Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Social Media
    4. How relevant is social bookmarking for SEO today?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How relevant is social bookmarking for SEO today?

    Social Media
    4
    4
    18903
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • garrettkite
      garrettkite Subscriber last edited by

      I've been doing SEO for a little over 4 years. I've never used sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc. either personally or on behalf of my clients. This past week I had a discussion with another SEO who asked what I'm doing for my clients with regard to social bookmarking. I responded that I'm really not doing anything and they were shocked. I took a pretty good verbal beating over it. She was borderline offended.

      I have always been able to deliver solid results for my clients without any type of social bookmarking, so I struggle to see the need, but am surprised at how shocked this other SEO was that I don't do it. How beneficial is it and am I really missing out?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • DanielleGreason
        DanielleGreason @SamuelScott last edited by

        Great response Samuel, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • SamuelScott
          SamuelScott last edited by

          Garrett, thanks for the question. I hate to give a complicated answer, but the answer is, "It depends." Specifically, it depends what you and the other SEO mean when you talk about "SEO." The phrase means different things to different people. Let me explain.

          If you are referring specifically to helping a website rank more highly in organic search results, then the number of Digg submission, StumbleUpon shares, Reddit links, Diigo saves, and more will not help a website directly. These are not direct ranking factors (one reason, among many, is that it would be too easy for anyone to spam Google's algorithm via these methods).

          However, these methods are useful in general online marketing (which some say is to what "SEO" refers) in ways that can help to increase a site's organic prominence indirectly. Here's an example. Say that you use social-bookmarking sites to "spread the word" about a site and its content. People find out about the site and its content via the social-bookmarking sites and then decide to write about the site, share it on their own social networks, and link to it. Then, the mentions and links that result indirectly can eventually help the site in organic search via the natural, earned backlinks.

          Here's the key. Social media and bookmarking sites are public relations and communications channels that can be used to reach a targeted audience (for any purpose). One use is to spread the word in the ways that I described above to increase awareness of a site and its content. The more you do this, the more that referral traffic and the resulting mentions and links will follow -- and the more that organic rankings will likely increase as an indirect result. (Of course, do not spam.)

          So, I guess my answer is that social bookmarking will not help organic rankings directly. But it can and should be used in a strategic way in terms of what is called off-page SEO, public relations, or content marketing (depending on who you ask) to help long-term organic rankings, sales, conversions, and more over the long term indirectly.

          I hope this answer is clear and makes sense!

          DanielleGreason 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 15
          • MoosaHemani
            MoosaHemani Banned last edited by

            Garrett trust me you are doing it right and especially for the client end I don’t really see any need of it. The most they can deliver you is some extra amount of traffic (with the bounce rate of 90% and plus) as far as the link equity from social bookmarking is concern, it’s more like directories.

            The reason why they are shocked is because they have no idea how to ACTUALLY build quality links so they keep workin on shit that are not important at all in my opinion.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • wearehappymedia

              Facebook Name Change and Effect on SEO

              Hey Mozzers! Trying this one again as my timing was probably pretty bad with Easter. Working with a company who has about 20K followers on Facebook and about 500 backlinks to their current facebook page. They want to change the name of the page to better reflect the business. I need to advise on this but I'm not sure of and how it will effect them. Any one had any experience in this area?

              Social Media | | wearehappymedia
              0
            • groupemedia

              Language Specific Social Account

              We have a managed server company http://www.centerserv.com in 3 languages.  The 3 languages are international and not country specific.  Should we open 3 different social media account/page for each languages (facebook, twitter, pinterest, linkedin, google+,tumblr)?

              Social Media | | groupemedia
              0
            • JCunningham

              Deleting Poor Performing Social Media Accounts for Businesses?

