Why is that so? Well for search engine optimization, you need to have a simple and straightforward title. Many people type “LSU vs. Kentucky” in search engines like Google. That is where I get most of my hits and it is where I will get most of my bookmarks. I have bookmarked my videos. The videos are timeless. The predictions are only good for a week or two. They are time sensitive. You want to have a balance of timeless and time sensitive material.

#4. You need to submit your own work- That is not cheating. You need to get your name and niche blog out there. You need to investigate what top bookmaking sites are for your niche.

Mine are

A. Digg- Because of all of my predictions. The easy title brings them in and they read my prediction. I hope that they will “digg around a little :-) “and bookmark my site. If you get on the top page of Digg.com, you could get thousands of visitors and hopefully some other bookmarks. I digg every post of mine, because of the immediate effect. My digg profile.

B. Stumbleupon- A browsing bookmark - This is great because of the quality of traffic. People that like your blog will simply tag it as a good blog. All of the people in their network will be able to see your blog. That is how you develop a niche following. My stumbleupon profile.

Tip- Do not go crazy bookmarking your own stuff on “stumble upon”. You can only bookmark a few URL’s on any given blog. Therefore, you need to be careful of what you bookmark with Stumbleupon. You need to bookmark your best and timeless posts. I learned this the hard way. If I had to do it over again, I would have bookmarked my introduction page and all of my SEC football videos, because they are timeless.<< update. I can now stumble more of my pages because I stumble a lot of other stuff as well.

C. Del.icio.us. The same as above except that it is not a browsing bookmark. This is one of the most popular bookmarking tools. My Del.icio.us profile.

D. Others are Reddit, Furl, etc.. If you already have a bookmarking network, do not avoid it. Embrace it. Did you know that Facebook has bookmarks? Google and Yahoo have bookmarks. Do not go crazy submitting all of your work everywhere. You will get burnt out quickly. You can take your time to submit your home page everywhere. You need to post all of your work to only a few places. Always submit it to digg and your other top network.  My Furl profile.

#5. Tag your work correctly and often- tags drive social bookmarking. A tag is a keyword or group of keywords that define your post/blog. Spend some time finding out how other sites in your niche are tagged. Also, spend some time finding out about popular tags. There is a good example on my blog. I have a very funny video of the SEC football coaches singing, “Staying alive”. It is a cartoon done in “Southpark” style. There are many tagging possibilities for this post.

Sports<< Remember what your niche falls under

Football<< continue to cover all of your bases for main tags for your niche.

American football<< You have to remember everything about your niche. If I just left the tag “football”, I would get soccer traffic that might not like my blog.

College Football<< now we are getting closer to my blog.

Every SEC football teams name and nickname<< this post is relevant to all SEC schools just like my blog itself.

SEC Football<< That is after all my niche

You might want to even go so far as to write words together. That is incase the tags are separated by the bookmarking system. I put “SECFootball” as a tag sometimes.

Video<< Many people browse the Internet for videos of their favorite past times.

Funny<< Many people like to browse funny posts. Life is too short.

Southpark<< Is a relevant tag that will bring another niche that might like other posts on my blog.

#6. You need to have places to easily bookmark on your site- You could have hundreds of buttons below every post. I do not think that is a good idea. You could have hundreds of buttons on every side panel. I do not think that is a good idea. I think that it takes away from the content, so I chose to do something different. I put a “Digg this” button below every post because that is where I get my most traffic. It does not get in the way, and after a while, it actually helps the uniformity of my blog. All of my readers can expect the little digg button. To avoid all of the other buttons I use “Add this “it is an excellent button. It is an excellent and free service that lets your reader easily bookmark to all of the top sites. Best of all, it is small. You can have all of the top bookmarking sites on every post without taking away from your material. They also offer a Wordpress pluggin that allows you to automatically place the button below posts.

Tip- Never take away from your content. That is the only reason the reader came. It is the only reason they will come back. Do not bombard your reader with ads or buttons. I try to have a couple ads and a couple buttons.

Tip #2- Add this also has an “Add this” button for your RSS Feed. You can have all of the top RSS feed sites and all of the top bookmarking sites with two nice buttons. Thank you “ADD this “.

#7. The next step is to remind your reader to bookmark it- I do not do this much at all because I just started bookmarking on my blog and did not want to detract from my content. I will do this more in the future.

I followed all of my rules with this post. It has a simple title that lets you know the content. The title also grabs attention by being a top 7 list. I filled the post with relevant content that was not overloaded by irrelevant buttons.

Disclaimer- I am not an expert on this subject. I do not claim to be. I have read a good deal about the subject and would just like to share my limited knowledge. I am new to blogging, so I am not in many social bookmarking networks. I am interested in feedback on this post. Please comment on this post. Please leave your own hints. I would like this to be the quintessential post on this topic, so anyone can come here and read this instead of going to 50 different sites. This topic was in no way an advertisement for “Add This” or “Digg”. I just really like both services. Please bookmark this post so others can see it. If you have any extra time, you can bookmark my homepage.