Social Bookmarking

Sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Backflip allow registered users to store all of their bookmarks in one location online, which allows them to access their bookmarks from any place that has Internet access, regardless of the web browser they use. These sites also add customization and interactivity to this feature where users can post and make comments about popular links on the site. These sites are popular because users can customize and control their online experience by storing any of the many websites they see in a day, all in one place. Users also love this technology because they can share their bookmarks with others.

Websites can cater to this market by making linking to various articles easy to do. For example, if a user were to read an interesting article on the New York Times website, he or she can easily save the link to the social bookmarking site of choice. The more people who bookmark the same link, the more popular the link becomes. An article’s popularity can bring in significant traffic to a site. If a website includes articles and other updated content, learning the ins and outs of social bookmarking sites can add value to the quest for website visitors. Catering to these sites is free and can potentially bring in a lot of traffic.

Some Web marketers will use social bookmarking to increase visibility within search engines, but also within the social bookmarking site itself. Imagine that a webmaster posted an interesting article on his site. People visit this article frequently and mark the link to that article in their social bookmarking accounts. Now search engines will know that his website is well linked and well respected.

Also, because of the popularity of that article, people who visit that social bookmarking site will also come across the article while using the social bookmarking site, making the link even more popular. Social bookmarking can have a profound snowball effect on traffic, which is why social bookmarking is a marketing favorite. Unfortunately, marketers have very little control over this process. They can’t make people mark a site, they can only entice them. This is why being mindful of having good, useable content is still important.