Social Bookmarking and Linking Strategies Page 1 Linda Fisk and Mark Robertson Freedom Interactive Marketing

Our Goals for Linking and Bookmarking Ensure that we are given credit for our content. Ensure that our content is highlighted and promoted across the web. Get as much of our content distributed to as wide of an audience as possible. Widen our audience and increase our traffic by helping people find our content and our sites.

Our Strategies Generate a significant number of quality links into targeted areas of our site to increase visibility of our sites and drive additional traffic to our sites. Distribute our content to social bookmarking sites to increase visibility of our content and drive additional traffic to our sites.

Benefits by Adopting these Practices Better SEO Results: Search Engines count links as “votes” for a page and assigns link scores Search engines assign trust scores through quality of links Better Visibility Across the Web: Wider Distribution of Content Wider Net to Catch New Audiences Increased Audience Better Distribution of Content = More Audience Better Search Engine Scores = More Audience

Page 5 Distributing and Highlighting Content through Social Bookmarking

Function of Social Bookmarking Sites Page 6 Social bookmarking sites allows users to: Submit story descriptions, as well as links back to stories, from all over the web Vote for submitted stories they feel are worthy of being read. Top-rated stories end up on the homepage and on the 1 st page of the category pages. An article of high interest can generate high quality back links – meaning lots of traffic!

Taking Advantage of Social Bookmarking Sites Page 7 “The reason that social bookmarking has exploded in the last year is obvious -- storing your bookmarks online instead of in the browser just makes sense.” – Tech Biz “Social bookmarking services let you keep links to your favorite web destinations in one location that's accessible from any computer on the net. Add the ability to share your favorite web destinations and search through other users' bookmarks to discover new sites, and you've got a highly addictive and truly remarkable phenomenon.” - Wired

Taking Advantage of Social Bookmarking Sites Page 8  Examples of social bookmarking sites include: Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Newsvine, Furl, Wink, StumbleUpon, BlinkList, Mag.nolia  Articles need to be submitted to the social bookmarking sites to be effective  Submitters need to be active in the site community  If an article is going to be submitted by the same person multiple times, then they will need to have multiple accounts to avoid being banned from the communities

Benefits of Sites Like Digg.com: Page 9 Benefits Include: Digg.com is a popular site that millions of people visit. Getting a story and link on the home page or a primary category page can result in significant traffic to your web site. Digg.com has a high page rank. Search engines pass this page rank value on to pages linked to and from high-level pages. An external link from a website with a high page rank tells search engines that this site is of value and the link value is passed on.

Submitting Content to Digg.com Page 10 Submitting content to Digg.com can be done in 5 simple steps. 1. Sign up for an account 2. Begin story submission to Digg.com 3. Submit the story link 4. Submit title and description 5. Check duplication and submit

Using Digg.com Page 11 Step 1: Sign up for an account

Using Digg.com Page 12 Step 2: Begin story submission process

Using Digg.com Page 13 Step 3: Submit Link

Using Digg.com Page 14 Step 4: Submit title and description

Using Digg.com Page 15 Step 5: Check duplicate articles and submit/cancel article

Page 16 Driving Traffic through Linking Strategies

Power of In-Bound Links “Quality links into your site might be the most important part of SEO.” – SEO Fast Start, 2007 “ Links pointing to a page are extemely important…and there’s no real limit to the number of links that can point to a page.” – TSA Best Practices “Our general approach to link building is based on the concepts of authority and trust….We want more links, from sites that are as authoritative and trusted as possible.” -NYTimes

Developing a Linking Strategy Content and features that represent an opportunity for publicity through in-bound linking: Content elements Navigation elements Discussion boards Video RSS Feeds Podcasts

Not All Links are Equal Quality and Relevancy are Key Quality Links for a news site might include: Yahoo Discussion Lists Blog Sites Yahoo Picks Drudge Report Fark Report.edu sites.org sites

Basically, Two Types of Links Navigation Links – those that are present in global or section navigation. This could include links that you add to the “footer” of the page. Contextual Links – those that are present within the content itself. These links can enhance usability and conversion as well as the reputation of the page.

 Create “regional hubs” that cross-link to each other Links should provide additional value and stay within topic Create an “About Us” page with all site-specific or regional site brands Link directly off content index pages to other sister-site same-index pages  Create cross-links to different properties/partners Regional Freedom Interactive site listing page Develop links within page text - Search for more “Weather” information from one of our trusted partner sites Cross-Linking: Leveraging Current Sites

 Create a national site list page Link to page off the home page Option 1 - Add to main site navigation Option 2 - Add link at the bottom of the home page Page should contain description of Freedom Interactive followed by a comprehensive list of all properties Cross-Linking: Leveraging Current Sites

Leverage site blogs and video clips  Post blog articles to other properties outside of regional hub  Post video clips on social network sites such as youtube.com, break.com, grouper.com, etc Develop Inbound Links with Site Tools

 Request links back to site from all third party suppliers Sub-domains Weather provider Traffic provider Travel content partner  Identify additional partnership opportunities Current display advertisers Local libraries Chamber of Commerce Better Business Bureau Schools City/County Government Develop Partnerships

 Widgets Restaurant locator Calculator – Salary, Auto loan, Mortgage Weather Maps  Feeds RSS Weather Traffic Classified listings Events listings Promotional Campaigns

Benefits by Adopting these Practices Better SEO Results: Search Engines count links as “votes” for a page and assigns link scores Search engines assign trust scores through quality of links Better Visibility Across the Web: Wider Distribution of Content Wider Net to Catch New Audiences Increased Audience Better Distribution of Content = More Audience Better Search Engine Scores = More Audience

Questions?

Authority Link Development