Why would you want to submit junk? If you submit tons of junk why would I bother reading your links if mostly they were comprised of junk?

Why would I read your email newsletter if it was mostly junk?

Why would I read your blog if it was mostly junk.

Why would I friend you on ANY social network if you mostly posted junk?

Why would I think your own submissions were not junk because of the junk company they keep?

Anyone reading this, how can you possibly still think after all the content people like Caroline and I have written that social networks are ways of promoting your own content?

Frank Leverts last blog post..The 2008 Search Engine Strategies (SES) Awards Meaningful?

If when I opened my Stumble Upon account I was taking the 30 day challenge and was still learning the site and stumbled a bunch of Squidoo pages that were removed from my stumbles, should I be concerned my account has been flagged.

I don’t do anything out of the ordinary now and understand how to use it. I have had an occasional squidoo page taken out of my stumbles.

should I create a new account or just stick with it.

brian

Brian Monahans last blog post..Clean Sweep – Building Momentum

Thanks for this article, I am just starting on the Social Bookmark scene and it has clued me up nicely.

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@Hendry, read the post after this one – it should clarify the difference between pure bookmarking sites and those that require the social element.

# Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

# Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

# Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Need I say more?

Social bookmarking is not a place to get inbound links. At least it was not designed as such.

Hendry Lees last blog post..Search Everything — A WordPress Plugin to Search Pages, Comments, and More

Chris Langs last blog post..Don’t Use Social Bookmarking Submission Software

I also theorize that Digg is going to be bought my Google and integrated in Google results. Maybe only in News, maybe only in Blogsearch.

I will go out on a limb and saw it off here by saying I expect to see “digg this” buttons in Google results right next to our listings.

Many Google results are old and irrelevant, they need to do something and I believe that will be, becoming the first social search engine.

I would rather see Microsoft buy Digg and do the same thing, but I have a feeling they would frak (bsg reference) it up somehow.

I have found 15 sites so far that Google will follow back to your site and return a backlink in Google results that have high traffic and return high quality backlinks to Google.

However, think about this: If Digg has 5 million users and the average number of posts, from the Digg top 100 to the user who no longer participates is 1 post per day, that is 5 million posts.

How can you possibly expect that Google will see your 1 link in Digg in 5 million others as a backlink to your site. In fact if you submit your site to Digg and no one else Diggs it, I have come to feel that is a negative indicator in Google’s eyes. The worst thing you can do is submit your Digg posts yourself and then get no Diggs.

One of my friends on Social Marketing Central wrote an article that went hot on the Internet. He got like 1500 visitors in a few days and 80 comments. The bad news is that he only got 18 Diggs. Now tell me this: Don’t you think that Google, that has access to the popularity of posts on Digg just like we do, would not see 1500 visitors and 18 Diggs a negative indicator of this blog and the blog post itself?

It takes 50+ Diggs before Google sees your backlink as valuable.

How does Google know how many visitors you got?

We tell them by using Google Analytics.

How does Google know how many Diggs or votes on any site we got?

They are links in social profiles of the other users that voted on us. We all know that Google can follow links.

I can easily get 100 to 200 Diggs for any article I want in Digg in 2 days. I do that through my own strategies and participation. I also do not abuse that power.

So social bookmarking if done wrong can actually hurt you. Social marketing is about being social, so be social on social bookmarking sites, don’t just submit you own content and expect that this will bring you results.

Participation, diverse quality content and large friend lists that rate your posts highly are the key here.

The incoming link to the page in furl is from the Furl homepage and is a direct link in an a tag, that a search engine can follow.

Also, social bookmarking software and submitting everyone of your posts is a good way for Google to downgrade all your listings.

@Karen Zara you are very right to submit all your own articles by hand and not to use SocialMarker. Just because a few gurus suggest using automated submitters does not make it the right way to do things. Have you noticed that these same Gurus SELL automated submitters? What could their motivation be there?

For those of you who have been around on the Internet longer than a few years, do you remember FFA submitters and search submission tools of 10 years ago. Same stuff here.

You should read my latest post on my site about social bookmarking spam if CommentLuv does not pick it up.

This is not blatant self promotion here Caroline, this is honest help from someone who knows this is the wrong road to go down from a social bookmarking expert.

Chris Langs last blog post..Social Bookmarking Spam – Will it Hurt You in Google?

Garys last blog post..BD-Live gains Momentum

@Brian, hehe thanks though I’m not too sure about the empire part :)

I just want to say thank you. I have had great success using your ebook on Wordpress sites. It has opened up a whole world for me since I can easily start a blog or website and have control over how it looks and feels.

I am looking forward to your Stumble Rush product. I am sure it willl be fantastic. You are well on your way to creating and empire.

