Hmmm, is submitting blog posts to social bookmarking sites pointless?

[moneyblogger1]

Hey Warriors,

I have come to learn that most of the social bookmarking sites are indeed "no-follow" when it comes to creating backlinks.

As far as I understand that means you can post a blog post on lets say, Digg or Delicious all you want but Google will not follow it and recognize it as a backlink to your site.

Is this true?

So then my question would be.....is submitting blog posts to social bookmarking sites as part of a backlinking campaign pointless?

I have checked Yahoo site explorer and none of my links from social bookmarking sites are being found.....hmmm

Thanks

Brandon

[genietoast]

For the most part, yes. But not totally.

If you use Delicious, there will be an RSS feed in your account. You can book mark your articles in there (or Twitter), take the RSS feed, and feed them to aggregator sites like Feedburner, Feedage, Million RSS, Feed Shark, etc.

Don't forget other free traffic methods like guest posting on high content sites.

Visit Kim Roach's blog at Buzzblogger.com. She's got a lot of good tips. FREE. Not too many involve SEO.

[moneyblogger1]

I guess where I have gotten a little confused is that I have read so many people talking about submitting your site to social bookmarking sites for backlinks and it is interesting to find out that this is pointless.

Are all these people missing the boat? Is this the same case with Youtube and video sites as well?

[kimkitch]

It is a good thing to have nofollow links pointing to your site as it makes your linkbuilding look more natural in the eyes of google.

[Kezz]

The thing is, even if the social bookmarking links don't directly add to pagerank, they will almost certainly bring you traffic.

Given that a major benefit of pagerank is traffic, that's one good reason to do it.

The other is that your increased exposure will lead to natural backlinking from people who just like what you have to offer.

People can't voluntarily link to your site unless they know it exists, and social bookmarking helps them find it.

If you get a tool such as OnlyWire or SocialBot that makes it a few second job to do the bookmarking, it's worthwhile.

[james.anderson]

Well no it's not pointless at all. First you can expect some decent traffic if your story is good enough. Secondly sites like digg etc. rank well in SE for low competing keywords, so you can expect some indirect traffic from SE's as well

Yes it's true that there are many nofollow sites out there but there are good dofollow sites out there as well. PM me if you need your bookmarking tasks outsourced.

Also mixture of nofollow and dofollow backlinks can help your backlinks look natural in the eyes of big G

[shaktimaan]

Originally Posted by moneyblogger1

So then my question would be.....is submitting blog posts to social bookmarking sites as part of a backlinking campaign pointless?

Thanks

Brandon

Dofollow social bookmarking sites can help index your post. Your post may also get some pagerank. For higher ranking they are not very useful.

[moneyblogger1]

Does anybody know a good wordpress plugin to make this process automaitc?

I have tried a couple that don't really work to well

Thanks

[Gary Becks]

It is not totally pointless but it's SEO benefits are useless. The cool thing about bookmarking your post is that it can be automated with plugins. So it really can't hurt since your are doing literally nothing.

[Kezz]

The OnlyWire plugin is the quickest in my experience.

But then, you don't really need a plugin as you can just put a little button onto your browser toolbar that does the same thing.

[jacky212]

Although google doesn't value dofollow links, yahoo and bing accepts no-follow links also as backlinks. And... its not just the links, you'll be able to drive a whole lot of traffic to your site.. Social bookmarking is an optimal way to lead traffic to your site....

[FerdinandF]

I found that I get lots of traffic from Social Bookmarking sites and so I do it to get traffic, not backlinks. The quickest way to get traffic to a new site is by using these networks. You can have 20-100 visits a day easy, even before your site is indexed by the search engines.

[Steve Crooks]

In the traditional sense of getting high PR backlinks that are all dofollow, yes, social bookmarking can be thought of as pointless however, there is something else you need to consider.

Google are paying a lot of attention to the social media in general and are starting to use the feedback they are getting from voting sites, bookmarking to understand what "the people" are actually interested in. PageRank, although still the major ranking factor for web pages is not the ONLY ranking factor. Social buzz is most certainly a factor in how your pages get ranked now. This is not just my opinion but something I have seen happen through my testing.

[paulgl]

Be careful with digg. If all you do is submit blog post after
blog post, you may get banned as a spammer.

Social bookmarks like that are way overvalued.

Paul

[halfpoint]

I don't put too much emphasis on bookmarking at all. I generally just use it as an additional method of getting things indexed.

