Thursday 13 September 2012

The Top Rated Social Bookmarking Websites

Below are the top thirty social books marking websites. These have been ranked by a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast. There are no exact measures of traffic but these numbers no less give us some idea about the market share of each these socialbookmarking players.

1.
The single biggest social bookmarking website on the internet is Digg.

www.digg.com

2.
Digg is followed by Technorati www.technorati.com
 
 

3.
Next in line is del.icio.us – one of the senior players on the social

bookmarking scene
 
 

4.
The fourth largest social bookmarking site is Propeller. www.propeller.com
 
 

5.
Then we have StumbleUpon – rounding up the top five social bookmarking

sites around.
 
 

6.
Reddit. You can check it out at www.reddit.com
 
 
 

7.
Next up is the most hilarious social bookmarking site you will find and it’s

called Fark. If you are into pop culture, you need to make it to

 
 

8.
MyBlogLog – which obviously specializes in blogs. www.mybloglog.com
 
 
 

9.
Slashdot is aimed at the techie population. Its tag line goes like this ‘for

nerds, things that matter’.
 
 
 

10.
Kaboodle completes the top ten of the biggest social bookmarking

websites around. This is aimed at those looking to buy things on the

internet – shopping! You can share notes about products and stores at

 
 

11.
Bloglines tracks blogs, news and feeds. It is still quite a busy site in terms

of traffic www.bloglines.com




12.
Newsvine encourages users to post the latest news items from around the

world at
www.newsvine.com. It becomes a one stop shop for all kinds of news.
 
 
 
 

13. Blinklist is a very simple and easy to use social bookmarking website. It
sticks to the basics of creating and sharing bookmarks.
 
 
 

14.
Netvouz allows users to have their own personalized bookmark page. Like

Blinklist, it is also quite simple.
 
 
 
 

15.
Clip the highlights with Clipmarks. It shows the most popular and recent

‘clippings’ from the web by submitters.
 
 
 

16.
Then we have Furl at number sixteen, which claims to be ‘your personal

web file’ It allows the same features of bookmarking, tagging and sharing.

 
 
 

17.
Mister Wong lets you do your social bookmarking in several languages, so

you can make use of resources that may or may not originally be in your

language.
 
 
 

18.
dzone. This is aimed specifically at web developers www.dzone.com
 
 
 

19.
Magnolia. This simply lets you find websites and build a community with

users who have the same interests.
 
 
 

20.
Rounding up the top twenty social marking sites we have Tailrank. Tailrank

tracks the hottest news in the blogosphere at
 
 
 

21.
Shoutwire has several topical categories. www.shoutwire.com
 
 
 
 

22.
Simpy is a very simplified social bookmarking website. www.simpy.com
 
 
 

23. BlogMarks promises users a hassle free way to save their bookmarks and
share them too.
 
 
 
 

24. Faves – which used to be known as BlueDot.us. Faves builds personalized
pages for its users based on preferences and interests. http://faves.com





25.Spurl lets you upload bookmarks from your computer on to the social
bookmarking website.
 
 
 
 

26. Spotplex contains social bookmarks in multiple languages.
 
 
 

27. Linkswarm is a humorously written social bookmarking tool but with all the
same features.
 
 
 
 

28. Spotback also involves collaborative filtering. www.spotback.com
 
 
 
 
 
29. PlugIm. www.plugim.com
 
 
 
 
30. Rounding up the top thirty list on the best social bookmarking websites is
appropriately called MyBookMarks. www.mybookmarks.com






Tuesday 4 September 2012

Using Fark To Create Traffic

Fark


Fark.com does not obviously seem to be a social bookmarking website. It is a humorous look at pop culture and the news, and is widely read by
people as an entertainment site. However, it is one of the most powerful social bookmarking sites around, and has the power to drive massive amounts of traffic to any website.

Fark is, in essence, a community based website.

Its creator Drew Curtis designed it so that it allows users to comment on a batch of
articles and news items that are updated daily. A seven day archive is also available for comment. Links to the articles or news items are submitted by registered Fark members which are then approved (green lit) or disapproved by the site administrators. Whether the links are approved or not, they can still have comment threads around them. Moderators monitor the discussion boards and any content that violates posting guidelines is removed.

