You have probably heard a ton about Social Bookmarking or Social Media Networking, or …. it goes on; as within anything on the Internet there are a myriad of different terms to describe this phenomenon. What it comes right down to though are votes. Similar to a backlink to a website, social bookmarks are a method for the average joe to share a great online find with the rest of the world. As others share their favorite finds the bookmarked content has a greater chance of generating more and more interest. Content that gets the most interest will earn prominent visibility that can earn hundreds and even thousands of free backlinks. As a result, making it easy for users to socially bookmark your content is definitely in your best interest. From my experience the most popular bookmarking websites are Digg it, Reddit, and del.icio.us.

So how can you add social bookmarking to your content?

Here is a great free online tool called the “Social Bookmark Link Creator” that will automatically generate bookmark links that you or your webmaster can include on key pages or articles within your website. It is not necessary to add social bookmarking to every page within your website but I do recommend adding it to articles, “how to’s”, and any other material that may provoke lasting interest.

After using this tool I added it to the “How to Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URLs” I recently added to StepForth’s FAQ section. As you can see this menu can be added to a page in a manner that does not detract from the content.

Anyway, if you haven’t already done it, I suggest taking your first step into the world of social bookmarking. If your content is of use it is likely to generate some positive attention… and who doesn’t need that?

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth SEO Services
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