Increase Website Traffic Using Social Bookmark Clubs
75Simple Explanation of Social Bookmarking.
If you want to get more visitors and traffic to your website, hubpage, or blog, this method will bring very good results.
Of course, before I begin to explain the method that is the focus of this hub, let me preface it by saying that ultimately, if you want a ton of website traffic, you must, ABSOLUTELY MUST! create high quality content that provides your visitors the information they are looking for.
Fail that and you will not get tons of visitors over an extended period of time.
How To Increase Website Traffic.
With that being said, and assuming that you are providing excellent information to your website visitors, let's move on to the unique way that you can gain a huge increase in your website traffic.
By now, most people are familiar with the concept of social bookmarking. You can use social bookmarking to gain website traffic in two different ways. The first is by getting visitors to come from your site by discovering your link at one of the social bookmarking sites themselves.
Secondly, and every bit as important, the search engines will also discover the link to your site each time it is posted at one of the social bookmarking sites. This is very important.
How Search Engines Rate Websites
Search engines rate sites on a variety on on-site and off-site factors. On-site factors include the keywords used on your webpage, the tags, the linking structure, and well as the quality of the outbound links. If you link to a quality site like Wikipedia, then you become a more trustworthy site. However, if you link to a "bad neighborhood" such as to a link farm, your site will not be viewed favorably by the search engines.
While on-site factors are important to getting good placement in the search engine results pages, off-site factors play an even larger role.
To simplify things, each link your page gets from an outside source is like a vote for your page. The more votes, the higher your page ranks in the search engine results. However, not all links are equal. Some links are worth far more than others. Some links don't count at all. So it is not just the total number of links, it is also the quality of links that counts.
Links Are Like Votes
At first, Google counted any link as valuable. But then link farms sprung up and Google discounted the value of a link from link farms. Then a directory listing was valued by Google, but directories turned into quasi link farms and directories lost their link value. Then links from articles had substantial value, until the article directories got so full of spam that a link in an article doesn't carry the weight with Google that it used to.
As of now, Google is giving a lot of weight to links found in social bookmarking sites, with some conditions.
Google is always trying to prevent gaming the system. It is no easy task staying ahead of the spammers and black hats (people who violate the rules in order to trick the search engines into giving them high positions in the search results).
If you create 10 different profiles at the social bookmarking site so that you can get 10 links for Google to find, Google will find them. But Google is also very, very good at determining genuine links from those created for the sole purpose of getting links. It is very, very likely that not only will you net get credit for those links, Google will lose trust in you for trying to game the system and your page will get demoted in the search results.
Scamming The Search Engines Doesn't Pay
The key is to get links from different people, with different ip addresses, that are genuine votes for your page.
Those genuine votes found by Google at the social bookmarking sites will really boost the position of your website in Google's search results.
When you have a new webpage or hub, how can people find it? Now here is the catch-22. In order for people to find it, your page has to be listed in search engines and bookmarking sites. But to get listed there requires links (votes). You cannot get the links if people can't find you, and people can't find you without the links.
It is a vicious circle of obscurity.
Going From Obscurity to Popularity
How do you break out of this vicious circle, so that you can get more people to bookmark your site, resulting in those bookmark links boosting your position in the results pages, resulting in even more people finding your site, so that they can bookmark it, and thus boost it even more in the results pages?
Yes, it really does work that way - if you are providing really great information and you get some initial links so that Google will place your site in a decent standing in the results pages to begin with.
The key is to get the genuine links at the bookmarking sites. That is the action that will initially jump start the process of increasing your website traffic.
If you don't have dozens of friends spread throughout the country and world who would be happy to socially bookmark your pages for you, then the alternative is to join a social bookmarking club.
I went looking but couldn't find any simple little clubs that don't require mountains of time and are free. So I decided to start one.
Bookmarking Clubs
Here is how it will work. Each club will have 10 members. When one club fills up, another will start. When that is full, the next one will start. Each member agrees to bookmark the other 9 members site at 5 very easy to use social bookmarking sites.
