Page 1 of 1

What is Social Bookmarking?

Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2009 6:57 am
by Neo
In the earlier days of the Internet, if you saw a website that really excited you, how would you go about telling your online friends about it? If you couldn't talk to them over the telephone, you would have to email them or send them a link via a chat room.

Well, now there is a new alternative… social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a concept where users 'tag' sites of interest. After that happens, these tags show up in two places: the user's profile, (which looks like a mini-site to other users), and the homepage of the bookmarking network. The latter will display the tag temporarily, before it gets displaced by newer ones.

Anyway, once a tag is entered into the bookmarking network, other users are free to rate it. URLs with higher ratings gain more prominence in a social network. In turn, those with lesser ratings tend to lose presence. And, if a tag is considered to be spam, it will be forever banned from the network.

So, what potential does social bookmarking have for Internet users? Well, most of these networks have an interactive “Web 2.0” quality. Sure, you're tagging websites, but you're also interacting with a community.

In fact, thanks to the way in which bookmarking works, many people could avoid wasting money on ineffective
products or even worse, online job scams. If they are unsure about the legitimacy of a site, they can see if it has been
tagged before within a social network. If it has, chances are you can get an idea of what others think about it before risking your own money.

Social bookmarking can also be useful for Internet marketers. After they have uploaded their site onto the Web, they can let people know about it by creating their own bookmark. If the website is worthwhile, other users will give it a good rating. This gives you some pagerank, even if it is on a smaller scale. Plus, it's an excellent source for free traffic.

Social bookmarking is all about linking to new sites and web pages. Therefore, it has a place in search engine optimization. By building backlinks to your sites and web pages, you can get them to rank higher in the search engines. This means you get a boost in traffic. There are hundreds if not thousands of social bookmarking sites on the Internet, that means you can get links back to your pages from them quickly and easily if you allow users to bookmark your pages.

In conclusion, social bookmarking is an interesting concept for people who want to combine their love of surfing with online communication. Through these networks, you can learn about new sites or tag your own sites while getting a chance to meet new people. Indeed, it's a simple concept, yet it offers extraordinary value both in terms of practicality and entertainment. Learn how to use social bookmarking in conjunction with other search engine optimization techniques to boost the traffic to your site.