Secrets of Social Bookmarking and Link Building Revealed

May 02, 2011 by Nikki Paladino

In Dave’s recent post about social search, he discussed how the rise of the social web has changed the way we share information. He mentioned how people share interesting and funny links with their friends through social media sites, blogs, email, and Google, but he forgot to mention one very popular method of sharing information that many people are now using: social bookmarking sites. 

Social bookmarking sites are not only great for sharing information but they also have become very useful in getting and creating links for SEO link building campaigns. These sites allow you to get links on their pages and also allow you to seek out potential link partners. Allow me to explain…

What is Social Bookmarking?

It’s important to understand the basic premise of social bookmarking sites before you begin your link building efforts. These sites allow you to create and save links to your profile page that you want to share with others.

When you bookmark or create a link on your profile page, you include the URL, description, title, and keywords that apply to that link. Then other users on the social bookmarking site are able to search for information about topics they are interested in – hopefully finding your shared links in the process.

Using Social Bookmarking to create links

Obviously, link building is about getting links and that’s exactly what social bookmarking sites allow you to do. You can bookmark links to your website, blog posts, twitter, Facebook, articles, or press releases on your profile page. These bookmarks then create permanent links to any of those things I mentioned on that particular social bookmarking site.

When you create your profile on your social bookmarking site you can also add a link to your website on the “About me” section.  Some sites even have a specific section where you can add links to your profiles on other social bookmarking sites, social media sites or your blog; this is another great place to obtain links as well.

Using Social Bookmarking to make connections

Social bookmarking sites allow you to share and send links to your site and they also connect you with others who you can use as link partners. There are two ways you can find people who will link to your site or your content.

The first is by users finding your bookmarks and liking them, then sharing them with other people, then having those people post your links to their sites.  All this requires from is sharing valuable and important information that other users may be interested in.  Easier said than done, but try to add bookmarks about the most current events or the most popular topics in your industry.

The second way to encourage shared links is to actively search for other users who may have sites or blogs that discuss topics related to your industry. These other users may be willing to promote your content on their site. A huge part of link building has always been about making connections. Now these social bookmarking sites are just an easier way of making those connections.

If they don’t share each other’s shared links, I don’t know who does

My favorite social bookmarking sites

There are many different social bookmarking sites on the web today so there are plenty to choose from when you begin your link building and content sharing efforts. You can create profiles on as many as you like. I have listed below the sites that I have found to work very well with my link building campaigns.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.diigo.com/
http://faves.com/home
http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.kaboodle.com/
http://www.blinklist.com/

I hope this information about how you can use social bookmarking sites in your link building campaigns is very useful and something you can incorporate into your link building strategies. If you have any questions, or would like some more link building tips, feel free to email me.