Using Social Media to get Pages Indexed Quickly

Sometimes I laugh at the ads posted through banners and links on different web pages.

"We'll submit your website to 65 trillion search engines for $29."

Sometimes I just shake my head, not because it's such a scam, but because I know that people do it. That's their $29 SEO. The pay and go and wonder a few weeks later why Google has not indexed their page yet.

There are a few things you can do to get your pages indexed if your site is new. You can submit it to the search engines. This takes a while and by the time Google and the others get around to indexing submitted sites, you've probably given up on it.

There is the link purchase, where you buy a link on a PR 6 or higher websites. It works, but it costs quite a bit, especially if you're smart enough to search for relevancy.

The easiest way to get you pages indexed is to "AddThis" or whatever widget you use for social bookmarking. If you submit your site to Digg, Furl, Reddit, etc, you have made the second step towards getting your website indexed.

The first step? Be active and make friends on Digg, Furl, Redd1t, etc. There are many people who have these accounts on the SB sites, submitting their own work in a few seconds, and never exploring or making friends or anything that will actually help them. It is a time investment, but the rewards can be tremendous.

If you can make enough friends (and by friends, I mean those who mutually befriend you) by Digging their stories, the right people will befriend you and Digg your stories back. This is the key. Hoping that your one single Digg to your page or website will be enough is a stab in the dark. It may get indexed, it may not.

Friends allow you to get 10, 20, 30 or more Diggs on a story. If it gets 30 Diggs, Google will index it. If somehow it is able to go Popular, prepare for the storm of traffic.

A case in point is Portland Toyota Dealers. They are a new site that was having trouble getting indexed. Using my SB sites, I was able to get it indexed and start a nice flow of backlinks pointing to it.

If you do not want to spend a few hours per week with social bookmarking to help your SEO, you shouldn't spend any time at all.





Social Internet Marketing

Some Rules for Social Media Optimization

If you can get past the marketing of the services, the advice on this article (the one linked to below) is actually very good. Replace the "we can" with "you can" and learn the techniques that they are suggesting, and it should be an excellent source of information.

One thing to remember - these services are very useful, but much of it is very isolated to certain markets. Low traffic websites are not going to get a burst of traffic by paying people to do SMO for them.

I consider social media as a true means of generating traffic as a fad without growth. While the fad will continue (it shows no signs of slowing down) by saying "without growth" I mean that the quality traffic that it generates will not turn into a substantial increase in sales (if you're selling something) or return traffic unless what your website does is provide a flow of information.

The true benefit of social media for many sites, especially stagnant market sites like automotive and real estate (where people look for these sites only once every few years) is in the boost you get for search engine optimization purposes.

Still, the article is excellent and I am happy to link to it. Be sure to go past the 5 and read the other 12 listed below.





Social Media Optimization

Social Bookmarking Profile: Shadows

What is it?

Social bookmarking community, with the last word stressed. It does't have nearly the benefits that can be achieved through Digg or some of the others, but it is more enjoyable and the conversations are engrossing.

Strengths

It is extremely well organized. The pages, groups, and profiles are interesting. There are 4 links that can be placed on the profile, plus more links can be added into the biography itself. The profile page can be made into a strong linking page with enough room for lots of content.

Weaknesses

It takes a while to get indexed often and even longer to get the links page itself indexed. You can put a ton of links on the link pages, but the ones on the profile, if it is updated regularly, are the ones that can have the most effect because the profile will be indexed more often and can gain a stronger relevance through content.

Nofollow

No nofollow yet. Until the spammers find it, it should stay that way for a while.

Conclusions

Shadow takes the mundane out of social bookmarking. There is a strong sense of internet community here, so there can be real fun in doing it. I suspect it also throws some small measure of traffic towards its sites, though nothing like going popular on Digg.

Here is my Shadow Profile.





Social Bookmarking for SEO

An Outside View -- Social Bookmarking Sites Rated

In my attempts to rate and classify the best bookmarking sites and ability to be used in search engine optimization, I was searching to see how my blog was ranking on the subject when I found another site that was similar.

Mine (of course) ranked higher for the term that I searched, but this is more of a generic, loosely focused site that delves in depth with one article on the ideas and concepts presented on this blog.

While I want to be known as the expert on the topic and a pioneer in the field, it never hurts to give credit to those who have also worked hard to determine the validity of this before it becomes more of a trend.

So, I will submit my first external link to a site with which I am in mild competition. Those versed in SEO will balk at this, as there are many reasons to now want to link to a "competitor", but after reading this article and others on the site, I felt it was definitely a resource for readers of this blog.

