How effective is social bookmarking?

[SamstaUK]

I was wondering how effective social bookmark sites are for building backlinks to your article/blog etc..

Because I have read that some sites like digg aren't very effective anymore.

Also I added one of my articles to a few social bookmarking sites, but when I search for backlinks to my article using the 'site:' operator, they don't show up.

Should I continue using social bookmarking sites for backlinks, or find a different way?

[Heimir Finnson]

Some of my digg sites rank higher that my actual page so I'd recommend social bookmarking.
Just don't overdo it. I just SB to the 5-6 most popular ones

[Andyhenry]

It depends completely on how much you do and how you do it. Some people just bookmark their own stuff and wait for results, but the major power from them is when other people bookmark your stuff.

Do some testing and see for yourself what results you can get - then decide whether it's worth keeping as part of your marketing mix.

Andy

[danielgb123]

That will all depend on how you go about it. Another factor is the content of your site, whether it is interesting, creative or even in a decent niche. You will see sites that have stupid images hit the front page of Google and then you will see breaking news do the same thing. It all depends on who you are on the site, whether you are power digger, or just someone that randomly diggs or submits content.

It CAN be great, but you need to have luck and know what you're doing!

[SamstaUK]

Originally Posted by Heimir Arnfinnsson

Some of my digg sites rank higher that my actual page so I'd recommend social bookmarking.
Just don't overdo it. I just SB to the 5-6 most popular ones

What are the 5-6 most popular SB sites?

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

I was wondering how effective social bookmark sites are for building backlinks to your article/blog etc..

They're great for getting new sites indexed and getting new content on established sites indexed and giving them a temporary boost in search results. They are of limited value long term in most cases.

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

Also I added one of my articles to a few social bookmarking sites, but when I search for backlinks to my article using the 'site:' operator, they don't show up.

Google only shows a small sample of your links with this operator in order to protect their algorithm. Use Yahoo Site Explorer to find your almost all your recognized links but don't obsess over this.

[SamstaUK]

That's a very helpful tool bgmacaw!

I found most of my inlinks are from ezinearticles itself. One is from a website I didn't even realise was linking to me.

What can I do for long term increased search rank?

[venomous2000]

I used it a few days back and I only got about 10-15 visitors to my site. Now I get the odd 1 or 2 visitors. It may be too early to say anything but I think it isn't worth it

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

What can I do for long term increased search rank?

There are many short, middle and long term strategies to use and it's best to use a combination of techniques to create a wide ranging incoming link portfolio.

The most effective long term method I've found is to get properly anchored (ie using your target buying keywords) contextual links (ie within an article, not sidebar or footer) from related and relevant sites, preferably from authority sites within your general niche and preferably not marked with the nofollow tag.

[SamstaUK]

My problem is that I'm trying to increase the ranking of an article, and I can't exactly write an article about an article

What ways are there for increasing the ranking of an article?

[Heimir Finnson]

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

What are the 5-6 most popular SB sites?

I always use twitter, digg, stumble, delicious and propeller.
There is a great site that can do this for you that I highly recommend
Social bookmarking service. Fast tagging and posting to all major social websites - SocialMarker.com

[GlobalAdRevolution]

It is worth it, but you have to have the rest of your SEO in order. If search engines don't value your content then it is a hopeless venture. Visitors equal ranking. I suggest you run some PPC on the article and if that doesn't work then check the value of the content you are providing.

[Spiritjoy]

Actually I find as a newbie them to be very effective. I do not use digg at all but if you have a consistent niche that people like it does keep bringing targeted traffic. I do not get a lot of traffic but it does convert. Also in my opinion it takes aboout 2 months then it starts coming in but what is weird is that you never know which site is going to do it. it is NOT the big ones that do it for me

[Bill Guthrie]

Techcrunch posted interesting article on Digg (April 2) as it pertains to their DiggBar (URL shorting device like tinyurl). Basically, Digg will be stealing link juice from your site since they're actually keeping the viewer within Digg and not naturally sending them to your site.

But a good way to get indexed.

[nicholasb]

I think bookmarking is mainly just for getting indexed, that is all I use it for, and I don't have trouble ranking for my keywords without it, to me it is just more of a hassle than anything

[rondo]

I bookmark to many sites because it does help my rankings.


Andrew

[BubbaGump]

The traffic is poor and do not convert.

I've outsourced the whole social marketing because of this.

[sarasayshi]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

but the major power from them is when other people bookmark your stuff.

Do some testing and see for yourself what results you can get - then decide whether it's worth keeping as part of your marketing mix.

I never thought about that. Is there some sort of source for trying to get other people to SB your sites like an exchange?

[Vanquish]

social bookmarking helps build backlinks to your article/video which in turn increases it in the ranks more high PR backlinks = higher page ranking in google.