Social bookmarking is the habit or practice of saving bookmarks to a web site and "tagging". Social bookmarking sites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links. Social bookmarking started as a method for Internet users to keep bookmarks that can easily be accessed online and shared with other users in the Web. These bookmarks are given tags to label as well as organize them and the tags illustrate a glimpse of the main content for easier access.

Social bookmarking is a grassroots process that allows users to establish the value of a specific web page, article, podcast, or video. By bookmarking an item, individuals are casting a vote to endorse that specific resource. The idea is that social bookmarking gives a resource credibility; the more users who bookmark a specific item, the more valuable the resource is considered to be. Social bookmarking is all about the collective voice. Most of the social bookmarking networks increase the profile of items that receive a lot of bookmarks. It probably won't be long before the major search engines begin to include social bookmarks as a part of their ranking algorithms.

Once you become a part of a social bookmarking site, you become a member of that community. You and all the other users are there for the same thing and you can help each other out in finding sites that will benefit all of you. It also makes searching the Web so much easier and quicker. Another great thing is that once you're part of a site, you can access it from any computer and any browser. That way, you're never limited in seeing the social bookmarks you've been waiting for.

So, the question, "Should you give any attention to social bookmarking?" And the answer is, make your site worthy of bookmarking. Bookmarks appear to web spiders as links to your page, and that makes them very valuable SEO tools. For some search engines, the more bookmarks that lead back to your site, the more "votes" you get! Links which are bookmarked by lots of users on social bookmarking web sites are effectively been "voted for" In fact Google has already started to feature StumbleUpon Reviews in its search results.

Nowadays, Social Bookmarking services are the most popular source for webmasters to drive visitors and traffic to their websites. Social Bookmarking let's the users to save and manage their favorite bookmarks online on internet. It has been made in such a way that users can tag them with keywords and share them with others and watch their bookmarks. Also, you are able to keep the bookmarks private and share them with your friends and family only.

This all started in the year 2003, when Del.icio.us launched the Social Bookmarking Concept so that people can enjoy their bookmarks online. But, now there are so many sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, reddit and Raidx.co.uk that offer social bookmarking services. These sites feature the most popular and recently submitted bookmarks. Social bookmarking has now become a popular tool to webmasters for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Social bookmarking can easily make your website popular and produce more traffic. That's why webmasters take more interest in social bookmarking sites to have maximum social bookmarks of their websites so that people can visit them more.

The Challenges of Social Bookmarking for Businesses

Like any kind of social media marketing, social bookmarking is low-cost, at least in terms of money. Where the "costs" escalate is in time. To do social bookmarking right, you need time to evaluate the various sites, add your bookmarks, comment on them, and interact with other users who share your interests. It is a big job.

If you do a search for the top social bookmarking sites, you'll get a huge list, like the one published on ebizMBA. So which ones do you choose? Delicious is one of the biggest, but would it be better to go for a smaller site, like furl or faves.com? Is it better to use all three, plus some social news sites, like Digg or Reddit?

Once you have made that decision, you need to decide how and when you will create the content you want to bookmark. Blogs, articles - what is the right amount of content and how often do you need to create it? You can really only answer that question by looking at social bookmarking as part of your overall social media marketing plan.

Social bookmarking and social media marketing are powerful marketing tools. To make the most of them you need to devote a lot of attention to the sites and create content regularly. You also need a comprehensive social media marketing plan that incorporates all of your content initiatives and your efforts to create bookmarks that direct people to that content.

Several tips about social bookmarking :

1. Webmasters should always offer links to popular bookmarking websites so the viewers are easily able to bookmark their favorite websites and web pages. If you search Google for social bookmarking scripts you will find many scripts that are available for websites which permits users to bookmark your website easily.
   In order to get your website bookmark by other members of the social bookmarking sites, you must also bookmark your own websites and ask your friends and family members to bookmark it. You must register an account with all popular social bookmarking websites and bookmark all your web pages with appropriate keywords and titles.
2. On bookmarking sites, you can also exchange links with many websites that are relevant to your sites niche. Many webmasters bookmark your websites if you bookmark their websites. However, nowadays social bookmarking sites don't allow you to exchange your bookmarks with other webmasters but you can still find your own ways. Participate in the social bookmarking websites and create a huge friend's list. Many times people visits their friend's profile and bookmarks the websites if they like it. Also, you can ask the members of your friend's list to view your newly created pages and they might bookmark them. Commenting on other's bookmarks will help you to increase your profile as well as your websites popularity.
3. Bookmark yours as well as other similar web pages because, when the traffic on the websites you have bookmarked goes high, yours will also increase at the same time. Similarly, if the link value of all the pages you have bookmarked goes high, the link-value of your websites also increases.
4. On the web-site side, be sure to include the code snippets provided by social bookmarking organizations that allow users to tag your site easily. Then, maintain it all. Don't just forget your account completely. If you do, eventually it will disappear and all the advantage of having one will go as well. Instead, continue using social bookmarking. Over time, the rewards will be increased traffic to your web site.
5. The last and very important tip is that your website should contain unique and fresh content. This is because, if your content is good and impressive, then only the visitors will bookmark it or else they will never return to your website again. May be you have done extensive search engine optimization or have created hundreds of bookmarks, but if your website don't have unique and good content there will no further bookmarks and traffic on your website. Remember that Content is the key to Success.

Work on the above social bookmarking tips properly, sit back and watch traffic coming to your website.