You submit one webpage or hub per week. That page or hub will be shared with the other nine members who agree to bookmark it. The total time commitment that you expend every week is bookmarking 9 pages at 5 different bookmarking sites. That shouldn't take more than 15 minutes, assuming you can bookmark 3 pages per minute.
So, for 15 minutes of work per week, you'll get 45 quality links at social bookmarking sites. Those links will come from different ip addresses and different regions/states. Those links will boost your position in the search engines.
For this to work, each member will also have to have other bookmarks as well. All 10 members can't have identical bookmarks or Google will pick up on it.
15 Minutes Per Week Will Reap Valuable Rewards
If you want to join a mutually beneficial club like this with everyone helping each other to get better search engine positioning, simply send me an email and I will add you to the current club. Every Monday night I will send out the 10 sites/pages to each of the 10 members. They then will have the next 7 days to bookmark the other 9 sites/pages.
45 quality links from social bookmarking sites per week, added steadily over time, will boost nearly any webpage or hub to near the top of the search results for all but the most competitive keywords.
I don't know of any easier way to get to the top of the search results than this. And getting to the top of the search results is the best way to get increased website traffic.
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Comments
Hi Jenny,
Thanks for your kind comments. I couldn't agree more that web 2.0 is a useful part of the mix, but it is not the be all and end-all.
Thanks also for bringing your hub to my attention. I will take a look at it right now. I appreciate your time spent in reading my hub and sharing other useful resources with me.
I suggest you take your paragraph explaining why it doesn't work to do all the social bookmarking yourself, and make it a highlighted text box. For me, this is the most important message of this Hub and some people won't read far enough to catch it.
We all know the advice to get links on social bookmarking sites, but most of us just join ourselves and post our own links. It never occurred to me that Google would be able to check the IP address and suss out that it was all our own work!
I have better things to do right now than work online, but that may change by the end of the year - and then, I'll be bearing your comments in mind. Good luck with the "club"!
Marisa,
Thanks for the suggestion! I will try to take the time to do that tomorrow. I really appreciate the great advice! :)
Greg,
I'm sorry, this could make you banned from those bookmarking services pretty soon. Such groups, where people are obliged to vote for everybody else, leave a clear footprint and are easily identifiable...
Hi Misha, I agree there is a risk of that. I understand the rules, and I understand about the footprints. That is why they will only be in groups of 10, that's pretty small. The larger the group, the more easily identifiable.
If you and I agreed to help each other by bookmarking each others sites, as long as we had other sites bookmarked as well, there would be no chance that we would get banned. The smaller the group, the less it stands out. That is why I chose 10. I believe it will come in "under the radar."
I will explain to each person about the risk of getting banned, and will seek to greatly reduce the risk by encouraging everyone to also bookmark some other sites.
Thank you for pointing out the risk. I appreciate your honesty.
Yeah, heavily bookmarking other sites is the key to be successful in such an approach, I agree :)
Thanks Misha, I appreciate your advice and input.
Nice Hub Greg, I printed it so that seeing it will help remind me of your points.
Hi ColeMartin, thanks for your kind comments. Nearly every SEO expert will tell you that off site factors (primarily getting links) is every bit as important as on-site factors. Right now, Google is giving links found in social sites quite a lot of weight. The more of those that you can get, the higher you'll rank in the search results pages.
Very good information! I wasn't aware of the social bookmarking club. Another way of increasing rank is opening a forum within a website. My sister's diet website is on page one and is doing very well with sales, and she attributes the high traffic and purchases in part to her forum.
VioletSun, Thank you for the kind words.
I couldn't agree more about the value of a forum. Not only is it valuable in Google's eyes to bring better rankings, it is a very valuable resource for the visitors of the website, and gives them a reason to keep coming back. That is excellent advice.
Misha makes a good point. Having a group like that to slant the results is pretty easy to identify....BUT it also works. People have been doing it on Digg for years.
Hi Charles, Yes, it does work. and it is easy to identify, unless it is a small group and everyone in the group has dozens of other bookmarks that are not related to the group. Then it is almost impossible to identify.
Great Hub, thanks.
Thanks for the kind words Spacebull.
Great hub. Good info you have here about website traffic on social sites.