Another variation of Fark is Totalfark. This is a premium version of Fark and requires a $5 monthly fee, whereas Fark is totally free. The advantage of Totalfark is that members have an online community and can take part in active and energizing discussions. They can comment on all posted links, not just the green lit ones.

In fact, the links submitted by this sub-community are not really meant for being
green lit and are displayed on Fark but reserved for comment and discussion by Totalfarkers. However, they may be green lit if they are particularly interesting, funny or embarrassing. This is particularly useful for you if you are looking at Fark from a social bookmarking perspective. If your blog is about any of the categories which Fark discusses, you can promote it heavily by posting links and inviting comment.

However, you must be careful. Your link must be good quality because the average Farker is intelligent and discerning.Furthermore, the administrators will soon work out if you are spamming. As mentioned before, there is no substitute for good content to drive traffic to your website, but once you build up credibility for your site, you can be assured that people will visit your website or blog for their daily fix.

Using Fark: Making It Work For You


You sign up for a free account on Fark and create a profile for yourself which is visible to other users. You can upload a picture and write a short bio about yourself, and you should do so, because this is important when trying to build up a community of like minded people to direct to your website. The Fark categories include Not News, Sports, Business, Geek, Showbiz, Politics, Videos and Voting. So, all of the news and infotainment articles that you could ever hope to read are listed here. Fark
describes itself as a new aggregator website and an edited social networking website, which receives about 1800 to 2000 links each day from users.

As suggested earlier, if your aim when using social bookmarking is to get people to visit your blog or website, then you should understand that each day, out of the 2000 odd submissions that Fark receives, only about fifty make it to the main page. So there is a high chance that your submission will not make it.
However, the kind of interaction you are seeking can be found on Totalfark. Furthermore, all the submissions that feature on Totalfark are archived in their entirety and not just limited to a seven day archive. Totalfark also allows for greater interaction and connectivity.

Users can, for example, add other users as ‘favorites’. You can highlight posts made
by your friends in any color you like and of course they can do the same for you.
Every time someone ‘favorites’ you, it creates a link back to your website. Not only can you ‘favorite’ your friends, but you can also do the same for your favorite posts and links as well.
Fark also has a voting feature where users vote on a particular humorous idea and whether it works or not. This is a great way to get people on your site, that is, if your link makes it to the voting section.

One of the most unusual distinguishing features of Fark is the tags given to the stories by the submitters themselves. They are displayed right next to a cleverly funny headline and carry a link to the actual story, as well as to the forum that is discussing the story. Next to the article you will find a number in parentheses. This
indicates the number of comments that have been made about the story, and the
more comments a story gets, the more likely people are to visit it.

 



 

Sunday 26 August 2012

Use Stumble Upon To Create Traffic

Stumble Upon



StumbleUpon is just a little different from the other social bookmarking websites (actually they are all just a little bit different from each other).

It works as a browser plugin to let you ‘stumble upon’ and rate websites, articles, blogs, photos, videos etc. A person using StumbleUpon is known as a ‘stumbler’, and when you come across an interesting web find you just click the Stumble! Button on your tool bar and add it to your StumbleUpon favorites. All the functions that you would normally use in social bookmarking are made available on your browser with StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon is a great way to discover exciting new content on the web in a relatively random fashion, as well as sharing your finds with your friends. When you click the button on your browser, StumbleUpon generates web page matches according to your preferences. The pages displayed are those that have been
recommended by your friends or other users of Stumble that have interests similar you.


Using StumbleUpon: Making It Work for You

To use StumbleUpon all you need to do is to sign up for a free account and then download the free browser plug in. Once this is installed and activated, then StumbleUpon chooses which new website will be displayed depending on the ratings you assigned to previous pages, or on ratings of websites by your friends
and the sometimes perhaps even based upon the ratings of other users on StumbleUpon who have the same interests as you. So, if people in your network give your website thumbs up, more and more people are likely to visit it.

The content on StumbleUpon is based on a rating system that allows users to givethumbs up or thumbs down to a website, so it is an entirely recommendation based system that makes extensive use of socialnetworking principles. It also has a one click blogging system, and users can rate a blog with a thumbs up or thumbs down decision.

