You have probably heard a lot about social bookmarking lately. Read on and learn this traffic building gem. Best thing is social bookmarking does not cost you anything, so as a traffic building tool is is great.

What is Social Bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is a public list of your favorites. Not all your favorites, just the favorites you want to share with others. You can add any website to your public list and retrieve it from any computer on the internet. The favorites are stored on a server so publicly accessible.

When you list a site in your bookmark list, anyone looking for similar information can do a search at the bookmark site and find the sites that you have bookmarked. It is like a search engine without all the trash.

When searching with a search engine, you get all the sites that have something to do with the keywords you typed into the search box. Trouble is it is easy to get a bunch of garbage sites that are loaded up with keywords but have poor content on the actual site. Many people simply optimize their website for un-related keywords to achieve a high ranking. The growth of bookmarking sites is an attempt by users to overcome this. The great thing about social bookmarking sites is sites listed are sites that other people have looked at and decided were worth saving for future reference. Real people have decided to bookmark the sites, not robots. Real people also monitor the sites so if trash does get added, it is soon deleted.

The more people who bookmark a site, the more popular it becomes. As an example, lets say you are selling widgets for a really great price. You bookmark your home page on many public bookmarking sites. When someone is looking for a widget, they do a search at the bookmarking site and your bookmark comes up. They go look at your site and decide your prices are so good, they might want to come back later when they need another widget. So they add your site to their bookmarks for future reference.
When someone goes to one of these sites and types widgets into the search box, your site listing will come up in the search. If many people have bookmarked your site, you will be listed high in the search results. It’s kind of like a voting system. If you site is good enough to bookmark, other people will want to see what all the fuss is about.

Unlike search engines where all you have to do is good seo, the sites you will find in the Social Bookmarking sites are quality sites that other people enjoyed enough to save. You don’t really have to have a good site to get listed in the search engines.

How do you get started?
Do a search for social bookmarking, many sites will come up. Go to each site and register for an account. It’s FREE! Once you have your account set up, start listing your site. Make sure you add proper tags to your listing.

Tags are the same as keywords with a twist. These sites will tell you what the most popular searches are on their site. You choose the tags that will work with your site or page and are also part of the popular list. Many of the sites will also offer a spot to write a small description of the site you are bookmarking. Add a description that uses some of your tag words for added benefit.

Building popularity
As with anything that is worth doing, this will take you a while to get it all set up and running smooth but the end result will be very well worth your effort.

Start with one bookmarking site and one page from your site. (Start with your squeeze page and build your newsletter list) Set up your account with the bookmarking site and add your page to the bookmarks. Make sure you use the best tags and description you can. (Check the popularity list on the site) Doing this in itself will help you get more traffic. Now you can go one step further and work both sides of the system.

Add a link to your site that will lead back to the bookmarking site that has your page bookmarked. Ask your visitors to bookmark your site on the social bookmarking site.

An example is below
Bookmark another of my sites at SpeedCameraPOI.com and access it from any computer, anytime. Create a link to the bookmarking site so your visitors only have to click.

You want to make sure the page opens in a new window so when your visitors are done setting up their account, they will still have your page handy to bookmark.

Next Page
Now move on to the next page. You will want to offer a different bookmarking site on each page. Why? So you can get as many bookmarks on as many sites as possible. Use the same information in the example above but change the social bookmarking site you are promoting.

Won’t this look odd to your visitors? No. Most people will ignore the suggestion once they have bookmarked your site. They won’t even notice that you have changed the name of the link. They will see, Bookmark my site, and think, “I already did that”, and they will move on.

Final Note:
Don’t SPAM the sites. Make sure what you are listing is relevant and useful. You don’t want to bring traffic to a page that has nothing but links, you will probably get banned form the bookmarking site. Only bookmark your pages that have actual content. Ask yourself if you would truly add this page to your own favorites list? If your answer is no then don’t list it.