Bookmarking for Blogs
With the recent increased popularity of social networking sites, it is not surprising that audio blogs and video blogs are becoming a common means for professionals to interact with their audience. That said, blog bookmarking has become the hot new tool in search engine optimisation (SEO).
Social bookmarking on the Internet uses metadata to store, organize, search for and manage bookmarks of web pages that may be of interest to them. Due to the recent popularity in sites like YouTube audio blogs and video blogs have become the newest phenomenon in blog bookmarking.
In 1996 a site called itList set a precedent by becoming one of the first sites to offer online bookmarks and bookmarking for blogs. As the dot-com era soared, we saw many for-profit companies enter the blog marketing marketplace. Due to the social bookmarking service provision, most of the companies at the forefront of the blog era were not able to turn a profit and departed.
A major reason why these companies blundered is because they recommended the use of traditional browser-based system of folders, rather than the more bot-friendly tags. As we moved into the new millennium the thinking had changed, new, younger, more-well versed companies started to invest their time and efforts into audio and video blogs, rather than the traditional boring text pages.
2003 was a big year for social bookmarking; it saw the first “big” company enter the bookmarking market, del.icio.us. They were later joined by Furl and Simpy and the related recommendation system, StumbleUpon. In 2007, the big companies joined the scene, with IBM’s Lotus Connections. This was a huge sign for SEO developers and consultants that bookmarking was a legitimate way of garnering widespread exposure to websites.
Advantages of blog bookmarking
Social bookmarking services extend beyond the traditional automated resources by granting their users the ability to tag their content (audio and video blogs) themselves rather than using an automated system. This significantly increases the chance of data being discovered by other users.
The Disadvantages of blog bookmarking
Unfortunately, nothing can be perfect and blog bookmarking is not an exception. Blog bookmarking works on a tag-based system and when you combine inexperience with the lack of attention to detail, there is sure to be spelling mistakes. Simple spelling mistakes can drastically hinder your content from being found. Spelling mistakes could be the least of your worries when you think about the ability of spammers to overload a particular genre or topic. Spammers have the know-how to include pages with multiple tags and if this happens you can almost guarantee that your page will ever be discovered.
Bookmarking for blogs has led to an inexpensive alternative for companies to reach their potential clients or consumers. Companies that are not willing or capable to shell out large investments for advertisements have turned to audio and video blogs. Audio blogs have replaced the standard thirty second radio ad and commercials have been substituted with video blogs.
It is important to note that bookmarking for blogs cannot be a substitution for search engines; it can help enhance search results by adding the human factor.
Once a user is on a social bookmarking service, they can store a list of Internet resources, including video blogs and audio blogs, which they find personally relevant and useful. The list that this user compiles is then available to other users of the same social bookmarking service, making bookmarking for blogs a self-perpetuating organism. Other users with related interests can then add their own blogs or sites of interest to that bookmark, which is then seen by the initial user. And so it grows. Bookmarking for blogs can be categorized by category, topic, by specific tags or even using random criteria.
This holistic system is becoming popular in more business-oriented sites, such as Workology. Workology is a social bookmarking service, but operates more as a social network community for professionals. Each member of the community has the opportunity to submit blogs, including audio blogs (and hopefully at a later stage video blogs too) that are accessible to a group of professionals (for example, filmmakers and writers). These users can then link through to each other, and build the number of blog bookmarking tags within the group. Through this system, members can contact other Workology subscribers and go on to build up direct links that may, eventually, lead to career and work opportunities.
The development of bookmarking for blogs has opened up an entirely new aspect to social networking - not only in expanding ones social circle, but in the promotion of business opportunities as well. Video blogs can act as a cheap alternative to television advertising, and by the same token, audio blogs cost a great deal less than a commercial radio advertising campaign. Because the system is specifically designed for users who have similar interests, the marketplace that your video blogs and audio blogs are exposed to are those most likely to be interested in the services or products you have to offer.
While bookmarking for blogs isn't by itself a great search engine alternative, it can be used to augment search results by incorporating a more human perspective. A recent research paper presented at Stanford University in the US concluded that while sites like del.icio.us are not yet ready to make a serious impact on search results, there are still ways in which it can be used to improve results, particularly when taking into account the increasing importance of video blogs and audio blogs. As more SEO experts see the benefits of using bookmarking for blogs as an effective SEO tool, the popularity of this system will probably see a considerable increase, particularly among business users. Bookmarking for blogs is a quick and easy way to increase your potential marketplace, and also to raise your own profile, incorporating written, video blogs and, where relevant, audio blogs too.
SearchPro Systems recognizes the importance of providing a full range of tools for SEO development, including a social bookmarking service. Bookmarking for blogs will certainly see an increase in interest as the Internet becomes truly multi-faceted, and our teams of experts are at the cutting edge of blog bookmarking as an SEO tool.