There's a lot of talk about social bookmarking when it comes to search engine optimization, and it is often difficult to see through the haze of marketing to the real facts. Basically, social bookmarking solutions visit websites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit and create links to your web site, tag it and share it with the entire world. Bookmarking is in fact one of the most undervalued link building strategies.

This can help drive traffic to your site in two different ways. First, in the event you have a novel or interesting web site, a lot of people will naturally be drawn to it and also click the links to your web site. Some people spend hours on social bookmarking web sites and use it to find the majority of their info. In case you send readers to an interesting post or valuable program, they'll naturally send a link to their friends, and they will do the same. Then, each one of these back links provided by a social bookmarking program will provide link juice to your site.

Link juice refers to website credibility to the eyes of search engines like Google. Social bookmarking websites actually have a whole lot of credibility, and with every back link it gives your web site a bit of that credibility. So even when no one looks at the social bookmark on Digg, the site will help your web site a bit more credibility. The way this actually works is that whenever the spiders from Google or Bing search your website, they find back back links to web sites with a whole lot of credibility. So even when it is just a blank link, those search crawlers will believe that there's a reason for the link, thus assuming that your website has reliable information within.

There's a drawback to social bookmarking services though, there are various disreputable businesses that will take your money and then spam bookmarking web sites with garbage - and this garbage is directly connected to your website. The social bookmarking web sites do not really like it and nor does Google and Bing, using a very inexpensive social bookmarking service is an easy way to get your website kicked out of search engine rankings completely.

So website owners looking to capitalize on social bookmarking programs really should make certain they find a good service that goes at a natural pace with great content. This is crucial to avoid being flagged by social bookmarking sites and search engines for spam. Make sure you select a social bookmarking service that only submits quality content material.