There is no shame in accepting that someone else is also doing a good job.

To read their article, please click HERE.

Social Bookmarking SEO

Social Bookmarking Profile: del.ico.us

What is it?

From the perspective of being a social bookmarking site the way it was originally supposed to work, del.icio.us is the best. Very simple to use, great plug-ins, and a wide variety of easy-to-integrate-and-import partner sites makes del.icio.us great for non-SEO surfers.

Strengths

Traffic to del.icio.us is one of the best. From a strictly social bookmarking perspective, the hotlist is a very common daily stop for millions of people. Getting to the front page, the "hotlist" means a burst in traffic beaten only by Digg.

The feeds that come from del.icio.us to other websites are extremely easy to use. Many social sites have an option to receive the feed, so tagging a site on del.icio.us is like tagging a site on several sites in one step. This is the best feature for del.icio.us.

Weaknesses

Very few, other than the one glaring one...

Nofollow

Many SEOs became tearful the day that del.icio.us implemented "nofollow" onto their links. The link itself, if not tagged by others, is pretty much worthless. Luckily, most of the sites that accept del.icio.us feeds do not have nofollow and the attribute does not follow the link when imported.

Conclusions

Next to digg, del.icio.us is the best site for SEO if you take into account the feeds and shared favorites. To many, it is actually better for this very reason.




Social Bookmarking SEO

Social Bookmarking Profile: Newsvine

For the intellectuals of the world, Newsvine is your Digg.

What is it?

Newsvine is a community of "Citizen Journalists" whose work rivals the mainstream news media sites. This group is not exclusive, but to have a successful "Vine" of stories and seeds, it is necessary to have an eye for news, a willingness to speak out, and a strong grasp of the English language.

Low quality work will never rise up the Vine.

Strengths

For high quality work, the rewards can be many. Because everyone gets their own sub-domain to post their work, it is possible to create a very strong stand-alone website with posts and seeds to others' work.

While it is strong at building high quality backlinks, the real benefit is the earnest traffic that can come from it. Though it won't shut down your servers, if you post something that is high-quality and thought-provoking, you can drive many people who can recognize greatness and may bookmark your site for future visits.

Unlike Digg, it is possible for a great story to work its way up the vine without having to build up a stock of friends to help it build momentum. Great stories rise of their own merits, regardless of the person who seeded or wrote the story.

With that said, longevity and having that stock of friends built up still helps.

The spam filters (i.e. self-policing Viners) are very sharp. This is great for someone who really wants to write and disastrous for spammers. A spammer can spend a lot of time and effort working their way up the vine, only to find that they were caught, deleted, and banned from the Vine forever.

Weaknesses

The competition is tight. Because so many of those who post articles are journalists with professional credentials and strength in their eloquence, it isn't easy to present the type of work that moves up quickly.

For those who are just looking for backlinks, this is not the place to go. It takes much more effort to get a story indexed and get a backlink than Digg, Furl, or some of the other "spammer friendly" websites.

Nofollow

Newsvine has no need for nofollow. Its very nature and the nature of its community does more to fight spam than a nofollow attribute could ever hope to achieve.

Conclusions

As a social bookmarking tool for SEO, Newsvine is not worth the expenditure of time and effort. For someone looking for good, quality stories and a community that rewards good, quality contributors, Newsvine is perfect.




Social Media Optimization

Social Bookmarking Profile: Digg

Digg is changing the world of news as we know it. If anyone is ever interested in what's hot in the world at that particular moment, just check out Digg. It's topics are wide ranging and they vary in scope from the war on terror to tips for cooking on the grill.

What is it?

Digg is the grandpappy of the social bookmarking sites. Started by Kevin Rose, it allows people to submit stories from pages on the internet. These submissions are placed in a constantly updated pool of stories for others to "Digg" (vote up) or "Sink" (vote down).

An algorithm looks at the Diggs and decides which ones are to go "Popular", or be placed on the coveted 1st page. Many servers have crashed by the exponential increase in traffic from making it to the front page of Digg.

Strengths

No other site has the instantaneous effect that Digg can have on a popular story. From a SMO point of view, it is the light at the end of the tunnel, as traffic is guaranteed. From an SEO point of view, the links can be strong when a Digg from a high PR/TR user is indexed at the right moment.

Getting Dugg well is a guarantee for indexing.

Weaknesses

It takes a lot of effort, Digging other people's stories, making friends, and luck to go popular. Above all else, it takes interesting stories, videos, or articles. Still, having the best written piece ever is no guarantee without some help from friends. If a story doesn't get Dugg quickly by a few people, within the first hour or so, it is doomed to sink to obscurity.

