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

28 replies
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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
#blog #bookmarking #hmmm #pointless #posts #sites #social #submitting
  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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?
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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    • Profile picture of the author Gringo
      Originally Posted by Kezz View Post

      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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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    • Profile picture of the author 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.
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      • Profile picture of the author moneyblogger1
        How can you tell if the site you are posting on is a do-follow?

        Thanks,

        Originally Posted by jmcg084 View Post

        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.
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        • Profile picture of the author peter.h
          Originally Posted by moneyblogger1 View Post

          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
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        • Profile picture of the author bretclive
          Originally Posted by moneyblogger1 View Post

          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.
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  • Profile picture of the author shaktimaan
    Originally Posted by moneyblogger1 View Post

    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.
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    Shaktimaan

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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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....
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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    • Profile picture of the author Stephen 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.
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      • Profile picture of the author 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
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        • Profile picture of the author 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.
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    • Profile picture of the author 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 View Post

      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.
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  • Profile picture of the author actionplanbiz
    no follows backlinks from high PR sites seems to positively influence my sites PR
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    These days social media is about traffic, not links. Make your submissions compelling.
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    • Profile picture of the author halfpoint
      Originally Posted by jazbo View Post

      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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
    Banned
    Originally Posted by moneyblogger1 View Post

    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!
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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