Social Bookmarking as part of an SEO strategy?

[Entrusteddev]

Hi all,

I was wondering on my commute to work this morning the effectiveness of Social Bookmarking as part of a SEO campaign.

The sites I work on generally have the social bookmarking widgets and they do get used by website visitors. In addition to this we also bookmark our sites, new articles and other new content within the top 5 social bookmarking sites.

This is all done as part of a wider social strategy.

But could I be spending my time better else where?

Whats everyones thoughts on Social Bookmarking and do you incorporate it in your SEO campaigns?

Cheers

Aran

UPDATE: I note that SEOmoz Q&A only have Tweet, Like and Stumble...

[walidalsaqqaf]

Hi Aran,

Social bookmarking is quite essential for any SEO campaign in my opinion. There are many social bookmarking options you can consider such as Facebook, Tweeter, Stumble Upon, Google +, Reddit, Digg...etc. Not only are they a great source of traffic, as Techcrunch recently saw with Google +. SEO Moz also did a good study on the influence of Tweets with regards to SEO called A Tweet's effect on rankings.

I personally would recommend the following: Facebook Like/Share, Stumble Upon, Twitter and Google +. But you have to make your decision based on the audience your site is targeting.

Cheers,

Walid

[Alex-Harford]

I think it depends on your business, but it's not just about promoting yourself and posting endless tweets etc. - you need to build relationships and target the right people - get involved, help people out, comment on how you enjoyed something they posted, if you genuinely did, and if it's relevant to your market.

If you just post everything from your sites to your StumbleUpon profile, for example, why would anyone follow you? If you post other interesting content that's relevant to your websites, with occasional posts to the best content on your websites, then I reckon that's a better tactic.