JigJak is a cool social bookmarking site that I’ve discovered lately, so it may be new to some and old news to others! I’ve been using it to bookmark some quality articles on here and I’m happy to say that JigJak is dofollow and I’m enjoying the link juice to my content. The community on the site seems very active and serious about keeping the quality in order on the site. JigJak also has around 6200+ pages indexed in Google so that’s a good sign they’re doing decent and aoff to a good start. I really liked the member community section which shows a visual map of the world and where most of the active users are, it ads a nice little touch. They also offer blogs to members so you can write your own content on the network and get it promoted within the site. This website is absolutely free and you can go ahead and sign up, but please do not spam.
Social Bookmarking
Link Building With JigJak.com
Link Building With iLinkshare.com
I’ve been keeping my eye on iLinkshare lately and I’m hoping to give it a try when it goes out of Beta, or they read this and want to give me an account(hint hint). I’m always on the hunt for people bringing new ideas to the bookmarking world and from what I can tell these folks got something cool going on. I have seen iLinkshare links showing up in people’s backlink profiles, that is in fact how I came across the site so that’s good news. There is no indication when they’ll be out of Beta so hopefully someone from the site could let us all know. They have dropped a few unique features they’re sporting;
- True 1-click bookmarking system
- Community-building contests and competitions
- Integrated public image sharing system (much like Flickr or Photobucket)
- Find users interested in the same niche of websites as you easily through our matching system
- Created with accessibility in mind, minimal reliance on Javascript
Link Building With Syncone.net
I’ve noticed this PR4 dofollow social bookmarking and tagging site showing up in my backlinks so it is time for a post on SyncOne. This site is simple to use and provides a great organization system for your bookmarks which makes it a cinch to add them in. You can also import bookmarks from your browser or through an OPML feed, so that can allow you to create a custom feed to import a lot of links quickly. I’ve just started using the site so I’m not sure how quality the links are, but the site seems to be liked by Google and is indexed quite heavily. Anyone else have experience using this site? If you’re done reading and ready to start bookmarking then head on over to the sign up page.
Social Bookmarking Software & Tools
I’ve been involved in creating a failed web based social bookmarking tool that was completely automated which never worked out fully. Most likely it was for the best because I can only imagine the evils that it would have been used for in the long run. There are a handful of useful social bookmarking tools and software out there so I thought I’d list off my favorites. Some of these sites pretty much do the same thing, it just all depends on how you like the method they use to lead you through a social bookmarking journey that will leave you asking, “Where the hell did my two hours go”.
Onlywire.com: I’ve used Only Wire for a couple of years now and it’s the easiest in regards to submitting without going to every site. I tried to create a tool modeled after this one except for one difference, it would submit to 100-150 social bookmarking sites instead of 30. Their new 2.0 release is nothing short of amazing except for the not so free pricing. You can use it for free under certain conditions, which are fair when you think of what it costs to host this tool. My favorite new feature is the API they release which you can integrate to auto submit everything from your website.
Socialmarker.com:I use this site when Socialposter is down which is more often than I’d like to admit. Social Marker offers a very easy to use interface for submitting your content up to 48 of the most popular social bookmarking sites in 5 minutes or less. Take note of their option boxes especially if you only if you want to make sure you’re submitting to do follow sites only.
Socialmarking.com:This site is also just like Social Marker and Social Poster except you can submit easily up to 130 social bookmarking sites! I only discovered this from the Google Ad they bought on Social Marker, so cheers to that. It has pretty much the same in frame browser submit that makes it pretty easy to tear through 130 sites….I don’t recommend submitting to 130 or you’re just going to look like you’re spamming, and really you are.
SocialPoster.com: This is the site I use the most mainly beause I like the way the user interface handles the bookmarking. It submits to the same amount as Social Marker and is pretty much exactly the same in everyway. The one downside to this site is that is regularly goes down due to bandwidth or cpu consumption.
