I once wanted to be a bestselling author. I would dreamily write away during class. I wasn’t in the classroom anymore, I was in a different world, transported by a play of words flowing freely from my ballpoint pen. That was way back in my elementary and high school years. I have a stash of stories handwritten in ring bound notebooks somewhere in my room. As you know, computers weren’t that compact those days so I prefer the old fashioned way. When I decided to get rid of some stuff, I found those notebooks. Some of the pages are yellow, some have smudged areas, no doubt caused by some kind of dampness after being stored away for such a long time.
Great writing is great. There’s no doubt about that. But even if you have the best articles, the best writers, the best content but you don’t market your site, it wouldn’t matter. An aggressive site with below average content can eclipse you in the search engine rankings if you do not promote your site in the same way that I can never be a bestselling fiction writer if I don’t even have a typewritten copy of my work. Social bookmarking is one of the tools used to make sure your site gets heard. It’s a grassroots effort because you have to do the dirty work. (Yes, filling up those information fields can be a pain in the neck.)
Uh. But what exactly is social bookmarking?
“Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.”- Wikipedia
It’s a method where you can save a page from a site you like to a public site so that you can open it later , even in someone else’s computer. You can also tag other people to view the site that you like or share your bookmarks to them. In this way, you can tag someone or another site to view a page. Of course, it has to be relevant to their page otherwise it might be passed off as spam. You don’t want to look unattractive to your neighborhood sites.
How do I get into social bookmarking?
As said, you have to register in a site. Or sites. Here are some popular social bookmarking sites, in no particular order:
1. StumbleUpon
2. Digg
3. Yahoo MyWeb
4. Del.icio.us
5. Reddit
6. Squidoo
7. Simpy
8. Mixx
9. Spurl
10. BlinkBits
There’s a lot more out there and you can add to this list if you want but these are the ones that I’ve tried and trust(and some highly recommended by SEO gurus too). To make it easier for you, there are tools which it make it easier for you to register to these sites and more. You can try SocialMarker which is a social bookmarking service that has more than 40 sites on its list to date. It fills out the fields for you so you can register faster.
Social bookmarking is a great tool to perk up the ranking of your website. Its effects can be seen directly such as a visible jump in your page ranking in Google or indirectly through creating awareness of your site and making additional links. Now, go and make those bookmarks while I take a look at those notebooks. Who knows one of my stories will be a bestseller if marketed right?
[...] I don’t have a sense of direction. None at all. It’s a wonder why I actually go from point A to point B. But traveling is vital for me. I don’t like getting stuck in a place for long. I have to go somewhere. Well, it’s the same with websites. Especially for new ones. You do not want to get stuck in the rut for a long time. You cannot afford it either. Your business might suffer or your efforts might not get the attention that you wanted to have. Aside from regularly posting an article, you have to do something else or be in the danger of being on the 16th page in the search engine. For those who don’t know what a web directory is, it’s pretty much like the Yellow Pages. Directories are sites which group all related sites in one category. Some have a lot of categories, some don’t. For example, under the category of home, parenting, gardening, cooking can be included. Social Bookmarking is quite similar to you bookmarking your favorite part of the book. Bookmark sites keep bookmarks of your favorite sites. You can also check out this article to know more about social bookmarking. [...]