Every website owner wants one thing – traffic. With traffic comes money and a greater value to their website. Social bookmarking has become a phenom in the world of Search Engine Optimization. The more links people have going to their website, the higher ranking they will receive with search engine such as Google and Yahoo. With this in mind it is essential that everyone knows the benefits and also the pitfalls which may arise with social bookmarking.

1. Accessibility – the best thing about social bookmarking sites is they are not restricted to one computer, you can access them anywhere where you access the internet.

2. Human Interaction – everyone that surfs the net loves finding the latest funny video, saying or joke that they can pass onto their friends. Users are able to to share the latest website they have found funny or exciting

3. Trust – many internet marketers over the years have built up a solid reputation so when they recommend a site through social bookmarking people tend to follow them. The has amazing benefits in terms of building an income because it will help build traffic to the site and increase sales for the owner. Best of all you don’t have to be the owner of the site to make money which leads us to the fourth benefit.

4. Affiliate sales – so many people these days who can not create products or web pages choose to become affiliates as they can simply promote a product without have to worry about inventory, site maintenance or associated costs. By promoting the product with their affiliate link on social bookmarking sites affiliates are able to earn commission on products they never see.

5. Search Engine Optimization – social bookmarking creates powerful backlinks to your website which will help it go up in the ranking of the major search engines. Bookmarking systems clearly have an advantage for external link building as the major search engines favour sites with such links directing to them.

With all these advantages, unfortunately like most things, there are disadvantages:

1. Tag structure – there is no standard across this medium in which to regulate how social bookmarking sites tag links. Examples include – should people only use capital at the start of a sentence or for each main keyword?

2. Collusion – like most things in the world today, a scammer can come up with a way to try to rort the system. If people join big groups and submit bookmarks and control the votes of them, they are harming the other users who are relying on the general public to vote on their submission.

3. Search Engine Optimization – because of the benefits in helping your ranking, a lot of people use this to create links back to their site without actually creating unique content rich submissions. Instead they simply create junk and add their link and hope it helps their rankings.

With all this in mind, social bookmarking done correctly is highly beneficial to both the individual and the internet community as a whole.