Hi Crazycat,
Thanks for the compliment about my hub.
Interesting concept you have here. One major correction for you though. All directory links have not been devalued, just directories that have no editorial integrity, basically directories that accept anyone. In many niches, directory links are the strongest links available. Google even recommends submitting to directories with editorial integrity as a way for your site to get noticed by the search engines and others.
Yes, Business Director, directories that have editorial integrity still do carry some weight. Dmoz is the grand-daddy of them all.
Thank you for your comment.
Good idea with this bookmarking club.
Jackcity, thanks for your kind comment.
It's clear that Social Networking, Social Bookmarking, and Content sites are having a real impact in where traffic is going today. And through HubPages, Facebook, Technorati and their similar sites, this is waay more than a trend.
And some of the biggest marketers on the Internet are finding the power in getting their word out through non-invasive ways.. what I call Get Them Off The Raft Marketing. The old days of Interruption Marketing or Teaching Frogs How To Drink Beer Marketing are racing in the other direction, where Social Acceptance Marketing is quickly growing.
Thanks for your many insights!
Charlie Seymour Jr http://hubpages.com/hub/OffTheRaftMarketing
Charles, I agree 100% with your statments. Thanks for reading my hub anc commenting. Thatnks for the hub suggestion. I will check it out.
Thanks for a great hub of valuable information
MrMarmalade, thank you for those very kind words.
I am going to join your club.
Thank you
Greg,
Great article on social bookmarking. You point out a number of important issues. I share your interest in the proper use of Web 2.0. I address another important issue in my Hub on Web 2.0 and Accessibility.
You have another hub, If You Want To Make Real Money Online, Forget Adsense that looks interesting. I'll be back to read it later. - Richard
I didn't know about the links-like-votes concept! Thanks!
Thanks for the great information. I am interested in learning more about the bookmarking club.
HI Greg, excellent article, good quality info and good concept on the club. This was tried some time back and stil goes on in sophisicated operations with adsense click clubs, which actually really sucks! These guys were not just using proxies and clicking on their customers links for them, they were clicking on competitor adwords ads to drive up their costs and out them out of the game.
Now I have to tell you most of the adsense/adword companies out there have pretty sohpisticated programmers out there to ensure that they detect anything unnatural in the form of bots especially for bookmarking and you really do need to be extra careful on Stumble Upon, those guys have some powerful software in place and lots of programmers with bots get booted fro there immediately.
It is unfortunate that this side of the internet exists and I do not know you have bothered to follow any internet marketing gurus around or read their campaigns but sometimes you will get a glimpse of the secret that is actually right out in front of everyones noses...it is their in house software developers...these guys do spend big money on copywriters etc but the real USP is not a Unique Selling Proposition it is an Underground Software Programmer.
As soon as they can afford it these guys go after the best programmers who understand the intimate layers of the protocols that the internet is built on. With one of these guys you dont have to do a lot of what everyday people try and do to get links, votes, thumbs ups and other positive comments and recommendations, all of this cna be done automatically with cleverly programmed software.
Its a bit like the fact that once a mobile phone network is built there is actually no netowrk operation costs to deliver the calls...mobile phone engineers never pay for mobile phone calls they are a club that shares engineering line numbers that work on the network but are never a partof the billing system Free Mobile Calls who wouldn't want a piece of that, that is just how things work with technology. Their are those that use and those that manipulate their understanding of it.
Me I am like one of those suckers that actually got an enegineering number of a friend of mine in the billing department and had to much of a guilty conscience to use other than once to see if it really worked.
Anyway, the point of my reply is that to do this with your club yo have to take some certain measures that you may have already figured out butjust in case this might help you I will say that what you are suggesting is definitely within the boundaries of most sites user agreements and in fact almost is exactly what they were designed for if yo just do this one thing and that is instead of just send out the 10 sites to commented on, you need to ensure that each of the 10 club members is also on each others friends list, that way you appear to be friends (which after a while I imagine you will be anyway) sending another a friend a link and also ensure that each of the 10 people in the group adds the niche or category that they are being asked to click on before they visit a site and digg it or thumbs up it on stumble upon.
