As with all of the advances made to technology in the last few years, it is small things that usually have the greatest impact. Social bookmarking is the next evolutionary step for the way that communication, directories, marketing, and information is controlled on the Internet. When people talk about Web 2. 0, they are referring to this evolutionary step that has been started by people who have become empowered by the ability to make independent decisions about how they find things and communicate using social networks and the Internet.

Social bookmarking impacts all communication and information that takes place on the Internet in some ways. This method allows an individual to bookmark information that they find of interest in a public folder that is “tagged” and available for the public in their social networks to access if they are looking for the topic. Using this method, “rankings” become obscured and unnecessary as individuals are doing searches that are “tagged” with the topic specifically related to their needs and interests.

RSS feeds from websites and blogs provides some visibility on the social networks when these feeds have been bookmarked. Sites and blogs that provide quality and valuable information on a regular basis to their reader often find that their traffic and sales increase. The bookmarks may be spread across all of the social networking sites via the people accessing them.

Social bookmarking is susceptible to spamming and hacking. All of the social media sites continuously upgrade their security to block spammed messages from businesses being attempting to be bookmarked on their sites. However, this is a continual race.

A website owner considering using social networking as a marketing tool will need to create a steady and consistent flow of quality information that a wide audience will be interested in reading. In addition, it is important to remember that spam advertisers are quickly blocked from a person’s bookmarks and when the URL has been blocked by a customer on one device, it is blocked from all of that customer’s devices.

Language plays an important role in social bookmarking. Many SEO work with the standardized protocols of the large directory search engines when writing and advertising. The language used for bookmarking on social networks is different. For instance a business that sells desks may write a profound article about roll-top desks. The bookmark or tag that it is saved in will be “roll top.” A person searching for “desks” will not find that business. Many people bookmark using a shorthand method that catches on.

It will be important prior to using social networking as a marketing tool that a person take time to learn the semantics of the bookmarking structure. A networking site organizes files, or directories, by the tags that information gets, not by the “key word rich” article that has been written. If the keyword is too long, one will have to figure out what that word would naturally be cut down to when it is shortened to a tag.

Social network optimization tools are very different from SEO for the Internet. There is not a marriage between the structure of languages between these two entities yet. However, the Internet search directories will evolve into social bookmarking as more people begin to take control of their information highway.