I have been using Social Bookmarking successfully to drive traffic to my blog. On the busiest days, almost half the traffic to my blog is generated as a direct result of social bookmarking. I have also found my ad revenue from Google adsense to increase on days I submit my bookmarks.

There are many social bookmarking websites, most of which are free. Internet Marketers all over the world use social bookmarking to drive traffic to websites. Bloggers use it to improve their readership. Here are 10 reasons why you should use Social Bookmarking:

1. More Targeted Traffic to your website

Social Bookmarking can provide massive burst in traffic. Inclusion of relevant tags or submission to correct categories and topical sites ensures the traffic you receive is highly targeted. Users search for posts based tags which results in quality traffic. This also improves the authority of your website for relevant tags. Pages that make it to the first page of popular bookmarking sites such as Digg or Delicious can bring tens of thousands of new users in a single day.

2. Build Authority and Reputation

Social bookmarking websites rank high, enjoy high authority and can pass sufficient link juice to your pages. It also allows you to target a huge audience which contributes to your reputation and authority.

3. Get your pages Indexed faster on Search Engines

Social bookmarking is an excellent way to get your pages indexed faster on search engines. Bookmarking of new pages or articles on your website can help search engine spiders crawl your new pages faster.  I often use this technique to get my new blog posts listed almost immediately on Google.

4. Higher Search Engine Ranking

Social Bookmarking also helps with link building. It allows you to build quality one way links to your website or blog. Increase in the number of back-links has a direct impact on the rank of your website on search engines.

Increased visibility further encourages users to syndicate and share your content with others which can further increase your back-links.

5. Better PageRank

Although the importance of Google PageRank is debatable, it is still used by many to determine the value of your website. The link juice passed from high ranked social bookmarking websites can improve your PageRank over time.

6. Viral benefits

Social bookmarking can also help your content go viral. It lets you promote your content and brand in front of a huge audience. If readers find your content valuable, they will in-turn rate, vote or share your content with others. Content that is shared by many can easily become popular and benefit from increased exposure. On social news sites such as Digg or Delicious, popular content is also displayed on the homepage, resulting in huge traffic.  Popular content also get republished on many external websites or blogs, where typically a backlink to your original post is also included.

7. Repeat customers and increased RSS subscribers

If you run your own blog, you are probably aware of the importance of building a loyal customer base and RSS subscribers. Social bookmarking brings new visitors to your website or blog. If they find your content useful, they are likely to turn into loyal visitors. Similarly, you can harness the increased traffic to boost your readership and RSS subscriptions. The logic is simple, More Traffic = More repeat visitors + RSS Subscribers.

8. Build your Brand

Most of the social bookmarking sites allow you to create a public profile. The profile pages are indexed by search engines and can improve the visibility of your brand.  If you post valuable information regularly, it adds credibility and makes your brand more visible to users. It helps establish your expertise in your niche. You can even grow your network or friend and fans with time thereby generating even more traffic to your website.

9. Increase in Ad Revenue

Many websites use ad networks like Google Adsense or Yahoo YPN to generate revenue on their site. Most Ad networks share revenue based on pay per click or per thousand impression. The traffic boost from social bookmarking improves traffic which in-turn can improve your ad revenue. Although most sites are unable to earn huge amounts from ads, there are users who earn millions from Adsense and other similar programmes.

10.Speed and efficiency

Social bookmarking requires less time compared with many other link or traffic building techniques. Unlike article marketing or Press release submissions, you are only required to submit a title, link and short description with your bookmark. There are many tools such as OnlyWire or social poster that makes it even faster.

The author K.Singh is a London based Web Design & Internet Marketing Consultant with over 10 years of experience in E-Commerce, Web development, Joomla and Search engine Optimisation.