Many bloggers treat social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon as traffic generators, which they can be. However there is a lot more to social bookmarking than just traffic.

One of the biggest advantages in having a post bookmarked is its ability to send the search engine bot to your site to read and index the post that has been indexed. This can often speed up the indexing process by hours, if not days, depending on the frequency of their visits.

More importantly, some social bookmarking sites create backlinks to the post thereby increasing the number of back links coming in to your blog. The back link is a deep link to the post itself as well, not just the front page.

If you use the social bookmarking service in the manner it is intended, that is, to share valuable content with others, and to have others share content with you, it can be a good way to find out what is currently ‘hot’ online. If you generate content based on what is popular, it will naturally create more visitors. Well written and it will generate links organically.

Finally, social bookmarking can be a great resource to help generate ideas to write on, particularly useful if you are having a blank day. Content sent to you by your friends can be just the inspiration you need to create that next post.

As you can see, whilst social bookmarking can deliver traffic to your site, used wisely, it can generate far more. The next time you access a social bookmarking site, think about how you can gain some of those extra benefits.

Traffic from social bookmarking sites is notoriously unreliable. They tend to drop in and disappear again within 30 seconds. If you have something special, they may stay around longer. If you are using social bookmarking to gain traffic, forget it. However, if you are using it for link building, go for it.

If one of your pages gets bookmarked and receives a few votes, you may see your traffic spike a little, ignore it. Having your pages submitted to social bookmarking sites can have several benefits besides traffic.

Most social bookmarking sites flow link juice. Every time one of your pages gets submitted, it will get linked back. The more pages submitted the more link juice that will flow. The more sites you submit your content too, again, the more links.

If there is a word of warning, there have been mutterings around the web that Google will start looking at unusual social bookmarking activities and discount unnatural activity. What defines unnatural? Who knows. For now it is only a rumor. However Google are famous for trying to shutdown anything it considers unnatural. Social bookmarking can help increase the number of links coming in to your site.

Social bookmarking and blogging have built a reputation for unreliability and high bounce rates. If you approach social bookmarking sensibly, this does not need to be the case. You can develop a flow of regular readers over a period of time.

Most bloggers forget the original theme behind social bookmarking - and that is the term social. For many bloggers, they sign on and try to accumulate as many ‘friends’ or contacts as possible. They then spend their time submitting their own content and sending it on to all their friends in the hope they will vote it up.

To be effective, you need to be a little more social. Rather than promoting your own content, you should be on the lookout for content that may interest those you have befriended. Over time you will gain a reputation for only promoting the best content.

Once you have developed the reputation for submitting quality content, slipping your own posts into the submission process will not be a problem, so long as it is quality and of benefit to all. There will be times when you won’t need to submit your own content. Because you are seen as someone who only submits quality content, those who visit your site are quite likely to submit for you if they think it is quality.

Social bookmarking is all about being social and interacting with others on the various sites. Sites such as Digg work very much on a reciprocal basis. If you Digg their quality content, they are likely to Digg yours. Be social and social bookmarking may work for you. Be selfish and the only visitors you get will be the high bounce rate type.

There are many different schools of thought when it comes to submitting ones own content to social bookmarking sites. The general consensus appears to be that it is considered inappropriate. However, social bookmarking sites are there to help individuals share information, so why not share your own?

The problem is one of spam. If submitting ones own work was accepted then every post ever published would end up on every social bookmarking site. Eventually it would defeat the purpose. At the other end of the scale however is a general leathargy in the promoting of other sites.

I wonder how many times you have read an article and though, that was good. It was informative, well written and I really got a lot out of it. Then moved on. Social bookmarking sites are designed to share well written interesting content. You have just read something that meets those objectives so why is it you don’t share? It’s a general malaise that effects nearly every user. Eventually many bloggers submit their own content out of frustration.

Where you can submit your own content is indirectly. If you write and submit articles to directories, find where the article has been reprinted (with your links) and submit those pages to the social bookmarking sites.

