Social bookmarking

By Max St John

Bookmarking is the same thing online as it is off - it's just a way of finding your way back to an interesting page that you might want to read again or pass on to a friend.

Online, there are loads of free social bookmarking sites where registered users post their bookmarks (links to web pages). These can often be rated by other bookmarkers.

Famous bookmarking sites include del.icio.us, which started off in 2003 and registered its one millionth user just three years later. It's now thought to have closer to two million users.

The most popular links on delicious are syndicated on other sites and there are countless other similar services, each with its own angle, such as Reddit, Digg and Furl. All together there's a vast potential audience.

How can I let people bookmark my web content?

To up the chances of your web visitors bookmarking your pages, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Most bookmarking sites will have a link or icon you can include on your web pages. All you need to do is visit the bookmarking sites and copy and paste the code supplied into your website.

If you don't want to include icons for every bookmarking site out there, you can use a bookmark manager, such as addthis (this is the solution we've opted for).

It's also worth noting that optimising your website to allow people to bookmark your content can be an important factor in your search marketing strategy.

Read our knowledge article on link building.