Times are changing in the internet marketing landscape.
Whereas before, online businessmen tried their best to keep abreast of the latest strategies that will help them place their websites in beneficial positions in relevant search engine results, nowadays, they are trying out some new tactics that are completely different from their predecessors.
The trend in this day and age, you see, is veering away from the rather mechanical operations of search engines, and leaning towards the more accurate and humanized features of user-driven indexing systems.
Did you get lost somewhere in that statement?
Such is but natural. You see, current trends are dealing with new technology and new approaches that a significant adjustment must be made in terms of the online marketer's mindset as well as the skills required to make it big in these changing times.
The Death Of SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, has dominated the Internet marketing industry for many years. It has been said that 80% of the traffic that can be generated for our online business will come from the search engines. Hence, getting a good position in search engine results pages (SERPs) has become the Holy Grail for most online businessmen.
But search engines are not without faults.
Search engines rely on spiders-robotic little creatures-to crawl through each and every single page in the World Wide Web. Thereafter, these spiders will index the pages according to the algorithms prescribed by the search engines.
Everything is automated. It's either black or white. There are no gray areas. Hence, it can't be helped that some pages will be placed in categories different from what the publisher has intended.
Trend Towards User-Driven Indexing Systems
User-driven indexing systems, on the other hand, allow the users themselves to classify websites under appropriate tags. The application of human discernment makes this approach more reliable and more credible for many people. After all, human eyes saw those pages. And the human mind processed their content and indexed them appropriately.
Social bookmarking websites are the most popular kinds of user-driven indexing systems. There are a lot of these in existence today, and judging from their page ranks, they are widely visited pages. The most renowned of these social bookmarking websites are furl.com, technorati.com, del.icio.us, and feedmarker.com.
Social Bookmarking Websites Explained
What are social bookmarking websites, exactly? While viewing web pages on your browser, you may have noticed a feature that will allow you to save a particular URL under your "My Favorites" folder. Click on the "Add To Favorites" button and you'll be able to save the URL on your hard drive. This process is called bookmarking. The saved URL is called a bookmark.
Social bookmarking websites work the same way. But instead of saving a URL on your hard drive, you'll be able to save it on a web server, under an appropriate tag.
If you visit a dog grooming website, for example, and you liked it a lot, you can save the URL under the tag "dog" or "dog grooming" in the space provided by any social bookmarking website.
What makes social bookmarking websites stand out is that you can share your list of indexed sites with other people. They may be looking for information about dogs, and your list can help them out a lot.
Marketing Advantages Of Social Bookmarking Websites
This relatively new technology presents a lot of useful possibilities for an online businessman:
- Experts predict that social bookmarking will soon replace search engines as the information finding process of choice by most Internet users. The best way to capitalize on this emerging phenomenon is by starting to position your online business using its features as early as today.
- Social bookmarking can easily be manipulated. You can place your own websites in favorable positions without having to go through the whims of search engine algorithms.
- Tags are beginning to establish an interconnectivity that reaches many platforms and many channels. Social bookmarking websites can easily become the launch pad for your conquest of specific tags which are considered as the "keywords for the new millennium."
The new generation of internet marketing strategies starts with social bookmarking websites. Master this particular channel and you're sure to garner an avalanche of traffic from sources which were once unknown. |
