Author: Nancy McCord

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Social Bookmarking Best Practices

Social bookmarking is a great way to easily start building one way inbound links to your website. There are a few things that I have found out that I wanted to share with you from my use of social bookmarking over the last several months.

  1. Don’t waste time using automated software or services. All the sites have worked to defeat the use of any automated entries with catchpas and other scripting techniques including even sensing the time and quality of your submissions.
  2. Don’t add all your bookmarks on one day. I space mine out on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule with one link per service per day.
  3. Use your top pages or blog posts that are on viral newsworthy topics to generate incoming traffic.
  4. The sites that generate the most traffic for me are Reddit and Stumble Upon. I use others, but in my referrer logs these are the most active services that send me website traffic in addition to links.

One more tip I use SocialPoster.com to make this labor intensive process of adding bookmarks a wee bit easier.

Social bookmarking is still a new service for us, but we are finding that for link generation it does have value and is less expensive for the client than article marketing.

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Social Bookmarking – Is It Worth the Effort?

Social bookmarking is a new smart way to create inbound links to your content, but is it worth the time and effort? So far based on client studies it appears to be a very workable approach. However it is labor intensive.

Here are a few client results from the Google Webmaster control panel after just 30 days of social bookmarking three pages a week.

Client A
inbound links before: 5,099
inbound links after: 5,107

Client B
inbound links before: 9,964
inbound links after: 10,162

Although this is not a super fast way to grow links, clearly it is growing links nicely over time. But the link growth depends on the topic and quality of content. Client B’s site appears to be growing faster as the quality of content is more newsworthy and is of better quality when compared to Client A’s.

I have found that the social bookmarking sites have worked very hard to defeat automated entries and so our links are all generated manually which is labor intensive. However social bookmarking can be done by any site owner with a bit of extra time. I find the benefits in the short term are measurable and easier and more efficient than contacting website owners asking for a one way inbound link or even a reciprocal link.

If you are interested in our social bookmarking program, I invite you to visit our social bookmarking services page for pricing and more information.

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Social Media versus Pay Per Click

Let’s say you own a fairly new business, where should you spend your time and money to generate sales – social networking or pay per click?

I feel that social networking is an excellent way to connect with prospects and engage clients. I love Twitter, Facebook, and blogging, but will these avenues generate immediate sales for a new business? I have to say from my personal experience using all these tools that although they are important for immediate sale generation, these tools can simply not compete with the power of sales generation that Google AdWords provides.

Does this mean you shouldn’t be involved in social media? No, not at all, but I feel that for new startups of a business that wants a return of immediate sales from their monetary investment that pay per click using Google AdWords is a better investment. I feel that social media involvement is key for positioning, search engine placement, customer engagement, and overall web authority, but this is most important for established businesses.

Startups typically have a short fuse – you have to generate some business quickly in order to stay in business. The more business you generate the more you can invest in your web presence. Here’s where social media involvement for the typical startup may simply be too far sighted. Although these are important things in which to invest your time, they may not return placement and sales for six months to a year or longer. These social avenues may not generate sales at all, they may help with authority and organic placement.

So if your need as a new business is to generate sales and you have a limited budget, I recommend investing in pay per click specifically using Google AdWords to get the jump start that you need. Then later as you are more established and have more cash to invest in growing your web presence consider blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

Find out about our Google AdWords services and pricing to see if we would be a good match for your needs.

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I’m Back From Russia!

Well I am finally back, cured of jet lag, and ready to go. I loved Russia and the river cruise. The people are very open and friendly and the countryside is beautiful. Fortunately I did not have much trouble with the smoke issue as I left Moscow and headed to St. Petersburg before the smoke was really a problem. However the heat is a totally different story!

I particularly loved St. Petersburg and would definitely go back there to visit. I have to say after having toured a bunch of palaces that I can see why the general population rebelled. The opulent lifestyle of the royal and extended court were unbelievable at the expense of the peasants. I think I might have been on the side of the rebellion as well.

I have inserted one of my photos from the beautiful Katherine’s Palace so you can see one of my most favorite places outside of St. Petersburg.

For an easier way to tour Russia than by bus and a new hotel every night, I would recommend a river cruise. My stateroom was like a nice room at the Sheraton. But best of all was the interesting and diverse global company of travelers that made cruising and touring a real delight.