Social Bookmarking as an effective tool of online marketing is being utilized by organizations to share the relevant information on social bookmarking sites to get back links leading to traffic generation to their site. It is the simplest technique wherein a website owner registers with a social bookmarking site say, Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, Furl, etc to make use of already popular nature of these sites.

Social Bookmarking sites have numerous followers and if a business features on these sites, and is of interest to the user, there is great likelihood of him/ her visiting the site. A user can also post links to relevant social sites if he finds the website useful. It will not generate increase the visibility and drive traffic to the business site but will also help in website ranking if it gets the quality back links.

An online business can beneficially use Social Bookmarking sites to get traffic provided following points are taken care of:

Interesting headlines and meaningful descriptions

It is common understanding that users will go through any write-up only when they are convinced by its headline which should definitely arouse their interest. Next comes the description of the Article and it should be kept short, concise without any exaggeration as it may repel the user.

Hold the readers with First Paragraph

The first paragraph of an article is crucial as the user after reading it makes his decision to continue or not, so make it as interesting as you can.

Content is the key

The favorability to your website depends a lot on its content as the user seeks to satisfy his information need through the site. If it has relevant, useful and fresh content, then bookmarking will reap great results otherwise if you present dull content, social bookmarking sites may ban you.

Allow users easy way to bookmark your site

Place a bookmarking at the bottom of each of your article so that users can post it easily. It is rewarding if the users bookmark your site.

Select the right time and category

Give proper attention to the time when you submit and the category to which you submit your site or article so that your chances of getting notices are not affected.

Break the language barrier

It is recommended to submit the stuff in English as it is the most commonly used language

Check facts and Spelling

Users today are quite knowledgeable and detect any inaccuracy in facts easily so to avoid getting negative comments or votes from them, keep a check on the facts that you are sharing. Spelling mistakes can degrade a well written content so avoid this mistake and perform a spell check before submitting as you may not get the chance to do later.

Provide Links to related Articles

It is one of the useful ways to retain the interests of the visitors and make them stay longer to your site.

Respond to users’ comments

Responding to the user’s comments is helpful in creating relationships and extending the social circle.

Utilizing the above mentioned points, a website can get success through social bookmarking and as these sites follow the Snowball Effect, if you become popular on any one, it will lead on the top of other sites as well.

Keywords – The base of a good ranking

If you are a part of online marketing, then you cannot afford to neglect the word “Keywords” and their utmost importance in Search Engine Optimization. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the world of SEO revolves around keywords and their efficient use.

But what exactly is a Keyword or keywords as commonly referred to?

Keywords are those words or a phrase which the user types to search for the information that he/she wishes to gain through the medium of internet. The information that users seek may relate to some product, service, topic or any other area of their interest.

How keywords are relevant to search engines?

Search Engines look for those websites which utilize the keywords used by the actual users so that they can lead them to the relevant sites and provide them with most optimum search results. All the major search engines rank the sites on the basis of their content implying that if the site has relevant keywords in its tags, meta descriptions, URL and text, then it has high chances of appearing on top of the search engine result pages (SERPs). Thus it can be said the Search Engine Ranking is a matter of Keywords. However it must be noted that overuse of keywords may result in the website being penalized for keyword Spamming.

Importance of Keywords for a website

As mentioned above also, Search Engines rank a website keeping in view its keywords richness which clearly indicates the importance of keywords. A website is optimized to make use of appropriate keywords to attract search engines and thereafter the potential customers. Here the key responsibility of Search Engine Optimization remains to develop Keywords from the users’ point of view and place them at various places on the websites. To achieve maximum results, a website must use relevant keywords in the HTML title, URL, Headings, Title tags, Meta descriptions, ALT tags, Comment tags, action buttons and the overall content.

Why so much importance to Keywords?

Keywords help gain a high rank in search engines which ultimately drives traffic to the website which in fact is the prime concern of website owners conducting online business. If the site gets good amount of traffic, there are equal chances of sales and thus profits.

Having understood the value of keywords, the next question arises as to how develop the right keywords for the website, the products and services. Keyword Research is undertaken to find the right keywords. There are also keyword research tools available makes the task easy. Word Tracker is a popular tool in this regard used in SEO.

Though these tools can prove to be a great help but in order to create the powerful keywords that will serve the purpose, the following points must be borne in mind:

• Keywords should be specific and relate to products or services
• Keywords must match the users’ thinking

So with such great potential, keywords are the basic requirement for Search Engine Optimization.