There are social bookmarking sites out there that give dofollow links. Meaning if you craft a piece of content and title it with the keyword phrase you need, you are getting a free link with the correct anchor text.
In fact, there are 100’s of sites out there you can do this at. I’m not going to give a list of all the dofollow sites I use, but check out this social bookmarking list and build your own. It simply takes time.
What you need
- A piece of content that provides value
- A compelling title
- Keyword phrase within the title
- A way to monitor your accounts
- Regular analysis of how long each link pops up in google
Here’s a tip, make up a phrase that no one ranks for, like I did here
Then set up a google alert for the phrase. Submit your phrase to all the social bookmarking sites and wait to see which pops up first. If a site does not pop up, then you have to question the Google juice they are receiving.
Actually, it’s a great way to see what sites are scraping your content by putting a unique phrase in your title and then setting up the alerts.
The biggest problem with this method is time and the relative effectiveness of the links. You have to make sure the content is good and the title passes spam detection else it will simply be delete.
The good thing about it is that it’s a cheap and dirty way to get sites deep crawled and indexed.
If one of your stories actually gets picked up and voted on at any of the social bookmarking sites all the better.
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That’s interesting, I have been looking at doing social bookmarking for the niche sites that I am building. I wouldn’t have thought about your Google alert test though – most ingenious :)
Good information. I typically use social bookmarking sites to try and draw links from others, but haven’t really focused on the value of the links from those sites themselves. Thanks.
I think you should set up a Google alert for the phrase “fungus between a marathon runners toes.” :)
Like the Google alerts test!
And that list of social bookmarking sites is useful – boy I didn’t realise there were quite that many. Basically, think of a made-up word … like ‘bwobble’ … and there’ll be a social network called that ;) !!!
Do you think they’ll all start to put nofollow on their links? Then we’ll all be off to find the next thing in link building!
If you’re interested in social bookmarking and SEO, here’s a link to a PPT presentation I did on the topic at SES New York over at slideshare: http://tinyurl.com/399fsh
It’s basic but has links to some useful tools.
The one question I have is: If everyone can set up a fake/real social networking site, and everyone can post links on that site, what value or “trust rank” will Google, etc. associate with that site?
My vote, little to none. Anyone else’s thoughts?
I think social media optimization is a good value add, but definitely not the end all for SEO.
Well, social bookmarking is fine, but there is no stable traffic from such source. I know it because one day my site received about 200 visits from stumbleupon, but it stopped later.
… Social bookmarking is always questionable, but worth sometimes. BTW, I stumbled this page just now :) .
great post, i really appreciate your clear way of explaining how to work on social networking sites to develop effective back link for a website. its really a useful information for all SEO. How do we can give title with keyword (which is spam protected)?
Agree with Jeff above, not much weight on this type of link but with larger quantities some love.
To me, like reciprocal links, if social links are sought they shouldn’t be a huge percentage of total links to a site.
Not bad for deep links, but little trust.
Hi,
Clear, concise and useful. Good post and good comments also! I have one question: does anyone know if Google looks at the user’s Google Bookmarks in order to personalize the search results?
So; let me get this straight; many of you and those of you who frequent “spin.com” think that the word “social” and the word “SEO” go together?
That news to me and I’ve been at this SEO stuff for over ten years now. Go figure. Let me know when I should start doing this so-called “SOCIAL” crap, ok? My clients will keep looking “down” at your sites from the top of the serps in the meantime.
Doug, you have failed to get it straight. There are a number of beginner posts about linkbait and how to take advantage of social media. There are a quite a few on this blog.
If you need a good beginners guide I will be welcome to point you to one. I know it can get confusing sometimes.
I think you have confused traffic as the point of social media marketing, that is not the point. The point is to attract links, using social media as a vehicle to put content in front of eyeballs and persuading bloggers and website masters to give up a link.
As far as I am aware, linkbuilding is still a crucial part of seo, unless you have found a way around it.
An interesting tip. Ive never thought to look for dofollow sites before, but ive just done a search of google and found a ton of them. Im about to look into it a little more now. Thanks for the tip Lyndoman.
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