One of the most popular social bookmarking sites is del.icio.us. It has a minimalist appearance that understates that it is a power tool in generating traffic, visibility, and incoming links to your sites.
On July 31st my post, 101 Resources to Help You Build a Better Web Form, received about 1,000 referrals from the front page of del.icio.us. Total, I received over 3,000 referrals from all sources combined. As the day went on, I watched the number of “saves” of that page grow quite quickly. Now, I have a little more than 400 saves or bookmarks of that post in del.icio.us.
What’s the big deal about being “Saved” in del.icio.us?
Many blogs do a daily, weekly, or monthly recap of popular links for their particular market. When your post shows prominence in popular tags, it is more likely to show up on those recaps. If your link is added to one of those recaps, you have a free inbound link without the “nofollow” tag. Also, aside from free links, you will most likely be receiving traffic from the post. You’re Technorati rank will increase with the more number of sites linking yours.
Short Term Benefits of “Saves” on del.icio.us
If your item is saved with a common “tag” or keyword, then you have the opportunity of being visible on that tag’s “popular” page. You can see an example of the “forms” popular page, which my post is currently at the top. When your item is on this page you are second most likely to acquire more saves. The most likely spot would be the home page. Also, you can use the del.icio.us API to automatically post to your blog on the topics that interest you. However, many of the sites that do this do not have much authority in the way of linking.
If you achieve front page of del.icio.us, then you also appear on many aggregate sites which are simply XML feeds of the popular social bookmarking sites at the present time. A few of these sites are; doggdot.us, popurls.com, and thumblicio.us.
Long Term Benefits of “Saves” on del.icio.us
Once your item has been saved by a number of people in del.icio.us, you can expect some long term benefits. I still receive a steady stream of traffic from being on a few recap lists, also I send traffic a good number of sites from being on my popular 101 lists. Also, those posts receive repeat traffic from people who have saved the item, as well as others who browser their profile and click through to your site.
Conclusion
The traffic is not as massive as Digg. My blog, hosted on Dreamhost, was able to hold together while being on the front page of del.icio.us. If one of my posts fails to get popular on Digg, then it still has a chance of going popular on del.icio.us and still having the ability to bring in the traffic and links.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Though the individual pages don’t always show up in the index when searched, I do think that Google relies on them heavily as part of the relevance calculations and is an important factor to consider.
August 7th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I do think that Google relies on them heavily as part of the relevance calculations.
I agree but yahoo ?
March 20th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
[...] developer and search engine optimizer (SEO) Jason Bartholme breaks them down into short and long term benefits: If your item is saved with a common “tag” or [...]