What StumbleUpon actually uses is called collaborative filtering. This is an automated process that makes active use of the opinions of the people using the system. It also takes into account the personal preferences that come about from machine learning. This creates a virtual community of people who are connected to each other, and over time this community should become ever more closely linked
because of the new linkages being added every day.


The website updates each user’s personal profile, which is a blog style record of the
sites that that particular user has rated. Then, StumbleUpon generates peer group networks of users that are connected by similar interests, and it is these social networks that organize the distribution of the content on StumbleUpon.

What happens is that users of StumbleUpon only the get to view the pages that have
been recommended by their friends or those who have similar interests.
Instead of just giving a site a thumbs up or down, you also have the option of leaving
comments on the website, and this will also appear in the user’s profile/blog. This
way of discovering content on the web is becoming surprisingly close to automating
the word of mouth marketing function.


Stumblers have the chance to rate and review the blogs created by their peers, and,
as a Stumbler, you could also join certain interest groups as well to further increase
the interactivity of your account. These are community forums created to discuss
specific topics wherein users post comments in such a way that it becomes more like a discussion board.


StumbleUpon claims to have a certain edge over conventional search methods, and some of these could be crucial to increasing your website’s visibility and directing traffic towards it. Using search engines often means that we have to carefully sift through pages and
pages of seemingly relevant content, but often these results are nothing more than somewhat irrelevant keyword matches which may be far from what you are looking for.
 

Using StumbleUpon, however, you can be sure that if the content on your website is good, then people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say will see you. Members have also come to trust content on StumbleUpon, since members are taken directly to matches that are sorted according to interests and preferences.
They are more likely to visit your site if it is visible on StumbleUpon. Like most other social bookmarking sites, StumbleUpon uses technology that is essentially driven by humans. By using a combination of machine learning and human opinions to yield search results, StumbleUpon delivers content that is highly relevant and appropriate, so that the user gets a high quality website every time they
search for something and they come to trust this pattern. This means that when your
website shows up on StumbleUpon, it will almost automatically have greater credibility.


StumbleUpon is quite easy to use too, so it could work for you, even if you are just
learning the ropes of social bookmarking. Also, if your target audience is not exceptionally good at understanding the workings of the internet and social bookmarking, StumbleUpon is a good place to start. Users can add your website to
their favorites with a simple click and they also have the opportunity to pass your link on to others in their online community. They can also give feedback or make comments. This creates an inevitable network of visitors to your website.
 

StumbleUpon lists nearly five hundred topics that users can choose to list as their
interests and preferences. This allows you to get your website known in different circles and communities of users. The internet just keeps getting bigger and more complex each day. Information is also constantly changing. StumbleUpon has a dynamic approach keeping fully abreast of all of the freshest sites, blogs and articles on the internet. It filters tons of
information on the website to bring content to its visitors. So if you have created a
new website, you can promote it and invite feedback and comments on it by using StumbleUpon.



Furthermore, the more active you are on StumbleUpon, the more visibility you will
gain, because StumbleUpon compiles a list of its most active users, and this gives extra exposure to those who are very active and helpful. It also shows you people on
StumbleUpon who are geographically close to you.

 

Monday 20 August 2012

How To Use Delicious To Get Free Traffic


www.delicious.com Just like any other social bookmarking site, del.icio.us is a collection of people’s favorites. These favorites are yours and those of many others like you. Whenever you find an interesting article, blog, music, recipe, review or just
about anything else, then you can simply save it to del.icio.us. This makes your favorites accessible from anywhere, not just your computer.


Furthermore, you can share these favorites with the people around you, whether they are family, friends or coworkers, and you can even build your very own
community of like minded individuals on del.icio.us. Del.icio.us also opens up the window to the best content on the web, so that you don’t have to sift through the thousands of search engine results. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite,
and this already acts as a content filter so you know that you are only getting the best resources and most appropriate website shown to you. Users can, as always,browse the numerous tags to search for what they want.