Brian

Brian Monahans last blog post..Let Me Hear Your Trees!

So how do we create content pages we can almost guarantee will be popular?

The social bookmarking world isn’t a lazy man’s (or woman’s) game even though all you need to do for your page to get listed is submit it at the click of a button.

Pages that you and others submit to these sites have to be
1) of immense value, or
2) of rare information.

Take a look through pages linked at a major social site and you’ll see they are often lengthy and contain info you don’t see everywhere else on the net for free.

What does this say about creating a content page solely for social bookmarking sites?

Well, a good rule of thumb is to shoot for publishing pages that are at least 3 times more valuable than the pages already bookmarked at social sites.

Put so much value into your page that it would have an actual cash value, being worth as much as a report or e-book. Information should be dense, rare, and interesting.

In some cases you can get away with a short, interesting post, but I guarantee it won’t stay popular for long. It will be buried.

Read my full post on social bookmarking:
http://www.nickstraffictricks.com/day-17-social-bookmarking/

Nick Stewarts last blog post..Day 20: Blogging

@JB, no I haven’t seen that particular post.

@Colin, when I first came up with the idea of the project I thought it was just going to be a handful of quick emails so I didn’t think of charging and then the concept grew from there so I decided to charge for half of it. Had I planned the project out more fully from the beginning there probably wouldn’t be 10 free lessons :-)

@jeflin, I’m not advocating that you don’t stumble your own posts!! I go into this very topic in some detail in the course. The point is not to auto-submit *every* post on your site – there is a distinct difference. When you carefully submit a well-written, value-packed post from a well-established profile you can get a lot of traffic.

@Peter, yeah the reviewer quality score is the reason why most submissions to bookmarking / social news sites cannot be automated. However, in my post in which I list do-follow bookmarking sites I am careful there to only include sites that don’t have that component. But yes I agree that as soon as something proves valuable in some way, there will be people that want to automate it, speed it up, mass-use it, abuse it, exploit it and so on. So far I think StumbleUpon has done a pretty good job of combatting it though.

Colins last blog post..I had thought it was all about traffic?

As well as the services you mention, there are several grey hat “services” that also perform bookmarking and voting, Three ore have come out this month. They are pseudo intelligent and do it from multiple (fake) accounts and over time. BUT of course they have no concept of QUALITY or taste.

Another major factor becoming apparent is that of the CHARACTER of each service. AYK this is how each Web 2.0 property is DIFFERENTIATING themselves from each other. So each platform has a unique demographic.

For instance AYK StumbleUpon users are a very specific breed of user. So people who use that service expect a certain style of content and recommendations.

So as you say, these are 2 major reasons why BLANKET bookmarking (automated or manual) is not a great idea.

1) The reviewers score
and
2) The style requirements of each platform.

Great point!
I hope people heed your warning, because these grey hat systems and mindless blanket marking, will ultimately devalue the entire ecology of the concept.

You and I have seen it time and time again.

Once something become spammy, or irrelevant, or not of quality, people are fast to move on. And sadly gurus highlight the FADs without explaining what the etiquette is. Gate crashers spoil the party for everyone. And many IM people are basically looking for a party to crash. The wasp in the beehive.

Wouldn’t it be great if people could exert their own quality control? You’ve just helped with this post, but I can’t see it changing the basic problem. That’s why future systems will become more heavily policed and why things like reviewers reputation will feature strongly in the indexing algorithms.

Peter

Peters last blog post..John Reese to laugh or to cry on Folder 2 point OH

I am aware of StumbleUpon’s benefits as a traffic generating tool but as a relatively new user, I have not seen much traffic yet.

I will spend more time reading your blog to understand the intricacies behind this system and I am glad to take away a lesson today – not to stumble my own posts.

Jeff

jeflins last blog post..Lehman Not Far From Insolvency

Colins last blog post..I had thought it was all about traffic?

Ayopeju Falekulos last blog post..Zion5 – A Neat Business Networking Site

Also using automated posting tools are easy bait but they neglect the effect of quality bookmarking as i call it. And thus i prefer to manually bookmark my posts.

regards
thinkjayant @ smartblogtips

TJ @ Smartblogtipss last blog post..Yandex beats Google in Russia over search engine dominance

Did you see the post by Danny over at SEOMoz recently where he talked about the algorithms used by Digg, SU, and Reddit?

Here is the algorithm he put out for SU:

Formula:

(Initial stumbler audience / # domain) + ((% stumbler audience / # domain) + organic bonus – nonfriend) – (% stumbler audience + organic bonus) + N

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Colins last blog post..Creme de la Mer – Review

My best,

Mike

Anyway, your article is a welcome and necessary alert, because many bloggers submit everything they can (although they shouldn’t) without realising the mistake they’re making.