No Comments Written by Robert on August 12, 2008 – 6:35 pm

Del.icio.us has cornered the market on social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share, and search bookmarks of popular Web pages. A bookmark is used when you want to save a popular Web page to retrieve at a later date.

Del.icio.us allows users to share the sites that they visit most frequently and allows other users to gauge which sites on the Internet are the most popular. One of the more useful features of del.icio.us is called tagging. A tag is simply a word you use to describe a bookmark. Tagging your bookmarks through del.icio.us allows you to better categorize your favorite Web sites, while also allowing you to share your bookmarks with other users with similar interests.

Del.icio.us allows users to share

Social bookmarking is an example of Web 2.0 and appears to be here to stay. Learning how to get your site involved in the social Web is going to continue to be a challenge with many rewards in years to come. At the same time, getting involved on the social Web can draw traffic to your Web site, readers to your blog, and customers to your store.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. Social bookmarking allows you to store, share, and browse the bookmarked pages that you and others like you have added to their profiles. Just as you can save a page that you plan to visit frequently to your own Internet browser, del.icio.us allows users to save these bookmarks online and access them from any computer at any time.

These bookmarks can include links to articles, recipes, blogs, wish lists of favorite products, MP3 podcasts, and other forms of media. Users on del.icio.us share these bookmarks with family, friends, and complete strangers who search the del.icio.us platform for new and interesting sites.

The ranking algorithm on del.icio.us is simple. The more people that save a particular Web site to their profile, the more popular that site is and the higher it ranks on del.icio.us when somebody searches for a related term. However, it is not all about ranking. Many users like to browse the bookmarks of other people with similar tastes, so showing up on these lists is essential to your success. Be sure to build out your own del.icio.us profile and become part of the community.

Optimize Your Web Site for Del.icio.us

Try trading bookmarks with other users with similar interests to spread the word about your Web site. You can also make bookmarking your Web site easier for other people. Be sure to add the “Save to Del.icio.us” button to your site and to the bottom of every post you create. Giving users a one-click way to save your site is the best way to get bookmarked more often.

Del.icio.us uses tags to make organizing and navigating your bookmarks simple. Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to any site you bookmark to your profile. You can add as many tags as you want and go back and edit them at any time.

Think of tags as keywords that you choose to describe your bookmarks. If someone else bookmarks another article and uses the same tags that you have, both of your posts are related by this tag and your site becomes more visible.

Del.icio.us allows you to search for popular Web sites by keyword tag and also provides an updated list, “tags to watch,” which lists five or so popular tags with accompanying Web sites. You can view all the articles tagged as a certain keyword on one portion of the del.icio.us site, or you may browse the most popular articles tagged with that keyword at a different section of the site.

The majority of users that visit del.icio.us go there to find the most popular site related to a specific term. If you can get your site to show in one of these popular searches, you are in a very good position and should see a spike in the traffic to your site as a result.