When you make your own website and everything starts running smoothly, you must find ways to generate as much traffic as possible. Banners and contextual advertisements are useful methods to achieve this, but they are costly and most of the time not that effective for a new website. Social bookmarking on the other hand is entirely free and extremely efficient if you know how to use it. Moreover, it\’s closely connected to the new changes that take place in online content, known as Web 2.0, which among others emphasizes on user participation.

Basics of social bookmarking
Initially used almost exclusively as an effective means for Internet users to share their bookmarks with others online, social bookmarking has since then greatly enlarged its scope. Now it\’s used by websites of all sorts as a means to make discreet but highly efficient promotion.

Websites offering social bookmarking services enable their users to submit their bookmarks and to label them with the help of tags, which enables easy sorting and facilitates access. These sites are often large online communities, where participants rate the links submitted by others.

How it can increase traffic
While SEO practices are the main methods used to increase traffic for any website, social bookmarking complements them. It\’s a tool that, if used properly, is so efficient that it cannot be neglected by webmasters interested in attracting more visitors and improving the image of their websites.

Social bookmarking is different from search engine optimization because instead of relying on computer algorithms it depends entirely on the opinions people have. And while SEO usually promotes large websites that feature content maintained by professional teams, social bookmarking can help even smaller websites generate some extra traffic. If a small blog covers an interesting topic that people like and a link to it gets on a bookmarking service, then the number of visitors the blog gets for a period can drastically increase.

After you make your own website you should use social bookmarking to your advantage. Not only that it can draw attention to you, but it can also help create useful backlinks. Google and Yahoo regard backlinks that go only one way, from website x to website y without y having to link back to x, much higher than interconnected links. This boosts your website\’s ranking in the search results page. All social bookmarks are one-way backlinks.

Using social bookmarking
Before you can use social bookmarks to increase your traffic you must ensure that your content is good, because without it, no matter how many links you submit you\’ll get nowhere. So, when you\’re sure your content is okay check three of the most popular bookmarking services around: Del.icio.us, Reddit, and Digg. They will require registration, but it\’s free and takes no longer than a couple of minutes. Then all you\’ll have to do is submit your links.

Tips:
– Keep in mind that if you also submit links to other pages, besides the homepage, you are likely to see results faster.

– If you are a blogger then you should submit links for each new post you make.

– For a conventional website send the links for all the interesting new content you add, such as videos, photos, or articles.

Focus on content
Especially when you build your own free website, since you don\’t have any expenses to worry about, you should invest in quality content. After all, this is what will bring you visitors. When using social bookmarking you have to remember that the value of the links is set by people, meaning that if you have quality content a handful of links will be enough to increase your hits. Spamming multiple bookmarking websites with your links will do you no good if your content is poor.

The many possibilities you have nowadays to make your website for free enable you to invest your resources in quality content. It doesn\’t really matter what type of website you have; whether it\’s a personal website or a business website you must ensure that it offers relevant and informative articles that are easy to read. It gives you the guarantee that you\’ll rank high in the search results page and that the communities on social bookmarking websites will rate your links.

Nowadays it doesn\’t take long to make your own website, but its promotion can take quite some time and involve substantial costs. Social bookmarking is one of the solutions you have to efficiently promote yourself with no expenses, in an easy and accessible way. Use it to your own advantage.

Author Bio: Maria Wixman Free Flash website by WIX.com I have been in the online marketing industry for over two years and love all things related to e-marketing, writing for the web, SEO and SEM. I\’ve been working for a large company that specializes in web design, and love how dynamic this field is.

Category: Internet
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