Note from Carl: The best auto bookmark tool out there is Bookmarking Demon – check it out!
If you’re looking for a tool to promote your website(s), the buck stops with social bookmarking. With the advent of Web 2.0 and its focus on the social aspect of the Internet, listing your pages on bookmarking sites is a surefire way to get visitors to your pages – they either get there by directly clicking on your link, or if your page is ranked highly enough, it turns up on a Google search depending on how trusted your site is.
Since it’s tedious and time consuming to manually add bookmarks to various bookmarking sites, most people turn to automated software that is able to do this for them. While there are many options available, some free and others at a cost, the thing to remember when choosing automated social bookmarking software is to make sure your site is not blacklisted as spam.
Automated software that creates a large number of profiles and continually posts all your pages to every social bookmarking site there is, runs the risk of getting your site(s) labeled as spam. You also abuse your Internet Service Provider by running this tool continuously and risk cancellation of your service. And finally, the bookmarking sites you post to will end up blocking you and putting an end to your posting days.
The key to selecting a good social bookmarking tool is to look for one that does not send out your bookmarks on a continuous basis, but which posts tags gradually and once every few days. You must be able to set the time frame for the posting. You must also look for software that is server based and does not run on your PC. It’s more complicated to install but the difficulty is worth it when you consider the savings on your resources.
The bookmarking tool you use must randomly select tags and bookmarking sites so that the posting process looks like it’s been done by human beings and not a machine. Some tools even offer to post from proxy servers thus reducing the possibility of your sites being blacklisted and blocked as spam.
Automated social bookmarking tools are useful only when used judiciously – after all, there’s no use for a bookmarking strategy or tool when your sites are all blocked out as spam.
This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who writes on the subject of dial up Internet. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.
Note from Carl: The best auto bookmark tool out there is Bookmarking Demon – check it out!
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{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with Heather – the value of these sites is declining, mostly due to nofollow, and the fact that there are just too many of them.
I never liked auto posting bookmarks. The software and scripts that do autopost are probably 50% responsible for the rapid increase in SB sites using nofollows.
Let me just say that using automated social bookmarking software is the worst thing you can do to your site besides posting all your own content to begin with.
Lets say you use social marker. Would it be natural to Google to find the same links, submitted in the same order on 20 different bookmarking profiles? NO.
The Google fall PR slapdown is coming for this kind of activity and it is not going to be pretty. The latest PR update was brutal as it was but the Q3 update is going to be burying bookmarking spammers.
Cool blog man, using thesis too. I like the way it’s no nonsense: Here’s some content, here’s my product, here’s how much it is.
I used an automated tool for a bit, there’s no way I’d do it manually, didn’t really get into it as it was kind of buggy and it wasn’t a big strategy for me anyway.
Admittedly, I don’t know much about this area. I have done some social bookmarking. I am very curious about how to automate this process. What are some of your recommendations for “quality” social bookmarking tools? I understand that some of these can be very detrimental. I would really like to know more about the quality ones.
Right now, I’m just submitting to Digg and StumbleUpon, mainly for traffic and quick inclusion in search engine indexes. Reddit has brought some traffic in the past, but I haven’t posted to it for a while. One service that is handy is socialmarker.com
Carl
Thank you Carl, you have revealed the dark side of automated system. These things are really important to know for new to social book marking people who are always in a hurry to get quick traffic but are not aware that this can actually harm them. One thing is very important to know that there are very few shortcuts in this internet world and some of them are very risky.
One should always use ethical methods for promoting the website, it might be slower but gradually with give you traffic and will make your website trusty in the eyes of search engine.
I have to admit that I have considered it but now I do it all manually. While I do get some good traffic, it is not good enough to make it worth my site getting banned. I tend to bookmark a lot of things on other relevant sites, try to keep the content along the same niche and just open up different accounts if I have to promote different niches. It is much more natural and I do not have to worry about Google or the SB sites shutting me down for spamming my own materials.
Just my two cents but great post. I have long advocated the all-organic methods. Like Agra said, it may take a little more time but while your competitors are trying to recover from the latest and greatest automation tool gone bad on google, our sites will still be rolling along well.
Another great service to ping your blogs posts is pingler.
I’ve found a fairly new product called onlywire and there’s a free option. It lets you setup accounts on social bookmarking sites and automates the process of posting your links including your own sites. I’ve used it numerous times and I think it helps me get some links from authority sites. I’ve even gotten some of those bookmarks indexed and ranked on Google, so I think it’s a good thing.
