How Your Own Favorites Or Bookmarks Can Really Promote Your Website Or Blog

Most people logon in the morning by doing one of the two following things:

Navigating directly to their site (i.e your homepage is your own site) Opening up your favorite homepage and then navigating to your site (i.e. you like to look at news or jokes before starting work)

The problem is that neither of these options do anything to promote your site! Doesn't this strike you as a bit odd? We put so much effort into writing articles, making sure the sites are SEO optimized, swopping links and paying for ad space, but when it comes to logging on to the Net (Something we all have to do every day) we don't lend a moment's thought to how we can use this simple every day act to work for us.

Well, here's how you can do it:

Ever heard of Social BookMarking? Social bookmarks are simply a list of links that people tag and add to their accounts online. These links are made available to other people in that community and everyone shares reams and reams of lists and so it goes. That's all good and well, but I get put off because most of the time there is an absolute mess of links scattered all over the page and most of them are really quite useless in any event.

The idea is good though! Sharing links is the same thing as saying promoting links, so we can use this school of thought to our advantage. By way of demonstration, I will use LinkDoozer (http://www.linkdoozer.com), which is a new Web2.0, community driven interactive bookmarks and favorites site. It has a number of useful features that suit my Internet use in addition to what I am discussing here so its worth checking it out.

LinkDoozer could be a called a Social BookMarking site - although it is slightly different in that it doesn't aim to have billions of links, it aims only to have your favorites. The idea is this:

You add your current favorites list (directly from your browser to your LinkDoozer account) You set LinkDoozer as your homepage (because all your favorites, including your current homepage are accessible at the touch of a button anyway, and from any PC). LinkDoozer has an autologin function so whenever you open up your browser you are taken directly to your own account homepage with all your favorites laid out for you.

That's it! All your favorites are now added to the communal pot and other people can view them and browse them as they so choose. I assume that your own blog/site is part of your favorites list - if its not, you better add it in here otherwise the whole purpose of this exercise is defeated.

Now, the fact that you have added your favorites to your LinkDoozer account means that other people instantly have access to your sites/blogs, but that's not the end of the story because the social networking component of the site can be used in a far more powerful way.

Links that are used by multiple people on LinkDoozer are rated higher than links that are used less. This means that only genuinely popular links end up being displayed in the LinkDoozer clouds - this is a far more effective way of finding quality sites because it shows you what people are using and not what SEO experts want you to see in search results.

LinkDoozer provides several ways for you to get other people using your site/blog. There is a recommendation feature that allows you to send your links to friends and colleagues and you can also generate an RSS feed to display all your links on your own blog/site.

Additionally, the most important feature of this particular social bookmarking site, and one which you will need to look at closely is the fact that you can rate and review any of your links and these reviews are also shared with the community.

Combining all of these features gives you a powerful and persistent presence on the Net for little to no work. All you have to do is put your favorites list, including your own sites and blogs, online, recommend that friends and family etc add your site to their favorites account (their account is set up automatically by LinkDoozer whenever you recommend a link to someone so they don't have to do anything other than log on), and write some reviews as and when you have a moment.

With that done, you can log on every morning safe in the knowledge that you are promoting your site/blog every time you do. As they put it on LinkDoozer - ... and let's face it, if you don't add your site to your own homepage, who will?

Good luck, and I hope this helps you out!