You can also undertake link searches to see who is linking to your pages. If you come across pages that have linked to you (particularly with a quote), submit that page to a social bookmarking site.

By submitting these pages to the social bookmarking sites, you are promoting them to other users. Your pages may not receive the increased traffic, however the site you have submitted will and the link back to your page(s) may increase in value. You will often see an increase in traffic from users following the link to your pages.

Social bookmarking is all about sharing interesting to finds to other users. Anyone who quotes my articles and links to my pages is going to be interesting - at least in my eyes - so I am certainly going to bookmark those pages for others (including the search engines) to find.

Writing blog or web site content on a regular basis can be difficult.  If you add in a dose of the dreaded writers block, chances are you could sit at your keyboard for hours and not type a single word. Perhaps social bookmarking can provide some inspiration.

For many writers, they have their favorite sites - but do they have their favorite bookmarkers? If you have added individuals with similar niche related preferences then checking items that they have bookmarked can be a good start. To a certain extent, this was the original idea behind social bookmarking.

The alternative is to use a social bookmarking site like StumbleUpon. Set your preferences to your niche then sit back and let SU take you through a random series of popular content. Stop and read what is relevant, stumble through to the next item if it has no interest.

There are several major benefits in using social bookmarking site for inspiration. The first is obvious - you do get inspired by an article. Other benefits include the introduction to new sites you may not have come across before (or a reminder of a site that you had forgotten about) and learning. You will be surprised at how much you can learn just by randomly visiting sites that others have bookmarked.

Many consider social bookmarking and the random viewing of pages as a ‘time waster’ and that this time could be better utilized. Sometimes,  by ‘wasting’ 30 minutes  you may find you have acquired new knowledge, been inspired to write (often more than one post too) and found new and interesting sites. It seems to me, with the right attitude, social bookmarking could also be considered an investment.

Social bookmarking is not just about promoting yourself. Sometimes you can gain a lot more by letting others promote to you.

In case you are not familiar with the concept, StumbleUpon allows you to pay for visitors to your pages, five cents per visitor or click. The question is, do you consider this to be a simple form of paid advertising, or paid social bookmarking.

On a simple level, it is just paid advertising and not social bookmarking. If you set a limit of $20 per day, you will get 400 visitors. They may stay on your page or they may spend five seconds and dissapear.

Where the situations changes is when they thumbs up your page. That’s a stumble and can lead to more than just the 400 visitors. Once you start to get votes your page is treated the same as any other page - he more thumbs up - the more visitors you are likely to get. That, however is still not the real concept of social bookmarking.

The real issue is if you are lucky enough to get a review with the thumbing. Now you have a social bookmark in place and it has started through a paid campaign.  Social bookmarking is all about getting as many of those ‘real’ votes, that is reviews, as possible.

So are paid ’stumbles’ just plain promotion or a part of social bookmarking? Does it matter? You could be using any form of paid per click advertising, a social bookmark is a social bookmark. Not a cheap method to get that bookmark and there are no guarantees of getting ‘reviewed’, however if you are simply after traffic, the bookmark may be a nice bonus.

The use of social bookmarking sites has quickly become a popular way of increasing traffic to one’s site.  Sometimes the traffic is not all what it seems. StumbleUpon is a good example. Someone ’stumbles’ your post and before you know it you have a huge spike in your traffic. When you check your stats, there is also a huge spike in your bounce rate.

There are many people that sneer at social bookmarking and claim the time spent ’socializing’ could be better spent elsewhere. For these individuals I fear the magic of social bookmarking has escaped them.

When undertaking a social bookmarking campaign, the last thing that should be on your mind is traffic. I agree that in many cases the traffic delivered is fleeting, stopping for seconds before deciding to move on. With the StumbleUpon system I compare it to a magazine. You flick through a magazine stopping at articles that interest you; flicking past those that don’t.  Likewise, you flick through blogs, stopping at posts that interesting you; moving on if they don’t.

