SEO Tips Australia

Social bookmarking is something that I've taken a while to get around to. But I have finally gotten into it, bookmarking blog posts and articles, and it really does seem to work. Of course the big sites of this kind like Digg and Reddit are the best to use. You can find lots of lists of them by Googling. But the downside with sites such as these is that if you immediately start submitting your own blog posts, web pages and articles then you'll get booted off for spamming pretty soon. So you have to spend quite a bit of time participating in them, bookmarking other people's content and voting on it etc. Then you can put one or two of your own pages in. Needless to say, most people just don't have the time to do that.

I think that a better approach is to sign up to lots of lesser known ones, some dofollow and some not. Many of these don't mind if you bookmark your own content, and some even encourage it. So you can start submitting your own stuff pretty much straight away. Of course it's a good idea to bookmark and vote on other stuff as well, so you're not just using the sites for your own purposes. But at least you don't have to worry so much about this aspect.

When submitting, you should write unique titles and descriptions each time. Just as with longer articles, the duplicate content filter applies to even these short little nuggets of information. Make your titles and descriptions attention grabbing and compelling, so that people are more likely to click on the links and also vote your stories up. If you are using them to bookmark blog posts, then make sure they are good quality and also a reasonable length. If they are no longer than the description that links to them, then what's the point?

And if you are hoping to get more local visitors to an Australian themed site then put geo-specific keywords into your submission titles, descriptions and tag lists. The more you do this the more the search engines will associate such words with your URLs.

While bookmarking blog posts does definitely help for SEO if the bookmarking site is dofollow, and can bring in some clicks if it is not, I think perhaps the best way to use these sites is to build links to articles that you have posted at sites like Ezine Articles. Do this from a few dofollow bookmarking sites and the article itself will accumulate more page rank, thereby conferring greater SEO benefit back to your site listed in the bio-box. It's also a bit more considerate to do this for the bookmarking site owner, since by definition articles are a bit longer and more informative than the average blog post. Also, good article sites have a bit of cred in themselves, so I suspect it's more likely that they'll get voted up onto the first page than blog posts will.

Of course there are squillions of such sites. And there are lists all over the place. Below is a list of some that I've found recently, some of which I've used. Most don't have high page rank, although some are about 2 or 3. Some are dofollow and some are not. The reason I haven't listed this info is that I think this whole obsession with getting dofollow links is a bit over the top. Of course you need them, but it's good to have nofollow links as well. Your site is still getting seen, and if you have nothing but dofollow social bookmarking backlinks you may start to look like a spammer to the search engines (although that's probably unlikely).

And on the subject of spamming: I think it's much better to do all your social bookmarking yourself. Using mass submission tools means that there'll be lots of duplicate content. And if you pay someone to do it they might rip you off or do a bad job that you just don't want to be associated with.

Doing all the submissions yourself has another benefit. Since you have to come up with a new heading and description every time you submit to a new social bookmarking site, you are honing your writing skills. That's worth doing in itself.

I have been looking for specifically Australian social bookmarking sites. But about the only one that fits this requirement I've found so far is  Kwoff. That said, Bleep It does seem to have quite a bit of Aussie content, and I'm sure I'll find others in time. Of course the more Aussie content on them, the better for local SEO. The process is similar to blog commenting. If the sites are dofollow, then the actual backlinks confer benefit directly. But if not, then being seen by a lot of Aussie webmasters and bloggers may result in one of them throwing you a link back at some stage.

Of course you can find new ones by searching for "social bookmarking" along with other keywords and Australian cities and locations included. One phrase that is common to many is "your source for social news and networking". Combining that phrase with geo-specific keywords will bring up lots of sites. Of course many of these are cookie-cutter Pligg sites. But you'll find a few that have unique look and feel and often a higher page rank. This shows that the owner has put a bit of care and effort into them, so they're definitely worth joining.

Below is a list of ones that I've found recently which seem to be quite active. I'll add more as I find them.