Some Diggers have a strong enough base of friends and reputation to post articles on about C-Span and go popular. This is a flaw in the system, but it also helps. It is possible for someone to go on, post a single story, and have it go popular. I've seen it happen. I've also heard about people winning the lottery, though I never seem to get close.

Nofollow

Digg has held strong and not adopted the dreaded nofollow attribute.

Conclusions

Anyone who wants to get into SMO must get into Digg. It's the Google of social bookmarking.

More about SEO can be found on Automotive SEO, a specialized blog about search engine optimization for car dealers.




Social Bookmarking

Case Study: Digg vs. Copyblogger

Have you always dreamed about getting on Digg’s front page? Well, perhaps you should dream of being featured on an authority blog on your niche, instead. People have discussed widely the fact that traffic from social bookmarking sites is “peculiar,” but a couple of weeks ago I was able to track down the numbers.

read more | digg story



Social Media Marketing

Power to the Diggers: How Nofollow Hurts Social Bookmarkers

In an effort to fight comment spam -- a tactic used by Search Engine Optimizers to build link popularity for their websites -- Google established the "nofollow" tag. It eliminates the "juice" that a link gives to its website. Spammers can post hundreds of comments on dozens of websites and receive no benefit for its search rankings.

Over the last several months, several social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and reddit have adopted this same technique in an effort to keep spammers from populating their website with a ton of junk. The thought is that SEOs will stop using the service and that only those who really want to post interesting things that they "found" will be able to have an impact.

It doesn't work and here's why:

1) The social media optimization boom has made spamming even more useful than it ever was for straight SEO. The services normally offer easy to install and use buttons, so there is no wasting time.

2) Many SEOs don't even check for nofollow, either because they believe what many of the forums are saying about how nofollow is a myth, or out of sheer ignorance.

3) SEO spammers need multiple sites from which to link, not multiple links on a site. Once they have placed their link, they move on to the next website. Eliminating the occasional 1 tag is nowhere near the epidemic of social media optimization, where build a friends network and creating multiple accounts has SMOs systematically tagging each page of their sites over a long period of time and voting for their friends in hopes of a recipricol vote on their own.

Now, this all seems fine, but why would a standard non-SEO, non-SMO care about any of this? They do not care about placement, though most like to see their stories make it to the front page of their favorite bookmarking site.

The dilemma lies in credit. Many people find something interesting and want to share it. If they share something that others like, it goes popular.

Everyone has heard of the tremendous instant boost in website traffic when it makes it to the front page. Wouldn't it be nice to also bestow some of this "glory" for future people to see through the search engines? Once a website leaves the front page, things go back to normal for its traffic. If the link juice were also applied, as it is with Digg, Furl, and Listible, then people's vote would be more than just on that website. It would count across the net through its effects on search engines.

I am a fan of nofollow. True SEOs don't need to spam forums and blog comments to get their websites ranked. Still, I do believe that all social bookmarking sites should remove nofollow and keep up with the times.




Social Optimization

Social Bookmarking and Blogging for Automotive

There seems to be a trend in the automotive industry that is gearing dealers towards moving their search engine efforts to blogs. Why? Because it works, has been for a year and now auto dealers, who are always a little behind on the technology aspect of marketing, are just catching on.

Websites like BlogProAutomotive are helping to spread the word about how blogging for car dealers is not just a fad, but also an important aspect of automotive SEO. The market is thinning and the competition is growing, so dealers need everything they can get to make their dealership stay afloat.

Social Bookmarking, the topic of this particular blog, is another area that auto dealers cannot afford to let slip. With sites like Digg, Ratepoint, Furl, Simpy, and del.icio.us offering quick and easy ways to make bookmarks, they fit into the common dealership mentality of "if it's simple, do it." Even smaller SB sites like 9Rules, Reddit, and Newsvine offer ways to market a dealership's services and products.

The real difficult comes in the idea of no being welcome. Most of these sites pride themselves on keeping relevant and only posting what people really want. Who wants to click on something they find on Digg, only to be taken to a car dealer homepage?

This is why blogging for dealerships is the best way. The automotive industry, in general, is not ready for social bookmarking. Not to be offensive, but they just don't have anything to offer people beyond their products. Blogs, unlike social bookmarking, allow people to post what they want. The explosion over the last couple of years of MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr make it possible for good search engine optimizers to make a difference without getting involved in "tricky" methods.

Social bookmarking is the fad that's here to stay in search engine optimization. Auto dealers need to focus on blogs instead of SB for now. This shouldn't be a problem until they start to catch on to SB sometime early next year.




Social Bookmarking Optimization