That is not the magic. The magic that social bookmarking delivers is the link from the bookmarking site to your post. That link can be multiplied by the name of bookmarks or votes that your site receives. Every time your post is bookmarked, that bookmark is saved in the bookmarker’s list of favorite sites.

That is the first piece of magic. The second still concerns links, this time from your visitors.  Traffic from social bookmarking sites is free.  If 1 our 100 stop and read - that is one extra reader you have received. More importantly, if any of these visitors link to your post, that is a another one way inbound link received.

The time invested in social bookmarking is almost impossible to measure in outcomes. You will never know if the next link comes from a visitor through a social bookmarking site, or from search engine listing. The fact you have another inbound link is what is important. There is definitely more to social bookmarking than just traffic.

Timing is everything, at least that is what I have been told. It seems to be true then it comes to social bookmarking as well.

Do you know where your ‘friends’ on any of the social bookmarking sites. For many sites such as Digg, they say you have 24 hours for your post to get noticed, after that forget it. For Digg, it can often be as short as 12 hours.

If your in the UK and many of your followers are in the US, when would be the most appropriate time to submit your post. Social bookmarking can be tricky. You can submit a post and get zero response one day and then next day get a flood for a different post.

Timing can be important, both in what time you submit and on which day. Some days do seem to perform better than others depending on the genre and your target audience. It is only by trial and error that you can determine the times and days that produce the best results for your genre.

As a general rule, social bookmarking across the board is more active between 10am and 3pm US Eastern Time and between 8pm and 11pm. Weekdays appear to be active than weekends. Different genres will produce different active periods and it seems that weekends are more likely to see page one activity for topics that generally don’t get a look in during week days.

There is no hard and fast rule for submitting to social bookmarking sites, however, if you can find an ideal time then make the most of it.

Social bookmarking is a popular way to get your blog posts out into the broader online community and StumbleUpon is one the most popular bookmarking sites available. However, if you occasionally thumb your own posts, be careful you don’t end up in the Stumble graveyard.

StumbleUpon can really provide your blog with a boost in traffic. When it comes to social bookmarking, get a couple of thumbs up and if your lucky, you will get a steady stream of traffic. However, to get that traffic the thumbs up  or ’stumble’ has to be done the right way.

I have seen many good posts killed because they were not stumbled correctly. The person who ‘discovers’ your post by thumbing it has to also provide a review. If they fail to write a review, the stumble ends up in the graveyard.  There are many theories as to why this happens but the general consensus is that for the first stumble, a review is required. If no review is offered then the stumble sits in limbo continuing to wait for that first review. Social bookmarking is fine, if everyone follows the rules.

If you get one of your social bookmarking friends to ’stumble’ one of your posts, make sure they also write a review. If you stumble it yourself, don’t be afraid to write that review. Some bloggers seem to shy away from writing reviews for their own posts, however this is the easiest way to kill the post.

Social bookmarking is a great way to meet people and promote yourself. It can also cause problems. I am waiting for the day that individuals start to abuse this stumble gliche to effectively kill posts from their competition.  Perhaps the powers that be at StumbleUpon can find a way around the problem.

Too many bloggers ignore the real power of social bookmarking when it comes to SEO and SERP benefits. There are distinct benefits from social media marketing particularly social bookmarking.

Sites that are bookmarked are often spidered much more frequently than a humble blog. That frequency can be hourly compared daily. To have a post ranked within an hour or two of posting can be important, particularly if you are trying to break a story and beat others to the punch.

The most effective social bookmarking sites for SEO purposes are StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us and technorati. Don’t however limit yourself to these sites as other dedicated sites such as Sphinn are often just as quick.

When it comes to social bookmarking, content is king. The aim of any social bookmarking strategy is to get other users to ‘vote’ on your post using the sites voting pattern. For SU its a thumbs up and for Digg, well its a dig of course. These votes are a mark of popularity, the more popular the post is, the faster it will be ’seen’ by the search engines. With a post that is also optimized well in the use and placement of keywords the position within the search engine results can be maintained for an extended period of time.

