3 Pitfalls of Automated Social Bookmarking

March 6, 2009

Riding on the increasing popularity of social bookmarking as a major component of online marketing, some online companies offer the services of an automated social bookmarker.

For a set fee, they promise the convenience of getting your web pages bookmarked in almost all of the social bookmarking websites—including the best ones—without you having to do any work.

The offer also claims to improve your rankings in search engine results, since the more bookmarks your web pages get, the better search engine spiders can crawl all over them.

Efficient as the offer might sound, be wary. Automated bookmarking could (although very rarely) work for a few days.

However, search engines and top social bookmarking websites are quick to detect the work of an “automator”. The first detection already leads to dire consequences.

Below are the 3 pitfalls of automated social bookmarking that you must consider before you avail of the services of automated social bookmarkers.

1. High risk of being blacklisted from the top social bookmarking sites
Strict social bookmarking rules exist to protect the goal of social bookmarking: to build online communities where each individual is able to share online resources from various websites to his online network.

Like search engines, the best social bookmarking sites have stringent rules about self-promotion and spamming. They have the capability to detect automatic bookmarkers, which they consider as spammers.

The first time that you get tagged will be the last time because every page stemming from your website will be banned from the bookmarks. You would have to go through the trouble of getting a new domain, not to mention rebuilding your credibility to your market and you’ve wasted all that money on an automated service that gave you all this trouble.

2. High risk of NOT ranking in the top 3 search engines
Google, Yahoo, and MSN have the capability to detect artificially generated hits and traffic. To preserve the sanctity of searches, these top search engines exclude inorganic website activity, including automated bookmarkers.

Although automated bookmarkers won’t get you blacklisted from these search engines, you wouldn’t get the rankings supposedly achieved by the automation. In the end, your pages still get buried under all the other sites that actually did work.

3. High risk of being tagged as a spammer—by your niche
The worst that comes out from all of this isn’t even the need for a new domain, nor is it the need to rebuild your site from scratch. It’s the credibility that you’ve lost for your brand.

The Internet is a small place. Word gets around and people will know why your website went under. Regaining your niche’s trust will take a lot more than purchasing a new domain. The other option, creating a new brand, will also be a lot of work.

Search engine optimisation and most marketing strategies rely on hard work and knowledge of the market. Although social bookmarking automators could offer to do the dirty work, they still aren’t capable of knowing where your market is and what matters to them.

Remember that technology is merely a tool that requires your guidance.