Many of them now feature on websites and blogs. By clicking on the icons it opens a window allowing you to save the details of the page you are browsing to that particular social bookmarking network.

So that’s pretty clever but why as a business do you care and how could it benefit you?Firstly let’s address what is social bookmarking and why in today’s internet and web driven business world it is so important.

What is Social Bookmarking?

In essence social bookmarking refers to a series of web based applications that allows users to store bookmarks directly online instead of using the traditional favourites structure on your computer. The immediate advantage of this method is that anyone can access their bookmarked sites from any computer or mobile phone.

The biggest advantage of social bookmarking comes against search engine results. You may not know but searching the internet with a search engine means that the information displayed is in essences selected by computer software which attempts to determine the meaning of what you were searching for. This can lead to inaccurate and sometimes wayward results.

A list of social bookmarks is created as a result of human action. Human filter the sites and view and list only those sites that are seen to provide value. Social bookmark sites allow visitors to make any link public or private in order to make their selection of interests / bookmarks available to each other.

Social bookmarking sites use tags to create a focus for their site. Tags are usually “single” words that categorise the site and enable visitors to find all the links related to the same Tag in the future.

Tags are similar to keywords but at the same time different. When we create keywords for a web page we are really trying to match words or phrases people will be using to search for information and create a density of keywords on the page that will improve our chances of a good search engine placing.

Social Bookmarking + Site Popularity = A Symbiotic Relationship

Social bookmarking has a number of advantages for businesses. Firstly social bookmarking sites attract a lot visitors; regular users = high traffic which has the knock on effect that the information on those websites gets a better positioning faster. For example it would not be unusual for your site reference on a social bookmarking site to be ranked higher than your actual business site.

The second benefit is that any links to your own website when posted within a social bookmarking site create back links to your site.

Back links are highly valued by search engines as they see inbound links as an indication of the popularity of that website and so in return increase your search engine position. As a bonus other social bookmarkers may see these links and add them to their bookmark file which again increases the popularity of your site.

Social Bookmarking as an Effective Web Marketing Tool?

Here at Virtual Secretary Solutions we can lead you gently into the world of Social Bookmarking and help your business expand its wings online. Contact us to find out more about ways we can work with you to increase your online presence.