[moneyblogger1]

See, I find that funny. I get hardly and traffic from these sites and I have been submiting content to them for a while.

Originally Posted by FerdinandF

I found that I get lots of traffic from Social Bookmarking sites and so I do it to get traffic, not backlinks. The quickest way to get traffic to a new site is by using these networks. You can have 20-100 visits a day easy, even before your site is indexed by the search engines.

[actionplanbiz]

no follows backlinks from high PR sites seems to positively influence my sites PR

[jmcg084]

I like to ensure that I post on do-follow sites/blogs, because it is important that your links count. on the other hand it doesn't hurt to have these no-follow links from the social sites.

But make sure that most of your links come from do-follow and maybe a maximum of 15-20% from the no-follow sites.

[jazbo]

These days social media is about traffic, not links. Make your submissions compelling.

[moneyblogger1]

How can you tell if the site you are posting on is a do-follow?

Thanks,

Originally Posted by jmcg084

I like to ensure that I post on do-follow sites/blogs, because it is important that your links count. on the other hand it doesn't hurt to have these no-follow links from the social sites.

But make sure that most of your links come from do-follow and maybe a maximum of 15-20% from the no-follow sites.

[halfpoint]

Originally Posted by jazbo

These days social media is about traffic, not links. Make your submissions compelling.

I've found that the traffic generated from social bookmarking sites isn't all that targeted and not really worth the time. Of course, that's only on a really small sample size so I could be way off base.

I see bookmarking sites as a way of mixing up my linking portfolio and also a way to get search engine spiders to my pages that aren't yet indexed.

Other social media sites like Facebook, however, are definitely worth pursuing.

[peter.h]

Originally Posted by moneyblogger1

How can you tell if the site you are posting on is a do-follow?

Thanks,

use firfox with and addon called 'nodofollow', go to the site, all dofollow links are displayed in blue, all nofollow links are red

[peter.h]

I think still focus on dofollow, but definitly have some good nofollow in the mix

no follow links still show up in yahoo site explorer, and if the page has high pr a lot quicker plus you can get traffic

[humbledmarket]

Originally Posted by moneyblogger1

Hey Warriors,

I have come to learn that most of the social bookmarking sites are indeed "no-follow" when it comes to creating backlinks.

As far as I understand that means you can post a blog post on lets say, Digg or Delicious all you want but Google will not follow it and recognize it as a backlink to your site.

Is this true?

So then my question would be.....is submitting blog posts to social bookmarking sites as part of a backlinking campaign pointless?

I have checked Yahoo site explorer and none of my links from social bookmarking sites are being found.....hmmm

Thanks

Brandon

Not necessary useless. No follows although not as useful as do follow is still beneficial to link building and SEO to some point.

Additionally social bookmarking site is great to get publicity and reputation to your site as well as the all important traffic. Quality, Organic traffic!

It might be less effective if it's just one vote however if you have a ton it can get you substantial traffic not to mention it can also get viral!

[cashcow]

I've found it to be pretty useless and I don't think the traffic (if you get any which I usually don't) is good "buying" traffic.

BUT ... my sites are mostly sites that sell regular everyday products.

If you have a site that is about something interesting or you have a good "story" around your business then I could see where social bookmarking and social media would have a lot of benefits. Not really SEO related but traffic related and, like Steve says, it can only benefit your site in Googs eyes.

Lee

[Hardi Wijaya]

Originally Posted by kimkitch

It is a good thing to have nofollow links pointing to your site as it makes your linkbuilding look more natural in the eyes of google.

Now that's an interesting thing you say. Matt Cutts made it clear that what nofollow really means. How can it be possible that the Google spider cares about nofollow?

Any insight?

[bretclive]

Originally Posted by moneyblogger1

How can you tell if the site you are posting on is a do-follow?

Thanks,

Also you can check the page source. If its given that rel="nofollow", then it a nofollow link.

[vijaygupta]

Keep posting on social media sites but not for backlinks just for traffic.....backlinks are also concerned with higher position in search engines to get more traffic and here social media sites are also doing the same thing for you.....providing you traffic.

[Gringo]

Originally Posted by Kezz

The thing is, even if the social bookmarking links don't directly add to pagerank, they will almost certainly bring you traffic.

Amen to this.

The way I see it each and every backlink you have will produce some form of traffic and bottom line traffic is what we all want and need.