.-= Jeff @ Spinning Reels´s last blog ..Rapala® RAPSX5IUL Ultra Light Spinning Reel =-.
I don’t see anything wrong with automating the process of adding your bookmarks to the bookmarking sites like del.ico.us, Faves.com, Furl.com, Mixx.com, Spurl.net and the hundreds of other similar sites on the web. However, you must follow along with the spirit of these social bookmarking sites and add only quality content and not just blast a bunch of junk to them.
.-= Rain@ Data Cleansing´s last blog ..Understanding Data Cleaning Techniques =-.
I agree with mostly everyone that says these are not worth the risk. The best way to actually take advantage of the social sites is to put a widget at the top of your site that allows a visitor to easily bookmark it. Not only is that convenient for the visitor, but it will allow you to accumulate a lot of unique links over time, which is what Google prefers anyways.
I like the idea of putting links from my site to easily bookmark on the big ones… digg, delicious, etc. Maybe I’ll mix those in with my social media buttons. I feel like all the other social bookmarking sites are useless just look spammy. Also, it looks spammy if you have an account with nothing but a few of your own links. The only way to do this right is to get real people who like to use the services bookmarking your site. One way to do that is with some sort of giveaway. We see a lot of people running giveaways where you get an entry for tweeting… I think we will try a giveaway with social bookmarking entries.
I used to use a program that created various account on SB sites and then spun up the title details etc. But, it was unbelievable slow to set up, and I’m not sure that the outcome was worth it. I do use Traffic-bug, which seems ok, but only I think to get indexed quickly.
Dave….
Social bookmarking DOES work! I’ve tried the long and tedious job of submitting to the major sites and wondered if it was worth it. I definitely saw my rankings rise as well as my traffic. When I used the automatic bookmarking software, I noticed that after a while I was no longer welcomed to some of the sites. This, even though I was very careful to not spam. I didn’t want to be labeled a spam site so I went back to manually submit my bookmarks. Unfortunately, the long and tedious job is just that! I’m on the look out for that elusive software to do the job. But, until I’m sure of the reliability of the software…long and tedious seems to be the only sure way to do it properly.
.-= JethroPotts@recessedtoiletpaperholder´s last blog ..Solid Wood Recessed Toilet Paper Holder/Magazine Rack =-.
It just took too darn long to manually submit to bookmarking sites. I found that if you’re careful and not be “greedy” and obviously spam them, that using automation is one heck of a time saver and won’t get you banned. Just take it easy!
.-= June@windowtreatments´s last blog ..10 Tips on How To Choose Window Blinds =-.
I agree with what you’ve said about a good bookmarking tool sending out bookmarks over time rather than all at once, however I haven’t been able to find such a tool. Can you provide a link(s) to any that you know of or recommend?
.-= Matt Rankin@Bob Strollers´s last blog ..Bob Stroller Reviews =-.
I have to say that social bookmarking does help sites get indexed faster and does give some help with the SERPs. I use BMD and it makes it so much easier to run multiple runs on different sites. Of course you SB should just be one part of your linking methods since for most of the competitive keywords it will not help that much.
I’ve done manual submission and I’ve done automated submission to the social bookmarking sites. Manual submission is slow and tedious. Auto submission is fast…period! If I sent the same bookmarking details to each site, then of course I might get banned. But, if you think about what you are doing and vary the submissions accordingly, then you most likely will NOT get banned. If you send the same details to site manually you probably WILL get banned eventually. It’s just a matter of using logical procedures to lessen your chances of being banned. Just use your head!
.-= Gordon@shoeshelves´s last blog ..Shoe Shelf =-.
For me one of the best things that I have found so far is well, believe it or not to outsource it… 100% complete automate social bookmarking tools are just a bit , to bit spammy, but I still like things like onlywire, easy and affordable.
.-= gab @ Home Air conditioner´s last blog ..Why Home Air Conditioning Filters Are Important? =-.
I use onlywire for all my social bookmarking. I find it works well and saves me a lot of time. I only send the bookmarks out to a small selection of websites however – I dont think its such a good idea to bookmark a website on 20 other websites at once…
.-= Rose @ Affiliate Gameplan Review´s last blog ..Rob Benwell =-.