Using del.icio.us: Making It Work For You


Del.icio.us is basically a social bookmarking website that enables you to save your bookmarks online. You can use it to your advantage to get maximum exposure for your website or blog. It gives you access to the links that other people have tagged as favorites and this provides you with an insight into what kind of content people are looking for and how to position your website in relation to this content. You can
assign one word descriptors to your posts; that is, tags. Tagging allows greater flexibility – since you can give a post multiple tags and increase your chances of
being viewed.

The following are some of the major reasons why people visit del.icio.us and my suggestions for harnessing the power of its extremely large visitor base to increase traffic to your website:
• Many people searching social bookmarking websites are looking for information or doing research. If your website is information based, then use the site to pick up tips on what kind of information people need most, so that you can post accordingly. Stay active in the ‘tags’ that directly or indirectly relate to your own website. Only when you post comments actively will people comment on your posts, thereby creating a network of back links and opening up new business avenues.

• Many people now do a considerable part of their buying and selling on the internet. For example, people commonly choose presents on the internet and
have them delivered. They even have their own wish list posted on the net and share it with others. This can be a gold mine if your online business is
product sales based. Trawl the wish list tags to get an idea of what people are buying. If you find a wish list that’s looking for what you are selling, drop them

a message and tell them you can help. If the user finds you and your service helpful, they are likely to recommend your product to others as well. This
could open up a treasure trove of visitors and buyers on your website.

• Many of us listen to pod casts – whether it is news, music, reviews or entertainment. There is a considerable market for pod casts. If you are in the
business of developing pod casts, make sure you check out the mp3 and podcast tags on del.icio.us to see what people are listening to now.

• The internet is also fast becoming a popular travel resources center. People are buying bus, rail and air tickets online. They are choosing destinations and
hotels online. And when it comes to traveling, word of mouth is a great marketing tool. People are likely to trust information from people who have been to the place, used the same airline etc. If your online business is travel related, it would be a good idea to get yourself acquainted with the travel and
other related tags. Become an active member, help people organize the travel and get the benefit of guiding traffic to your travel based website at the same time
.
• Creating a link log can also help you immensely and is quite simple to do. Make sure you comment on other users’ blogs as well and they will comment
on yours, thus creating a network of links that point back to your website.

• You can also use del.icio.us as a tremendous networking tool and also for pooling resources and completing projects that need collaborative work.
Groups of people can use a shared account. They can use special tags for their own work and share relevant bookmarks that will be useful to the entire
group. You can, in fact, basically organize your tags and resources in anyway that you want.



Thursday 16 August 2012

How To Use Technorati


www.technorati.com The word technorati is a combination of the words technology
and literati. The mainstay of technorati is blogs. Technorati is basically concerned with the world ‘live’ web, as opposed to the World Wide Web. The world ‘live’ web is that part of the World Wide Web which is constantly being updated and is interactive.

 Technorati searches for and organizes independent, user generated content, whether it is blogs, videos or pictures. This kind of ‘personal’ media is also sometimes referred to as citizen media.
Before examining the workings of technorati, let’s take a look at blogs as they are the basis of technorati. A weblog or blog (as it is commonly known) is a kind of daily diary or journal but it is online. Blogs are a very powerful tool of communication.
They may be very personal and not actually trying to achieve an audience at all,whilst on the other hand, they could be vying for mass viewing. In any case, blogs are quite influential. They reflect a wide variety of opinions and topics, and they are as varied as the millions who write them and read them. Millions also respond to these blogs and are influenced by them.

Within the blogging community, bloggers connect to other bloggers on a regular basis. This means that they are engaged in an interaction that is almost like an open conversation. This is where technorati comes to fore.

Technorati tracks blogs and the conversations around them, and it rapidly indexes these links. The world live web is buzzing with activity that many are entirely
unaware of.For example, every day over 175,000 new blogs are created. These blogs are updated regularly as well. There are 18 blog updates per second – which means that there are 1.6 million posts being made every day. This could be a gold mine of potential visitors to your website.


Using Technorati: Making It Work For You

Technorati’s mainstay is the blogs that people create.
You can sign up for a free account and start posting your blog pages to Technorati straight away. You can also create a user profile for yourself, so that others can get to know you and your interests and help you to network better. The site also includes news, and is broken down into these two main categories – news and blogs. There are topical categories as well, and these include business, entertainment, lifestyle,
sports, technology and photos. Each topical category has blogs and news items related to it.

