Most of webmasters today use social bookmarking as a tool for getting traffic and building backlinks for their site, and yes it is really effective.

I am talking about this after reading Gary Baybayan’s “My Game Plan That Conquered The Marhgil Macuha SEO Contest In Google.”

He won that seo contest by Marhgil Macuha taking the top spot a day before the contest end outranking Jehzlau’s entry which used to rank for a long time. I also joined that contest and placed 3rd (I only did social bookmarking for my entry, no other link building strategies).

Going back to the topic, Gary’s post pointed out that it was social bookmarking that gave way to his entry and after reading it, a certain thread in digitalpoint last year came into my memory wherein a guy was looking for seo service into one of his site. I offered that guy my service and finish the project in a week’s time. How did it happen?

That guy’s keyword is competitive. Site is few months old that time. It was in 300+ position in google for his keyword by that time. I started building links by submitting to directories and an article campaign but what pushed the site to its current position right now, which is #2 was the social bookmarking made for that site. 3 days before the site went to first page of google serp, I personally bookmarked the site, hired another guy who also knows the proper use of every bookmarking site and waited for its effect. We know that the directory and article campaign won’t give immediate results as it takes time before submissions here are approved (most web and article directory owners are lazy approving tons of submissions everyday) so we’re sure that it was the social bookmarking that pushed it to the top. Though social bookmarking is that powerful, always think that it isn’t the only factor. Site should also have a good on-page structure and some backlinks already. And you must know the proper use of it.

To sum up a list of social sites that I personally use, check the following:

http://slashdot.org
http://www.bloglines.com
http://www.del.icio.us
http://www.digg.com
http://www.furl.net
http://www.technorati.com
http://www.43things.com
http://www.fark.com
http://www.jackool.com
http://www.sphinn.com
http://www.simpy.com
http://myweb.yahoo.com
http://www.backflip.com
http://www.blogmakrs.net
http://www.blogpulse.com
http://www.clipfire.com
http://www.icerocket.com
http://www.kinja.com
http://www.librarything.com
http://ma.gnolia.com
http://www.netvouz.com
http://newsvine.com
http://stumbleupon.com
http://reddit.com
http://www.rojo.com
http://rollyo.com
http://www.shadows.com
http://www.spurl.net
http://www.squidoo.com
http://tagsy.com
http://www.yoono.com/index.jsp
http://www.listible.com
http://www.bibsonomy.org
http://www.blinklist.com
http://clipmarks.com
http://de.lirio.us
http://www.diigo.com
http://www.kaboodle.com
http://linkfilter.net
http://myprogs.net
http://tagfacts.com
http://www.rrove.com
http://scuttle.org
http://segnalo.alice.it/?
http://shoutwire.com
http://wists.com
http://www.zaadz.com/
http://unalog.com
http://tagtooga.com/db.tag
http://smarking.com
http://oyax.com
http://bookmarktracker.com
http://buddymarks.com
http://dinnerbuzz.com
http://favoor.com
http://aboogy.com
http://bookmarksync.com
http://connectedy.com
http://lookmarks.com
http://memestreams.net
http://sitejot.com
http://startaid.com
http://ulinkx.com
http://zurpy.com

You may also check the social bookmark list thread in the seophilippines forum for more.