Social bookmarking sites are particularly popular among people with affiliate marketing programs because such sites are a free and effective way to get backlinks and drive traffic to web sites and blogs.
If you have been thinking about promoting your web sites, blogs, or affiliate marketing programs through social bookmarking sites, this guide will help you get started.
How to Use Social Bookmarking Sites
First off, you need to find a social bookmarking site and register as a user. If you participate in affiliate marketing programs, your best bet is to choose one of the more popular sites, such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, or StumbleUpon. These social bookmarking sites have the most traffic and allow you to submit and bookmark web sites and blogs.
The next step is to get used to the site. To make the most of social bookmarking, you need to make sure that there are other users besides yourself who will be interested in your affiliate marketing programs, blogs, or web sites. Different social bookmarking sites have different types of users. Finding a site that works with your niche rather than against it is a must.
Finally, pay special attention to the blogs, web sites, and articles that are bookmarked the most and ranked the highest. This will give you an idea of what people like to see. Knowing your social bookmarking audience is essential, particularly if you are promoting affiliate marketing programs or niche-specific blogs.
How Not to Use Social Bookmarking Sites
Nobody likes a spammer. Social bookmarking users are no exception. If you want to promote your affiliate marketing programs, it is best to do it in a round about way. Sales copy will only make it so far up the ranking.
The blogs and web sites that do the best in the social bookmarking arena are those that offer entertainment, worthy news, or some sort of draw. In other words, don't submit content with a title like "Check Out These Affiliate Marketing Programs".
When submitting content to social bookmarking sites, it is essential that you stick to submitting quality content. Once you get traffic flowing into your web sites and blogs, the sales will follow naturally.
More Social Bookmarking Tips
A few other things you will want to keep in mind when promoting affiliate marketing programs and blogs through social bookmarking:
- Timing is everything. Articles that get at least 25 votes within the first 15 minutes will rise through the social bookmarking ranks faster than articles that get 25 votes in two days time.
- Opening several accounts on one social bookmarking site so that you can vote for yourself should be avoided. This will only damage you if you are promoting your own blogs and affiliate marketing programs.
- Get your friends to help. This is the easiest and best way to promote your blogs and affiliate marketing programs through social bookmarking.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is easy, and if you do it yourself, it's free: it just takes a little time, and a strategy.
If you follow the process outlined in this article, within a few weeks you'll be getting a flow of free traffic to your Web pages. What's more, the people who arrive on your site's pages will be targeted visitors, primed to buy from you, because you have just what they're looking for.
While the usual SEO process is well known, the process outlined in this article is different, because it focuses on creating landing pages -- destination pages -- as entry points to your Web site.
Let's look at the process.
Step 1: Discover who's looking for you
Start by thinking about your customers. Who's looking for you, and what terms would they type into a search engine query box to find you? The terms that they'd type into the search engines are your site's pages keywords and key phrases. Make a list of these keywords. If your site has been online for a few months, scan your referrer logs to see what keywords your visitors used. Because the search engines are basically just indexing software, your keywords are the keys to the SEO kingdom.
You'll use your lists of keywords and phrases as you optimize all your Web pages.
Use the keywords in: your page titles, your page descriptions, your meta tags, and of course in the content on the pages themselves. You should also use your keywords in internal links across your Web site. It's wise to get other site owners to link to you using the keywords for which you want to be found too. This tells the search engines exactly what your pages are about, and when the pages should be returned in the query results.
Optimize every page on your site with keywords which are specific to your site, as well as to each individual page. Aim to create around 300 to 800 words on each page. Although you won't manage lots of content for every page -- some pages don't need it -- the more text you can get onto your pages which includes your keywords the better.
Yes, this takes time, especially if you have a large site. However, it's time that will repay you over and over in the months and years to come, in FREE Web traffic.
In your optimization process, your individual pages are all-important: especially your site's landing pages.
Step 2: Create landing pages that sell
The strategy to optimize your Web site to get traffic and to make sales is to optimize each page, as well as to create specific "landing pages" for your site. This is because your pages get to the top of the search engine results pages, known as the SERPs, your sites don't. (The SERPs are the search engine pages which are returned when people enter search queries into the search engines' query fields.)
Step 3: Realize that landing page content is the emperor
You'll often hear that "content is king". However, this needs to be amended to "content is king, but landing page content is the emperor".
Landing pages are sometimes called "Web sales pages". Often they're developed as the landing point, so to speak, for PPC advertising. These pages usually have a lot of content, which makes them magnetic to the search engines.
Think of your landing pages as entry points, or destination pages, for your site. You want your landing pages to stand out -- they're the most important pages on your site.
Because they are so important, you'll want to create many landing pages for your site: these will be special pages that you create specifically for keywords for which you want to be discovered in the search engines. Consider creating a landing (sales) page with unique, information-rich content for each product and service that you sell.
Over time, your special landing pages will draw an ever-increasing flow of targeted traffic to your site. So in three steps, you've created powerful search engine optimization for your site.
Both Cliff Posey Jr & Angela Booth are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Cliff Posey Jr has sinced written about articles on various topics from PPC Advertising, Computers and The Internet and Software. Cliff Posey, owner of CRP Marketing, owns and operates Cliff has also operated several other successful web businesses including Love So. Cliff Posey Jr's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.
Angela Booth has sinced written about articles on various topics from Article Writing, About Branding and Copywriting. Angela Booth is a veteran copywriter and marketer. She develops SEO marketing strategies for businesses large and small. Visit her creative copywriting site at