Great blog, and great subject. I’m an absolute newbie (to affiliate stuff in general – so be gentle with me!), but, what does occur to me is the following – even if you use software like BMD that uses a proxy, is the use of a proxy going to alert an SE filter? Where do you draw the line on ‘abusing/spamming behaviour’ – anyone got any numbers? Is it relative to your site’s daily uniques? As I’m new I’ve even worried about how to proceed manually bookmarking – how may accounts on how many bookmarking sites, do you need to complete the full profiles to appear genuine? A lot of questions I’m posing here, and, probably no such thing as concrete answers available, and another thought does occur which is – even if using software and indeed the process of bookmarking in general loses value as the SE ‘catch up’ – there always has to be some kind of organic metric that google will use, it’s just a matter of getting there in the early stage – thank you for your patience! Great thread!! (trying to end on a positive note there) (Also, I thought I’d try and get a limited use version of BMD – almost impossible – or maybe that’s my system giving me a hard time) All the best.
I use socialbookmarking to get indexed fast and get some easy backlinks. Recently though many of the sites have done the nofollow tag which takes away some of the link power.
.-= Mike@Wireless Outdoor Speaker´s last blog ..Choosing The Best Wireless Speakers for Your Needs =-.
I think they can save a lot of time but you need to be careful which tools you use. I have used a few in my time which have been a total waste of time…others like Onlywire and SocialMarker have been really good. It totally depends on what you need it for really.
.-= Bill @ Viral Submitter Pro Bonus´s last blog ..About Me =-.
I never use automatic social bookmarking tools, I just feel I have more control that way… thi sgoes for directories, and other SEO stuff as well.. Manual it takes a bit more time, but it makes it all that more rewarding too
I bookmark all of my sites using a social bookmarker called Bookmarking Demon which was recommended to me by a friend whos been in internet marketing for a few years. It seems to work quite well and there are a lot of things you can control such as when your sites are bookmarked and by which services which means it is quite customizable. So, I have formed the opinion that some tools are good for automating the process of social bookmarking but you need to know what you want and what you dont want. I personally want to manually bookmark my pages so for me a tool like Bookmarking Demon works well…
.-= Shelly @ Watchmen Costumes´s last blog ..About Us =-.
Honestly, I was very hesitant about the idea of using automated social bookmarking softwares. However, after thinking it over really long, I’ve decided to purchase BMD.
And my honest feedback? I’m glad I did. But let me just make it clear for everyone, don’t expect 100% automation. You need to do somethings manually to avoid getting flagged as spammer since this tool in my experience is really fast to submit your URLs every time.
I think Google is not giving as much juice to SB as much as it used to. However, I still socialbookmark articles and backlinks as way to get them indexed quickly.
You really need to be careful with these sites. I manually tried to set up 2 logins (one for my consulting site and one for my other blogs) in Digg and it seemed to work – I received the emails that my logins were valid. The next day neither login would work. I tried to get help and I never heard anything. I would not risk it with automated book marking.
I have bookmarked using a few do follow sites (Folkd etc), but after months I’m still not sure that I have received any juice from them. Should they be showing up when I do a yahoo back link check on my site? (they haven’t yet – is this a crawl issue ?) Should I tweet each bookmark I do to get it indexed? I know that this thread is about automated social bookmarking tools, but I think that my questions bear relevance on social bookmarking as a whole – be it manual or automated. Any answers to these questions would be much appreciated.
Thanks Gary
Interesting topic and a bit scary as well…. I am not a professional webmaster, but have created a site with lots of effort and now started using Only Wire just this month…. now I come across this article… which poses a grave question on the use of automated SB systems… I am worried… but the question is if I do the same thing manually, i.e. submit the link of my articles to 6-8 bookmarking sites, would it be considered spamming?
Devdeep Ahuja- I don’t think doing it manually is considered spam. I run a few different blogs for different media sources and then share them on my Facebook and Twitter (manually) and also post links to them from my personal blog. In that process, nothing is automatically generated and, therefore, no two posts are identical. As long as you make sure you’re not posting duplicate (and by that, I mean word-for-word) content in multiple places, you should be fine.
Its a really good idea to use both automated system and a manual system. When you set up your link network, the deeper pages you can automate those more but the pages that you set up closer to your money page you need to manual bookmark those to the top sites. Google will not know if what you are doing if you use more then one system, they key is to use several systems at the same time, making it look natural to the
Google gods.