other strategies you may be using is to maintain a register on a database or even a simple spreadsheet. This way you can keep a track of who is on what site and you can track your messages and videos and links that you send out and also keep a track on the success rates or the conversion rates of each strategy.

Finally, never forget to have key word or phrase rich tags in your content. In order to maximise your search engine rankings not only do you need to have the volume of sites out there but the content must also be key word or phrase rich to supercharge and accelerate your rankings.

In summary

Remember that the blog is the centrepiece of your five critical steps to optimise your rankings for your business but it also relies on the strategies that support it and provide the back-links to your blog. The other strategies are great but when combined with the social bookmarking your rankings will be accelerated and your information will be disseminated more sustainably and efficiently to an enormous number of sites instantaneously. Your search engine rankings can do nothing but increase dramatically.

In the concluding two articles in this series we will discuss the final strategy of content sharing sites and then bring the whole process together in one cohesive package.

Shane Kendrick is an Internet Marketing Consultant and Advertising Copywriter who specializes in web content and social media. Shane also provides training and webinars for enterprises looking to enhance their online presence. For more details on the range of services provided by Shane and his team, visit their website at http://www.itsonlywords.com.au or eMail to enquiries@itsonlywords.com.au

Shane can also be contacted to discuss various topics including those associated with interactive learning methodologies on Skype at "ShaneKendrick" or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/shanekendrick

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