How Social Bookmarking Affects SEO

Social bookmarking, including systems like Reddit and Digg, notably affects SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in a few different ways. Social bookmarking links can help determine which SEO keywords a web page shows up under, increase its Google PageRank, and/or make it appear in search results more quickly.

As a link receives additional votes in its favor, it will appear on more prominent pages of the social bookmarking service. This affects SEO more significantly, while producing an increase in direct traffic. Many web site operators have added links or icons to social bookmarking services at the beginning or end of each web page, thus encouraging their visitors to bookmark the pages.

When search engine “spiders” detect a link, its wording (“anchor text”) affects their identification of the content on the page it links to. Then the linked page becomes more likely to show up in search results for those words or phrases. This is why an inbound link with a vague anchor text phrase like “Amazing New Product” affects SEO less favorably than more descriptive links do.

For example, a social bookmarking link titled “New Operating System Released” would make the page it is linked to more likely to show up in search results for each of these four words. Thus, the more relevant and searchable the words in the link, the more useful it is for SEO purposes.

Most social bookmarking services are classified into categories or “tags”. Links on web pages with related content usually provide more SEO benefits, so the same is likely true for social bookmarking links which are grouped with other links on similar topics. Thus it is probably best to choose “tags” which are relevant, but not obscure.

A difference between social bookmarking and using a search engine is that people generally use search engines to find specific things they are looking for, while a social bookmarking system is more often used to explore new information they might be interested in. It is somewhat like the difference between advertising in the yellow pages and posting an advertisement on a laundromat’s bulletin board.

Basically, social bookmarking affects SEO in the same way that inbound links on other web sites do, but is different in that anyone can post or vote on these links. Their position is also more subject to change than most other links, and new content is generally favored over older material.