How relevant is social bookmarking for SEO today?
-
I've been doing SEO for a little over 4 years. I've never used sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc. either personally or on behalf of my clients. This past week I had a discussion with another SEO who asked what I'm doing for my clients with regard to social bookmarking. I responded that I'm really not doing anything and they were shocked. I took a pretty good verbal beating over it. She was borderline offended.
I have always been able to deliver solid results for my clients without any type of social bookmarking, so I struggle to see the need, but am surprised at how shocked this other SEO was that I don't do it. How beneficial is it and am I really missing out?
-
Great response Samuel, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
-
Garrett, thanks for the question. I hate to give a complicated answer, but the answer is, "It depends." Specifically, it depends what you and the other SEO mean when you talk about "SEO." The phrase means different things to different people. Let me explain.
If you are referring specifically to helping a website rank more highly in organic search results, then the number of Digg submission, StumbleUpon shares, Reddit links, Diigo saves, and more will not help a website directly. These are not direct ranking factors (one reason, among many, is that it would be too easy for anyone to spam Google's algorithm via these methods).
However, these methods are useful in general online marketing (which some say is to what "SEO" refers) in ways that can help to increase a site's organic prominence indirectly. Here's an example. Say that you use social-bookmarking sites to "spread the word" about a site and its content. People find out about the site and its content via the social-bookmarking sites and then decide to write about the site, share it on their own social networks, and link to it. Then, the mentions and links that result indirectly can eventually help the site in organic search via the natural, earned backlinks.
Here's the key. Social media and bookmarking sites are public relations and communications channels that can be used to reach a targeted audience (for any purpose). One use is to spread the word in the ways that I described above to increase awareness of a site and its content. The more you do this, the more that referral traffic and the resulting mentions and links will follow -- and the more that organic rankings will likely increase as an indirect result. (Of course, do not spam.)
So, I guess my answer is that social bookmarking will not help organic rankings directly. But it can and should be used in a strategic way in terms of what is called off-page SEO, public relations, or content marketing (depending on who you ask) to help long-term organic rankings, sales, conversions, and more over the long term indirectly.
I hope this answer is clear and makes sense!
-
Garrett trust me you are doing it right and especially for the client end I don’t really see any need of it. The most they can deliver you is some extra amount of traffic (with the bounce rate of 90% and plus) as far as the link equity from social bookmarking is concern, it’s more like directories.
The reason why they are shocked is because they have no idea how to ACTUALLY build quality links so they keep workin on shit that are not important at all in my opinion.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will Traffic From Social Media Effects Search Engine Ranking
hi, If i get paid traffic from social media on my website blog. Will overall ranking of my website increase in search engine or not. Share your experience.
Social Media | | Khan500 -
Facebook Name Change and Effect on SEO
Hey Moz! Working with a company who has about 20K followers on Facebook and about 500 backlinks to their current facebook page. They want to change the name of the page to better reflect the business. I need to advise on this but I'm not sure of and how it will effect them. Any one had any experience in this area?
Social Media | | wearehappymedia0 -
Multiple language redirect, link building and social sharing
Hi all, I have 3 questions bother me for weeks, thanks advance for any answers. We are an online langauge school, provide many content about learn Chinese , the site is http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/ 1. Langauge issue. As you can see, It's a multiple language site, when a user first time visit the site, it redirects (302) the user to his own language. I have read many articles about this, most said 301 is good than 302. But 301 is a permanent redirect, so it can only implement on one language, right? For example, if we 301 redirect http://www.chinesetimeschool.com to http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/en-us/ for english speaking users, we have to use 302 redirect for other languages, ie, 302 redirect http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/ to http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/fr-fr/ for French speaking people. Or in other words, we cannot use 301 to redirect home page to different language page, right? In my understanding, it will mess up google which language page the home page redirects to. 2. Link building. Our editor created a lot content, but from Alexa we only see 85 links back, which means our content has few exposure. We want to get more links back especially for the English version, any advice? should we find a US company help us since we are in China not famliar with US? Any good company or guys good at link building/content exposure suggested? 3. Social sharing. We have around 300,000 followers on facebook, many content pages has hundreds of shares, for example, this page http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/en-us/articles/new-years-greetings-in-chinese/ has 129 shares and 333 likes (I use Moz open site explorer tool), but if I check http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/, only has 130 shares and 414 likes. So I think shares of a page won't be counted in the domain shares. This makes me thinking of 2 things:
Social Media | | mikecao
A. Will social shares of home page be more important than other pages? If so, we need share more of our home page.
B. Even if we have a lot page shares, I didn't see any google traffic changes (for at least half year), will it mean social page shares has very few influences to google seo? Many thanks!
Mike0 -
Does a 301 retain social actions
I just changed the domains on one of my largest and oldest sites for branding reasons. I have the 301 set to keep the page structures and all. My question is will the "likes" and shares and etc be kept via the 301 or will they have to be reacquired?
Social Media | | Atomicx0 -
Crawling of Social data
Just a quick inquisitive question. Websites like Facebook and Twitter arent public, they obviously allow a page title and snippet of account info in search results. So how are is social metrics gathered as regards to Tweets or Shares or Likes etc. in crawling data gathering? Would this give some insite how best to share social media too?
Social Media | | xtopher660 -
Value in content from website being shared across social media?
If I write content (small career advice quotes) on my website and I distribute across Twitter and FB I assume my site will get the full credit (from an SEO perspective) since that is where the content was originally uploaded. However, will I still get SEO credit for being active on social media, or will Google view it as duplicate content and evaluate that I am not active on social media? thank you
Social Media | | knielsen0 -
Automating the brainless tasks of Social Media Management
I'm talking about Scheduling Tweets Scheduling FB Updates I'm sure I'll be pointed to some good resources for the above but what I really need is a tool that allows me to sort out queries/complains/requests that I would need to pass on to my client. Something that lets me tag a comment and gathers it with complete data like user name, time, comment etc. Does something like this exist?! Similarly, something that allows you to filter words that should be treated as spam. Also, suggestions on what other "brainless" tasks of SMM should be/can be automated would be appreciated. Regards, Edit: No responses as yet! Whats up Mozzers?
Social Media | | AsadMemon0 -
Social Media Convergence Issues
Hello and Good Morning, I have a tech convergence question... In our social media package we have listed that we will subscribe to hubpages and scribd. a lot of these services do the same thing (twitter vs identi.ca, color vs instagram, gowalla vs fourquare, ect), what are some of the better services to use and why? We have our favorites but they may not necessarily be the most effective. thanks!
Social Media | | imageworks-2612900