              I'm the Internet Marketing Manager for an ad agency and in charge of not only our social media and SEO but advising and hooking up clients with successful campaigns. I've taken the liberty of signing us up for almost every major social media account. Some are very successful (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Vimeo is ok (we use it over YouTube), Vine is picking up) and others are very not doing well (Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube really is low, Google+ is very mediocre).  I’ve been wondering if it would be more beneficial to just delete certain accounts.  I think I need to keep Google+ (Google values it and we are not doing terribly on it) but all the others listed in the bad column I think are really cancerous to our SEO (and make us look bad b/c we are doing poorly on them) but I really don’t know.  I used them kind of to see if they would work for us and to demonstrate that we knew what we were doing in these social networks, but I think they may be doing us more harm than good both from a PR standpoint and SEO.  Doesn't it hurt your website for Google to see poor performing social media accounts, just as the opposite would be true (good sm accounts and mention/activity would give you klout & SEO...)? What do you think? I'm no novice but no master either.  Love this forum.  Thanks in advance.

              Social Media | | JCunningham
              0
            • douglasapuc

              How Can I do SEO for a Escorts Website?

              So here comes the hard part of working with SEO.... I've been doing SEO for a quite long time now and as far as I concern, it has been working and that's why I can tell people I'm a SEO Manager! It was all good until 3/4 months ago when I got this client that wanted me to do SEO for his Escort Agency. I've analysed his website and came across some structure error, poor linking and so on... I've started by reformulating his website, re-structuring his urls, keeping good pages and throwing alway the poor content ones, requested some website owners to remove links to that website and so on.... All good and sorted, but when it came to do the off-page optimisation it  became a nightmare! It's pretty easy to get links for a clothing website or any other (not "obscure") kind of websites, but no serious and authority websites would link to an escort agency; It's also very easy to create something funny and nice and post it on a page of your website to get people sharing and liking on facebook, but again very hard to get people to share and like things posted by an escort agency... You can't really advertise on escorts directories and use keywords on the ad because godfather google would penalize you.... I really don't know what to do anymore, so I will list some questions and if guys SEO experts could help me out, I would be so grateful!!! How can I get people linking to the website without paying for it? How can I get good authority links to this kind of website? How can I advertise on paid directories without being penalised by google? How can i get shares and likes on social network websites? The website has about 3000 pages, been online since 2010, have at least 3 lengthy articles posted a day! Please guys help me out with this case that is making me loose my nights of sleep... If you guys need the website address and the targeted keyword I can PM you (I dont know if the forum allows me to post it here) Thank You so much for the help in advance....

              Social Media | | douglasapuc
              7
            • bronxpad

              Realtors SEO and Active Rain

              Does anyone know if active rain social network for realtors pass any link juice through the attached blogs features? They have both a free and paid service. Does anyone have any insight on this?

              Social Media | | bronxpad
              0
            • brianspatterson

              Social Media Approaches for a Pest Control Company

              Hi Everyone, I am working with a pest control company that is looking to branch out into social media.  Their primary goal is to connect with their existing customers to improve retention.  The secondary goal is to potentially pick up new clients. With that said, I wanted to see if you all had some ideas on things that they could tweet/facebook about on a regular basis?  Posting about bugs on a daily basis gets pretty boring. I know Rand has been talking a lot lately about not being so narrow, so maybe we should talk more about general home improvement?  Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks! EDIT: I should clarify that this is a company that has maintenance plans.  You don't call them only when you have a problem. You sign up with them, and they treat your property every 3 months, or whenever you call.  Only about 2% of their customer base is one-off phone calls to fix 1 problem and never come back again. I don't think their existing customer base will have any issues with Liking them on Facebook or following them on Twitter. The initial plan is to incentivize them to do so, but once we get the like/follow, we want to continually be in front of them with interesting content, contests as Jay suggested, etc.

              Social Media | | brianspatterson
              2
            • MarieHaynes

              Is there any SEO benefit to hosting your Facebook photos on your own site?

              I will often post photos that I have taken to my Facebook page (either personal or my fan page).  Sometimes these can get lots of likes. I got thinking that perhaps I host these photos on my site (i.e. www.example.com/images/photo1.jpg) and then share that "page" on Facebook.  That way any of the likes would be counted towards my site. What do you guys think?

              Social Media | | MarieHaynes
              0
            • stroke

              Social Media Adult Websites

              Hello, Do you recommend using the buttons (facebook, twitter and google +1) on pages with adult content? For adult seo marketing google uses this metric? Thanks, Stroke

              Social Media | | stroke
              2

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.