Especially on SU if you have a guy whose profile is on arts and crafts and then he goes and starts giving thumbs ups on business or equestrian and its not a category that is in his profile SU will smell a rat immediately. they are just that on top of things any irrelevant links that people vote on get noticed, the rest are not as severe but you cannot try this without the above, not only could you get banned but you might get your club members banned as well and that would not be good for anyone.
The other thing you have to consider is that at least someone is going to have to give the site a thumbs down or a non positive vote...it is not realistic to have all thumbs up..it doesn;t happen in real life and even if you site was giving away $10 notes for voting and another $10 to charity these bookmarking sites will know that everyday human nature has been manipulated in some way and of course itis at their discretion as to whether or not they ban you.
I hope that helps you out, it is a good idea and it is a way to fight back by using the system as it was intended to be used just all join together as friends and select all the categories and have at least one thumbs down from the group, it should survive indefintely if you do it like this.
You aint going to take the marketing world by storm with 45 votes across the bookmarkers but if you do spend a little time to make other friends outside of the group on those same sites you will be surprised that just one positive comment can lead to boatloads of people visiting and giving you that human touch that this strategy of yours needs.
Of course the fastest way to make a million on the net is to get known for a super strategy that you can sell to the people or as the gurus do make the money and sell people on the idea that they can too...of course they dont make the money by doing the one off things they tell you to do and that is where I like your attitude and ingenuity in applying this strategy to the benefit of other people too.
So I hope you go on to make a fortune in your niches with your group, of course your strategy will force you to stay low key so you may never get the kudos by going out in the open too much with it.
Whether you know it or not you just pulled back the first layer of the internet that most never even think of working in...welcome to the underground :) Mike
Haha you say "samming the SE's doesnt pay" then set about implementing a scheme to gen up links from social bookmarking sites.
So, is this like a pyramid thing, or a permanent membership which continually does this?
This kind of stuff does work though, not doubt about that...
I never knew how to get people to view my site until I read your article . Thanks . I have sent you an e-mail asking you to make me a member of one of those social bookmarking sites of yours and please approve my request to be a member of your fan club .
Thanks and I just hope your strategy works for me .
Srinivas
A Social networking ........
Good move.
Hi Greg, excellent hub! Add me in to the club. -Tom
My hub about internet marketing: http://hubpages.com/hub/internetmarketer
Do the members of your clubs know about Web 2.0 Submitter? It is a program that semi-automates the bookmarking process for 10 of the social bookmarking sites that pull the most weight. Digg, Propeller, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Shout Wire, Plime, Newsvine, Plug IM, Mark TD, and Only Wire.
The software would be perfect for this kind of strategy. Plime, Shout Wire, and Newsvine are very strict and it is easy to get banned. The users on the Plime site will chastise any one that bookmarks one of their own sites. You need someone to suggest your sites for you to be effective.
What are the bookmarking sites that the clubs use? Do they always use the same ones? I have sent you an email. This is just the sort of thing I have been looking for. Check out Web 2.0 Submitter at http://hubpages.com/hub/web-20-submitter
This sounds like a great idea. Hope it works.
a lot of very useful information. I'm new to the scene and learning as I go.. thanks
Great information Greg! Alot of the above comments, echo my sentiments. Keep up the good work.
Great great article Greg.It is simple and understandable to everyone. It is very informative too.
Thats wonderful explanition. Thanks
Great great concept! I have adopted almost the exact same concept but without having the "club." You see, I noticed that on my blog if I include simple "code" then I could greatly increase the times that people decided to socially bookmark my blog posts. I wrote an entire article on this topic and placed it on my blog. Let me know what you guys think!
the concept is good but even the risk is higher
Very good article. It is very useful for me. I want to join the club.
Inspirepub says:
2 years ago
Good explanation of the value of links, Greg - this is one of the reasons to participate in social bookmarking communities.
There is so much codwallop being touted about "Web 2.0" being the Answer - it's a useful part of the marketing mix, as you point out, but it's not the be all and end-all.
Did you see my Hub on it?
http://hubpages.com/hub/Web-20-Marketing---Fact-Or
I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Jenny