Death Social Bookmarking

Back when link building meant creating 50 links in a day with citations, social bookmarking, email spamming while wearing a giant, leather, old FUBU jersey with DJ Jazzy Jeff playing, I thought link building was difficult. But, nowadays, it’s even more difficult than that…and requires less sportswear. There are a ton of linking options right at my fingertips. I can find new linking options for whatever I want, whenever I want…especially if I’m not bothered by that big, awkward message in Google Search Console stating there is suspicious linking activity [insert sarcastic tone]. Let’s be honest: Link building has evolved. I have to be picky about where I’m building links to now. I have to find a niche. I have to understand where my target audience lives. And, I have to provide them with quality content that engages them to lower my bounce rate, increase time on site, and ultimately be good enough for the user to click, comment, and share my content. Whether you prefer to risk it with the black-hat tactics and sweater vests of 1995, or would rather progress forward, you have to get your content shared. When you’re creating epic content, people deserve to see it. So, how do you get your content seen by millions? This is a topic often discussed at SEJ. There are tons of content promotion ideas and link building techniques to get your work to reach the right people. But, what are the right channels? Is it social? Blogs? Social bookmarking? Today, I’m going to focus on the topic of social bookmarking as a link building tactic. Let’s dig in. The Pros of Social Bookmarking Social bookmarking works when done with the purpose to build an authentic community. Just take a look at Process Street. They stated, “Over the past 30 days at Process Street, around 11% of the traffic to our blog came from social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Inbound, and GrowthHackers.” StumbleUpon became the #2 traffic driver for Cisco. At SEJ, StumbleUpon alone brought us 5,787 pageviews in the month of July. It also shows in our #SurveySays Twitter poll results that StumbleUpon is a top social referrer for others.