At SoftwarePromotions, we’ve become increasingly aware of the potential of social bookmarking websites, and it’s also something we like to handle for our clients. More and more site owners are reporting significant traffic boosts from sites like Digg and Del.icio.us, and they can certainly be very helpful for making a wider audience aware of your product and/or site.

Of course, it’s usually not as simple as submitting your site and hoping that other people will have time to notice it before it’s swallowed up or pushed down by a deluge of other submissions. No, you need to make more of an effort than that.

Think about the things you like to read, or are likely to bookmark. Interesting or helpful stories, lists of tips and hints, articles which talk you through complicated ideas or procedures. These are the kind of items that other people are likely to notice, too.

On his blog, Rohit Bhargava has published what he calls the 5 rules of Social Media Optimization. In other words, how do you make your site content more interesting, and more likely to be bookmarked/linked to? Other people have added more rules, and they now stand a total of 16.

My personal favourite? Rule 6: be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense – although I might have altered it to “even if it doesn’t offer any immediate benefits”.

Oh, and over at SEOmoz, Rand has published a list of his best sites for SMOing. Also well worth a look.

5 Rules of Social Media Optimization

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