Social Bookmarking is the latest craze in the world of Social Media. You will probably have heard the names of some of the largest sites – Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious. The popularity of these Bookmarking Social sites is big and on the increase, which is why anyone interested in SEO needs to understand how to make them work for you! So what exactly is Social Bookmarking SEO? Well, bookmarking is the practice of saving links to websites you would like to remember. Social bookmarking is making those ‘bookmarked’ websites available for others to view and follow. When you register with a social bookmarking site, you are essentially telling other members what you have seen, what you have liked and why, and inviting them to view your favorite sites. In this way bookmarking sites have begun to act like ‘real-time’ search engines. In many cases bookmarked web-pages have not yet been noticed or indexed by traditional search engines. There are some bookmarking sites that allow you to have more private accounts where information is only shared with specified people or groups, but these are not really relevant to us in terms of SEO benefits. Most bookmarking sites invite their users to organize their saved links with tags, or keywords. Viewing of others bookmarked sites is also often done via these tags allowing members to find sites most relevant to them. And it is here where the Social Bookmarking SEO benefits become apparent. Benefits By bookmarking your url and tagging the link correctly, you can draw substantial traffic from members interested in your product/service. The best thing about this traffic is that it is from relevant and high quality members of the bookmarking community. Building links to your site is crucial for effective SEO. Every post with a link on one of these Social Bookmarking sites counts as a link to you. If other members follow the link and like it they too may bookmark your site; and as the popularity of the bookmark grows, so too will traffic to your site. Don’t Get Carried Away… It must be remembered, however, that bookmarking in no way replaces any other form of SEO or Social Media Optimization. These sites are still relatively young and long-term positive effects of their use are yet to be proven. The most important thing to work upon remains the website content – there is no point attracting any traffic if the content on your site is not going to keep visitors there! Here at Emboodo, we understand the potential benefits of these sites. We have added Social Bookmarking to our giant toolbox of SEO methods, and will be monitoring its performance.