Ever since the collision of the personal computer (PC) and the Internet, we have been faced with the daunting task of tracking all those fantastic web sites with all that great information. Fortunately the folks at Netscape, Microsoft and more recently Mozilla recognized that dilemma enabling us to digitally record the location of our cherished discoveries by saving to our “Favorites” or “Bookmarking” our new-found web gems.

Pretty cool, isn’t it? For the most part yes, but as our use of PC’s became less personal (we are often working on more than one machine) maintaining a consistent bookmark database became challenging. As time marched on, our reliance on web-based information grew but so did our mobility, further complicating how we access all of our key bookmarks … or at least it was until about a decade ago when online bookmarking sites appeared.

Though initially slow from the gate, online bookmarking really started to take-off around 2003 with the launches of Del.icio.us and Digg (2004) when online bookmarking finally took hold. Not only did these web portals become online warehouse of our treasured resources, the ability to share these links with other sites users allowed these sites to become social communities, which have been growing and flourishing ever since. In essence the sites evolved from just being online bookmarking depositories to actual social bookmarking organisms.

Apparently so! According to an article on Kevin Rose (one of the key players at Digg) in the November 2008 issue of Inc., Digg is one of the hottest companies in the U.S. today with over 30 million customers. Heck Kevin has over 60,000 “tweeple” following him on Twitter! Isn’t Web 2.0 wonderful!

So yes, I guess you could say social bookmarking has really come into its own. Just think, Digg started as a pretty small operation (on the business side) and has managed to grow exponentially. All because of the coincident appeal of being able to easily track our web resources even when on the go and spawning complete social communities.

And yup, it even has a variety of marketing advantages, something for which we can all be thankful.

Why? Well, here are a few reasons:

• New Content! As people add bookmarks and their descriptions, that’s new content being added on a continual basis right? And we all know how search engines love new content ….
• Back-links! Each time someone bookmarks a site, it creates a back-link (an incoming link to that site from an off-site source). One of the key driving factors in search engine optimization (process of getting a high rank on the search engines) is the number of back-links to a given site. Smiling yet? ….
• They’re social! Truly befriend other like-minded users of your preferred social bookmarking site and interact with them on a regular and real (no spamming dam-it!) basis. It works wonders and helps drive traffic to your site or blog. I recently experienced this first hand when friends visited a few of my sites, commented, bookmarked and promoted the articles and boom sudden surges in traffic ....

So the next time you are looking to expand your web and increase your traffic, remember to start utilizing the social bookmarking sites, add your favorites (including a few of your own) and socialize. It can work wonders.

A word of warning: don’t just go to the sites and bookmark your own work or just use them as another place to spam people. If you do and get the reputation of a self-promoter or spammer and the whole effort will likely be worth nil.

Jim was formerly an "old school" network marketer now helping home and small business owners to utilize attraction marketing and relationship building methods to grow their Internet presence. You can access additional information resources and tips to propel the growth of your business by visiting Jim's blog or my home business connection website.