What is Social Bookmarking and Why Should I Do It?

You may have heard the buzzword “Web 2.0”. You may also be familiar with “bookmarks” in your Internet browser and even “viral” web marketing. I want to focus on one particular element of Web 2.0 that lawyers can use to promote their websites: social bookmarking.

First of all, what’s “Web 2.0”? Simply put, web 2.0 references online systems that support contribution of multiple users. The Wikipedia is a good example of “Web 2.0”; it has an open structure where many users can contribute and edit content. The “Web 2.0”” expression of a search engine is “social bookmarking”. Imagine this: instead of a search engine deciding who should be #1 by itself, wouldn’t it be great if they could get the input of thousands of users like me and you? Sites like Del.icio.us, Shadows.com and Furl.net are (free) social bookmarking sites where end users can bookmark their favorite sites for others to see. Those bookmarks are also associated with tags (like keywords) that describe the site’s content. (So, when bookmarking a legal site, tags used would be lawyer, attorney, law firm, litigation and other area-of-practice specific terms.) When many, many people set bookmarks for a site or article, they rise in the rankings of the search system’s results according to their tags.

So who notices? Yes, you’ll get some traffic from the sites themselves… but traditional search engines like Google also notice – and that’s what’s important. Social bookmarking your own site (and encouraging your colleagues to do the same) effectively “reminds” Google that your site is worth reviewing. My suggestion: go to the three social bookmarking sites listed above, sign up and bookmark your site(s)… bookmark sites you find useful… and bookmark any new page or article you have published. Create one account at home and one at work, if you’d like. As part of a larger online marketing campaign of on-page optimization, link building and PR, social bookmarking can be a useful tool.

[tags]social bookmarking, bookmarks[/tags]

Written by jclayc on May 5th, 2007 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on General SEO Discussion and Legal Websites and SEO for Law Firms.

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