Social bookmarking, which allows Internet users to save , organize, share, and search bookmarks of websites or web pages, has become the new trend in search engine optimization or SEO. Sometimes, social bookmarking is called social bookmarketing as it has been used as an online marketing tool or strategy. Simply put, this kind of bookmarking is just like bookmarking your favorite sites on your PC. The difference is that you have to store your favorite websites to social bookmarking sites, and you get to share them with other Internet users.

Why is social bookmarking an effective tool in improving website owners' search engine optimization? This is because social bookmarking sites are primarily “tag-based”. Once you bookmark a site, you tag or categorize them with keywords for future references or so that other users can just click on them when they need information on a specific topic.

What happens is that search engines index the tags and links at the same time. Thus, with your keywords attached to them, you are enjoying one-way links from high-traffic sites. This means more visitors and potential customers for your site. Also, when someone bookmarks your website, the social bookmarking site that you are a member of will check the tags to find out if the link already exists. Thus, when you change your bookmark tags from time to time, you can have multiple links with different tags on the same site. Social bookmarking sites are regularly crawled by search engines, thus having bookmarked links on these sites, your site will most likely be crawled at the same time. One thing you have to remember, though, is that you have to use proper tags if you want to have social bookmarking work for you in your search engine optimization efforts.

Be sure that your site is also worth bookmarking for. Its content should be specific and valuable. This means Take note that social bookmarking works like word of mouth, a tested-and-proven marketing strategy. When someone finds your site interesting and bookmarks it, the person can share it to his or her friends who share the same interests with him or her , and the cycle can go on, leaving your site popular for a specific group of people.

If you are an SEO professional, you cannot afford to utilize the ability of the social bookmarking sites to generate traffic for your site.