SEO isn’t the answer. Neither is Twitter. Or Facebook. Or LinkedIn.

Your website isn’t the answer. Neither is your blog.

Social bookmarking isn’t the answer either; but in combination of all of these, it could be your answer.

There’s a lot of overlap between social media and social bookmarking; but at its core, bookmarking is just that: tagging a website or blogpost that might be of interest to other members of your community.

How do you start?

I would suggest starting an account on the major social bookmarking sites:

• Digg
• Sphinn
• Reddit
• Delicious
• StumbleUpon
• Yahoo! Buzz
• Technorati
• Squidoo

Just like social media, sooner or later, you’ll find the one(s) you (and your network) gravitate more towards. In other words, don’t feel like you have to commit time to all of them.

How can you leverage them?

Every time you write a new blogpost or article, digg/stumble/sphinn/buzz/etc. that post. Better yet, have someone else do it for you!

If your article or blogpost makes it to the homepage of one of these sites, the viral possibilities are endless, and you’ll reap the benefits of a ton of traffic.

In addition, mark your favorite blogs, blog posts, and websites on your favorite social bookmarking site. Ask friends and coworkers to join your favorite site and start building a network.

What will happen?

You might just see the benefits of social bookmarking traffic.

Nicki Hicks
Bookmarking Socially

Photo credit

So you’ve just created a killer blogpost. It’s got a ferocious title that will bring in a ton of readers, it’s keyword rich, and to top it off – you’ve got some stellar, unique content. Ok, so now what? Hit “publish” and you’re done? I think not…

1. Email subscriptions and RSS

It may sound silly, but make sure your readers have the ability to subscribe to what you write: be it via email or RSS. I can’t tell you how many blogs I’ve seen that don’t have either option, and interestingly enough: I’ve only seen them the one time.

2. Tweet about it, post it on Facebook and LinkedIn

Make that puppy viral! Sure, you have your email and RSS subscribers, but proactively seeking new readers and subscribers adds to your community. On top of that, your followers on Twitter might ReTweet your post – sending it out to their followers; your friends on Facebook might “like”, comment, or even repost your post; and your connections on LinkedIn could also access your post.

Specifically for Twitter, give your reader the option to “ReTweet” – the icon in the top left of this post – this way, they don’t have to do any work outside of hitting a button.

3. StumbleUpon it

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t use this tool for all its worth. But the reality is, you can create quite a bit of traffic around StumbleUpon – specifically among those people in your network or those that simply like the same things you do! Bonus: get other people to StumbleUpon the post too!

4. Digg it, or add it to your favorite Social Bookmarking site

There’s a lot of junk on social bookmarking sites. But then again, there’s a lot of great stuff too. Once articles go viral, there’s a ton of traffic in store for them, even if it’s for a short time. (That’s why you need #1 – to keep the readers.)

So, have someone digg or sphinn your post, add it to delicious, reddit, or whichever social bookmarking site you love!

5. Get your incoming link juice on.

Last, but certainly not least, get back to some basic SEO and get some other bloggers/sites to link to your post.

There’s an overlaying theme here: be everywhere. Be it a blogpost, a marketing message, newletter, what have you; distribute it to as many channels as humanly possible.

Nicki Hicks
Getting your blog out there, one post at a time

I realized how lately I’ve been writing a lot about topics that, while related to SEO, aren’t necessarily discussing what I would call more traditional optimizing techniques. The reason? It’s not just about SEO anymore.

Yes, you should optimize your site. But going are the days where that is enough. Not only is SEO an ongoing process, but so are other types of web marketing outlets – and those are exactly the places you need to invest your time in order to even hope to succeed in the search engines.

Video

Let’s not beat around the bush. It’s all about YouTube. Sure there are a ton of other video outlets, but YouTube is the best out there. With its easy-to-use interface, it also provides easy-to-embed options (AKA no code knowledge necessary).

Better yet, views from your site or blog add to the total views on YouTube. Why does that matter? The more views a video has, the higher it will rank in Google’s search – and with universal search, that’s just one more way to rank. Not to mention, it’s an easy way to optimize for smart phones.

Photos and Images

Can you say alt tags? Search engines can read, but they can’t see very well. So we have to help them out a little. But when you do it right, and create great keyword rich descriptions for them, images are another way to rank in the search engines.

Social Media

Pretty shortly, if you’re not using any sort of social media outlet for your business, you’re going to be behind the game. Not only is social media a great way to share links and increase buzz, but it also humanizes your business and can almost be used as a PR medium. Plus, while it would really only affect searches for your company name, your social media profiles typically rank extremely well.

Here are some of my quick guides to where you should be, why you should be there, and what to do once you’re there:

• Facebook: Why it’s for your business
• LinkedIn: How to leverage your account
• Twitter
  - A guide to get started
  - What you should tweet about for business

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is great way to make things go hot. While there’s no SEO power to sites like Digg, Sphinn, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc., the traffic you get from just being “sphunn”, “stumbled”, “dugg”, or the like is entirely worth it.

Nicki Hicks
How are you working toward better online visibility?