As a member, you can ‘favorite’ the blog or posting of a fellow user. You could even‘ favorite’ the user. This means that you are giving them a ‘thumbs up’ for all of the posts made by that user. Imagine how many link backs it can create to your website if people favorite your profile or even your posts in the same way.

Technorati also makes a distinction between the most ‘favorited’ blogs and the top commented-on blogs. So this brings a greater number of blogs to people’s attention.If, for example, the aim of your blog is to spread information, it may not garner too many comments but it may be a favorite of many users. On the other hand, blogs that are more opinionated and interactive will invite much more commenting.

The ‘popular’ page on the website displays the top five blogs, the ones that have been voted as ‘favorite’ by the most people, and it also provides a link to the top one hundred favorite blogs. It also shows the number of people who have voted the particular blog as favorite. The ‘popular’ page also lists the top five blogs that have the most comments made about them and provides a link to the top one hundred most commented on blogs. This page shows the number of comments made about a post as well.

Friday 10 August 2012

Top Social Bookmarking Sites To Try


Digg

www.digg.com is a popular website that involves elements of social bookmarking and blogging. It places an emphasis on science and technology but has recently expanded to included categories such as politics and entertainment. The latest stories and websites are submitted by registered users and editorial control is democratic. This means that news stories and web site links are submitted by users
and they are only moved to the front page of Digg based upon a user-controlled ranking system.

This is how it works. Users can view all the stories or link that their fellow users submit. If a story gets enough ‘diggs’ it gets promoted to the front page of the Digg website. If it doesn’t get enough ‘diggs’ it remains in the ‘digg all’ area, where it will eventually be removed. A post may also be removed if enough users report a problem with the link.

All the content on the Digg website is free.
Originally Digg carried fifteen categories in which to submit stories. These were deals, gaming, link, mods, robots, security, technology, design, Apple, Linux, music, hardware, movies, programming, software and science. However, Digg was recently revamped and the previous categories have now been worked into the six new categories, which are: technology, science, world & business, sports, entertainment and gaming – with each category having subcategories.

On Digg, users can discover web content from just about anywhere. Whether it’s the biggest names on the web or the most obscure blog from the other side of the world, you will find it on Digg.
There are no editors on Digg. The editing is done by all the users together. The users together determine the value of the content that is available. All the content is user driven – from the blog posts to the pod casts. Once you submit your post, it is instantly visible to all Digg users. If your submission is a good one and it gets enough Diggs, it gets promoted to the front page of the website.

 There it is available for viewing by millions of users around the world. Since Digg is all about sharing and making discoveries, users can also build conversations around the content that is posted. Digg provides users with tools to comment on and

discuss topics they are passionate about. When you go through Digg, you will quickly realize the benefit of working through the lens of other users who have the
same interests as you, simply because it acts as a content filter. This ensures that you only get the most interesting, relevant and unique information.

Using Digg: Making it Work For You Simply sign up for a Digg account at digg.com and take off from there.
Whenever you want to submit an article, video or pod cast, just post it for people to see and it will show up immediately in the section called ‘Upcoming Stories’. Here, other Digg members can see it and ‘digg’ it if they like it. A ‘digg’ is a vote for your post that recommends it to other users. If your submission
receives enough diggs, then it gets promoted to the front page of Digg.com. The next step up the ladder of popularity is to make it to the Top 10 list on the
homepage.

The more people who digg your post, then even more people are likely to click on it. If it’s good for them, it’s good for the next user as well. On the other hand, if a
submission is no good and does not receive enough diggs it will remain in the Upcoming Stories’ section and stays there until it gets deleted. So you have to be at the top of your game to make sure that your post does not get deleted. To do this, you must stay active on the website.

You must take part in the collaborative editing process that Digg is essentially based upon. You should digg posts that you like because it means that other users will also digg your posts and create better visibility for your post. You can also share your digging history with your friends. You should make an effort to ‘bury’ any bad links, that is, links that have irrelevant
information or duplicate entries. This keeps the spam out and ensures that users get only relevant information. This helps you gain credibility and in turn build an invaluable network.