Over time your post may well lose the top spot, in may in fact disappear of the front page altogether. That is fine. You have had your hit. While the topic was hot your post was as the top of the results. Once the topic goes off the boil the number of searches will reduce. Time to move on to the next ‘hot’ topic.
If you wear badges on your posts, eg, number of Diggs, Sphinns etc, it can become viral with people voting on Sphinn to outdo the Digg count. One social bookmarking site is rarely enough to get to number one. You need to work the rounds and get a boost from a number of sites. Likewise, you will not get voted on for every post. Pick your posts, pick your moments, then get the boost while its there to be picked.

Social bookmarking seems to be dividing into two distinct groups who are then using social bookmarking sites for different reasons.

The first group join social bookmarking sites that best reflect their genre and their interests. They interact within that social community slowly developing a group of friends (or at least acquaintances). Bookmarking is done on the basis of quality and interests and does not often reflect their own sites content. These users are more like your social butterflies in the offline world. If they find something new and interesting they like to be the first to tell others.

Part of this online socializing includes visiting other blogs from within your sphere of friends. If an article stands out then you will signal that fact to others by flagging it in someway. This then sets of a chain reaction where your friends refer that article to their friends. This of course is the viral principle at work.

The second group join as many sites as possible and make as many friends as possible. Their aim is to promotes their own content and get as much traffic to their site as quickly as possible. The quality of the article is not considered, in fact almost every article is either thumbed, dugg or flagged in some way in the hope that it will go ‘viral’.

Smart operators have found a way to have a foot in both camps. They sign up to as many good social bookmarking sites as possible. Spend as much time as they can to socialize and build a network. Once established, they then start to promote their own articles, often by getting their closest ‘friends’ to flag the article for them.

Which camp are you in? Social bookmarking that has been done carefully and with consideration to the friends list will generally drive more quality traffic, traffic that will stay and read and perhaps even subscribe.

Traffic that is driven from an artificially created viral exercise may be useful in pushing up the articles authority and search engine rankings. The traffic generated in this manner will generally have a high bounce rate and a very low conversion rate.

What is your preference? The buzz created from a close group of ‘friends’ that generates a reasonable conversion rate, or the buzz created from an artificial viral campaign that may boost your search engine ranking but has a low conversion rate?

Both can be effective. By gaining a higher search engine ranking the traffic derived will be quality traffic with a potentially high conversion rate. If you are smart, and can have one foot firmly planted in both camps, you will have the best of all worlds. A viral campaign that brings in traffic with a moderate conversion rate whilst boosting your search engine rankings. This intern leads to further traffic with higher conversion rates. Learn to work both ends of the social bookmarking scene. There are plenty of benefits to be gained.

The number of social bookmarking sites that have not gone the no follow route is slowly declining with Flickr the latest to join the no follow list. The seems to be an unhealthy interest in whether or not sites, social bookmarking sites included, use the follow or no follow tags. It seems that everyone is looking for rank juice rather than publishing for a audience.

Don’t get me wrong. Link building is important and if you can get inbound links with no follow tags then your ranking is going to be marginally affected. However when it comes to social bookmarking sites then is more value in what other are saying about your pages than a simple no follow link.

If your articles are bookmarked in a variety of social bookmarking sites then the search engines are going to notice you far quicker than by a simple spider crawl. If your article or page has been bookmarked by many then articles ranking climbs. Add to this the tags that are added to your page when it is bookmarked and the area of relevance is broadened. If I bookmarked this article with ’social bookmarking’ tags then that is one area. You come along and like this article and bookmark it but the tags you use are SEO and Linking. The article now has three points of reference. Each point of reference is reinforced every time someone bookmarks the page.

Whether or not the links have a follow or no follow tag, the search engines will still find the page within the social bookmarking sites and still reference them. I have had pages published, submitted to a site and been indexed by Google within two hours - the index is to one of the bookmarking sites, but that link still leads eventually to my page.

If you really want a social bookmarking site that does not use the no follow then check the following. From what I can see they don’t use the tag, however things are changing almost daily.

