Initially the cyber people regarded the social bookmarking sites and other community oriented projects like Digg, Stumbleupon and others as places to interact with other surfers. Did you know that you can also gain Page Rank on your Digg profile and then use it as a source of backlinks to your own sites?

For Digg social bookmarking site your profile is a subdirectory, for Stumble you get a subdomain. In both cases your profile can get a high PR by being linked to from other users’ profiles and other sites.



In order to be successful in social bookmarking sites and use a possibility to promote your own websites the basic rule is to build a network of friends. When you submit your story to Digg or Stumbleupon social bookmarking services and you have no friends, you will be lucky to get five diggs or stumbles.

So let me share what I already know about social bookmarking site marketing and feel free to experiment or comment.

  • Start by completing and saving your profile info. Add links to your websites (keep the number of outcoming links to less than ten) where you are allowed; add a nice avatar, complete your bio, try to sound professional yet fun.
  • Add some quality content to your favourites and digg/stumble relevant popular stories that has already been submitted by other webmasters and surfers.
  • Avoid adding spam. If you digg a page about how to make fast buck by stuffing envelopes, it’s hard to imagine you becoming a popular stumbler within your online community.
  • Participate in digg/stumble exchange schemes (you can google for “stumble exchange”) through forums that permit such activities. Yet again, never stumble spam even if you are asked to! As you exchange stumbles/diggs add your exchange partner to friends and ask him to do the same.
  • Add some friends that already have established profiles (go for people with 200 friends or more - you’ll see that most of them already have a high PR). It is not necessary that they “friend” you back, you will still show up on their Digg profiles as their fan, thus getting a link. Get the drift?
  • Always check if somebody has added yourself as his/her friend. Respond positively by adding them and digging some of their favourite links.
  • Participate in comments as frequently as possible. Don’t spam the comments though.
  • Interlink your Digg, Stumbleupon, Myspace, WhateverSpace profiles.
  • If you have your own personal site or “about me” page, link to your social bookmarking profiles.
  • Even if you have your own personal web site but especially if you don’t, create a profile at Geocities. Make a simple page about yourself and topics you are interested in. Link to all your social bookmarking site profiles and some of your own sites that are relevant.
  • Word of mouth. Tell your off-line friends about social bookmarking sites and add them as friends as soon as they have signed up.
  • Don’t spend more than 1 hour a day digging or stumbling. It sucks you in easily and can harm your schedule, leaving important work undone.

Remember that most social bookmarking sites provide “do follow” links (they are followed by search engine bots) and sometimes gets you decent traffic (which is not converting into sales or clicks as easy as natural traffic though). Following these social bookmarking guidelines can equip you with some high PR webspaces and boost your own web sites.

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