 You can invite your friends or make new ones on Digg. This lets you view what others are digging and help you find mutually beneficial resources.

You can even share a link with friends who are not on Digg by emailing it to them. Most importantly you must share your opinions and make them heard on Digg. This is only way that you gain credibility for yourself and create more link-backs to your website, thereby generating more traffic.


Saturday 4 August 2012

How to Make Social Bookmarking Work For You


Here are some methods that you can employ to get the most benefit from social bookmarking. Many of them focus on how to organize your information so that your website shows up in more and more search results:


• When you create a blog post, make sure that the keyword phrase is as close to the beginning of the post as is possible. When you bookmark the post, use
the title of the post and tag the keyword as well. This is great for search engine results. In fact, doing this is often termed search engine ‘bait’!


• Stay active on the social bookmarking website and bookmark every post. As mentioned before, social bookmarks are bait for the search engines, and this
is an opportunity that is not to be wasted.


• Social bookmarking leads to more people reading your articles, posts etc, and over time this will create additional credibility for you. It can also lead to
repeat traffic, referrals, sales, newsletter sign ups, comments on your blogs, emails from readers etc. In order to make the most of the social bookmarking
website, you need to have all these functions working for you.


• Interaction is your biggest and most potent weapon in social bookmarking.
Links back to websites rely on being bookmarked and getting read. With advancing technology, you can add video, audio, RSS feeds etc to get more and more interaction on your website and eventual links back to your website.


• The content on your website must be good. There is no substitute for good quality content when it comes to generating traffic. You must ensure that you
get quality links as well, because the links that you receive on your website must be from reliable sources and have to do be relevant to your content.


• Related to the point made earlier about having good content is the fact that search engine spiders are always crawling good websites. Increasingly, social
bookmarking websites are becoming a favorite of search engines. This is because there is a human element to social bookmarking. People are actively
involved in organizing and tagging their favorites. This is a strong indication that the web page is extremely relevant to the search, much more so than a
simple keyword search.



• When using social bookmarking you should work towards improving your search ranking. Get as many people – ideally those with similar interests – to bookmark your web site. The best way to encourage people to come back to your website is to provide great content and make it easy for people to
bookmark your website.

Tuesday 31 July 2012

Using Social Bookmarking For Your Website or Weblog

With the millions of blogs and websites competing for the time and attention of internet users, social bookmarking can be a huge help in getting your website or blog noticed. Social bookmarking has proved to be one of the top techniques to promote your website and guide traffic towards it, and the beauty is that it is actually quite simple to do.


The first thing on your checklist should be visiting a few of the top social bookmarking websites, such as
Digg, del.ic.ious, and Furl. If you are really clueless

about social bookmarking websites, then do a simple search engine search and you will get a ton of results. Sign up for a free account at the social bookmarking websiteof your choice, and when you do so, you will get to select a ‘button’ that you can add
to the end of each of your blog posts. What this does is enables users to bookmark your blog or website easily.


For example, if a visitor likes your website and is a member of the social bookmarking service ‘Digg’, he/she can click on your button and this will lead them to the Digg website where they will have to log in. After that, your blog post, article or website will appear as a bookmarked URL. This also gives the visitor the ability to post a comment on your post and this can prove to be very beneficial to your website in terms of traffic.


The more people that click on the social bookmarking link for your website, the more links you will have on the website pointing back to you website. This should increase the traffic on your website when people logging on to Digg are looking for posts relevant to them and find your site bookmarked. Also, as more and more people visit your website they may also social bookmark it themselves, either on the same social bookmarking network or on other sites, both of which will lead to even more bookmarks leading back to you.


However, just registering yourself with a social bookmarking service does not mean that your job is done. You shouldn’t simply stop after pasting a button under your blog posts and expect everyone to remember to click. You must become an active
member of these social bookmarking sites.

What is meant by ‘active’ is that you must actively visit the social bookmarking site in question and find topics that relate to you or your online business. This allows you to bookmark, post and add comments of your own.

Believe it or not, this really does increase the traffic on your website. If you bookmark some one’s website, it is likely that they will also bookmark your site, and there should soon be a network of links pointing back to your site.