Furl
Propeller
Digg
Technorati
Slashdot

Social bookmarking has to be the most cost effective way to promote your blog. The cost in dollar terms can be nil. The cost in time can be minimal once you are established. The rewards can be huge compared to other forms of blog promotion.

One of the biggest mistakes that new bloggers make is to try and get on the Digg or Stumbleupon hit parade. If you can get on the front page of Digg or get a good surge from Stmbleupon then sure, you are in for a fun ride. However  your bounce rate is likely to be huge, your click through rate low; and the
long term affects on traffic can be negligible.

If you are prepared to take your time, research several of the social bookmarking sites to get the feel for them and then spend some time getting to know the players, your long term traffic can be boosted; it will be quality targeted traffic as well.

By fostering relationships within these sites you will slowly build subscriber numbers and just as importantly slowly develop backlinks. With the increase in backlinks comes the increase in recognition by search engines and with that development comes the increase in quality targeted traffic.

The key to successful social bookmarking is to get to know the important people on these sites, promote yourself to them by visiting their blogs and leaving thoughtful and appropriate messages. Don’t jump in and add them to your contacts. Become known first. Don’t throw every article you write into the mix; promote your best articles. Finally, respect the other  players; promote their articles only when they deserve promoting; don’t promote articles to become popular. You will gain a reputation for being selective in what you promote, what you submit and who you befriend. Your opinion will start will be valued.

Compared to other forms of blog marketing, social bookmarking can be very productive and very cost effective.

Social bookmarking is a great tool for getting your site or individual articles out into the blogosphere. To bookmark a site or post you need only log in and submit your site or post. Social networking on the other hand is time consuming and involves befriending others. Reading their blogs and commenting or entering into discussions.

There are many different networking opportunities available. They range from all purpose sites like BlogCatalog to the numerous topic specific forums. To find a forum for your niche just visit your favorite search engine and enter the niche and the word forum, for example, golf forum or SEO forum.

Why is social networking important? Social networking is a way to get your name out there (along with your site). One of the things I have noticed is that the big name bloggers just don’t have the time to answer every question thrown at them, except through forums where they can pick and choose the topics and discussions to participate in.

Forums are a particularly good place to develop a name for yourself. Find areas where you have good knowledge of the subject matter and start to answer some of the general questions. Over a period of time you will develop a reputation for being the person with the answers. With that recognition comes the ability to answer questions through blog posts. Forum users will then add your site to their regular reading list, or better yet, subscribe to your posts or newsletters.

One word of caution. Make sure you are aware of the forum’s rules regarding the kinds of posts you are allowed to make and whether or not you can include your own sites URL. Most sites don’t mind referencing your own URL so long as it is in context and you art not spamming. Social bookmarking is a great short term method to gain traffic - social networking is much better for gaining long term traffic and building your name.

In an earlier post we wrote about the benefits of Social Bookmarking. What if I told you that with the press of one button you could send your plog or each post to over 30 different social bookmarking sites? I have come across one tool that does it all for you.

Social Marker from socialmarker.com is a powerful little tool that can be added to the browser or inserted onto your blog - there is also a WordPress plugin available. For Social Marker to work you need to sign up to each of the sites listed. This will take roughly an hour if you wish to sign up to all 31 sites. If your like me, you have probably signed up for a lot of the sites already. You also have the option to select which sites you do (or don’t) want to include.

You will also need to install a tool onto your browsers toolbar or insert the buttons code onto your web or blog page. If you have the toolbar button in place then you only have to select the pages URL, press the button and away it goes. It takes 5 to 10 minutes and your post has been submitted to all sites. Installing the button enables your visitors to quickly submit your page as well.

Why use a tool like this? Social Bookmarking sites provide very quick back links to your posts. The more back links you can acquire the better your Page Rank is going to be. The added benefit of course is that your page or your post will be available to over 30 communities - instantly. If you get just 5 visitors from each of these sites, that is 150 extra visitors - all for 10 minutes work submitting your post. The following is the list of sites that you can currently submit to.