Amongst marketers, some opinions are strongly held. From ideas about traffic conversion to myths about search engine calculation methods, marketers often hold themselves to patently untrue ideas. One such idea is the thought that social bookmarking traffic is worthless. From Digg to Reddit, Delicious to StumbleUpon, the audiences on offer through social bookmarking are wide and varied. While there may be relatively little direct marketing potential on offer, there are hundreds of ways to optimize your search engine ranking through social bookmarking websites.
The first, and most direct way, is to simply submit your website to gain popularity and potential links. All you need for this is a website, a social bookmarking account, and some content that has the potential to generate a massive amount of buzz and attention. Social bookmarking websites are good at smelling spam, so if your website is entirely commercial, you might find yourself having a hard time converting submissions into powerful links using this method. However, any links are good, and social bookmarking links are still worth the time, even if they do not spread.
The second method is to spread your links yourself, through a series of social bookmarking accounts and disguised resources. SEOs have been using social bookmarking as a link-networking tool for years, and it is still a highly lucrative resource. Using multiple proxies, and sometimes even multiple computers, you can create several social bookmarking accounts and use them for the sole purpose of submitting your own links.
Of course, you are unlikely to generate any spread links with a new account, but that is not the point of this strategy. Instead of focusing on viral content, this method brings non-viral, ultra-measurable SEO influence as a major goal. You control every single bookmarking account, leaving you with the potential to generate hundreds of backlinks in a very short amount of time.
There is a third way to create social bookmarking power, and it is a little indirect and sneaky. Social bookmarking websites love quirky, unique content, but sometimes that content does not exist in uninteresting yet profitable niches. If you can submit content on an interesting topic, let it generate a large amount of interest, and then modify your linked-to page, you can push something that’s particularly lucrative right to the top of the rankings, all by secretively changing your social bookmarking links.
Of course, these indirect and slightly devious methods present you with a real risk of having your content, and eventually your links, removed from social bookmarking websites. It all comes down to your business’ priorities — innovative businesses might value a wave of traffic more than a potentially small short-term issue. No matter which form of social bookmarking SEO you decide to pursue, all can generate massive amount of links in relatively short amounts of time, and all are incredibly valuable to SEO marketers. Look beyond the immediate effects of social bookmarking traffic, for there are hundreds of ways to turn attention into SEO power, regardless of where you operate.