6 Untapped CMS Resources For Theme Link Building
I’ve been keeping a close eye on the different open source CMS’s that are coming out these days, mainly for link building opportunities. If you’re a WordPress or Joomla theme designer you most likely have distributed free themes in order to build links and get exposure for your work. I’m aware that Google has been watching this practice closely because a lot of folks were selling the link spots(Sponsored Themes Discussed @ Webmaster World). Now if you’re a web design company or freelancer, there is no problem using this as a form of marketing. Unfortunately the theme market for the likes of phpBB, vBulletin, WordPress, Joomla, yaddy yadda, is way over saturated these days.
There are all sorts of new open source CMS’s coming on the market, and a handful of them are starting to get a large use rbase. There are CMS’s for DIGG clones, forums, social networking sites, social bookmarking, web 2.0 and new blogging platforms. These are perfect times to grab some new business and get a chance to work with a different platform. Because there are so many the possibilities are endless, and would be a great way to expand your design firm to the next level. Lets take a look at 6 CMS’s that are growing rapidly and are desperately in the need of both free and premium themes.
Pligg is almost perhaps too popular to be called an “untapped resource”, but since it makes for a perfect first example I’ll go with it. I’m not sure on the exact number of downloads, but looking at a few factors indicates that there have been a few hundred thousand downloads of Pligg in the past few years. You can search for “powered by pligg” which is nowhere near acurate at 1.5 million results. That and the fact the forum has 35 thousand members is how I can up with that number. The search phrase “Pligg Temaplates” is searched for on average 40xday. The competition in the search listings ins’t too scary and there are already a bunch of places you can promote your theme like in the Pligg forum.
Elgg is quite possibly the most popular open source social networking platform at the moment. The software its self is brilliant and there is no secret as to why it’s so popular. There are plenty of opportunities for theme design with Elgg both on the forums, gaining top rankings and freelance sites. The one thing I did notice about Elgg, which is also what made me write this post, is that there is a serious lacking in the theme department. You can advertise your free themes within the community, on various Elgg theme sites and try and rank for some quality keywords.
ModX has been gaining a lot of ground for its triumphant web 2.0 properties featuring clean SEO friendly code, and sexy Ajax to make it all spiffy. Their forum is very active in not only English, but many other languages which also shows a strong sign that ModX will be here for a long time to come. There is a strong need for paid and free themes and the link building opportunities are definitely there.
Social Web Content Management System(bloody mouthful) is a fork off from the first mentioned Pligg software and in my opinion looks and works like it will be the true champion of Digg clones soon enough. Now is a great time to build some links and buzz by creating great templates for this rapidly evolving CMS. Right now there are a few sites where you can submit your template as well hit up the template section on the user forum.
Concrete5 is one of my favorite up and coming CMS’s and I’d like you guys to take a minute to check out the demo, features and scalability of the framework. You PHP and Ajax programmers are going to have a fun time with this CMS. I trulely believe that Concrete5 will be making big waves in the near future and they’re going to need theme designers! Why not use the opportunity to build some quality links on this web 2.0 platform.
Plone is most likely a new word to your vocabulary, and it was fairly new to me up until the other day. Plone is a well supported and heavily used CMS that boats a long list of big sites running the platform. This CMS is great for community based websites as well sites that have a magazine/minimal feeling to them, so you’ll be able to get creative with your design. This is another example of a great CMS needing more designers and present more opportunities to build more links.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amount of possibilities for design teams to generate more business and build links from theme resources that are not over saturated. I hope you designers out there found this useful and that it gives you a ton of new ideas on how to drum up more business.
Link Building With BlogBookmark.com
This is one of my favorite social news sites that is not only do follow, but brings in a lot of dedicated webmaster traffic. Blog Bookmark was started in the early months of 2007 and has steadily grown in traffic over the past year. I really like the design and feel of the site which is what makes it a cut above the rest. The site covers a lot more topics other than webmaster related, but since most of us spend our time on these sites a lot of the front page news is on that subject. So join today and start getting back links and traffic with Blog Bookmark.
Link Building With Shout Wire(No Follow)
Shout Wire is another site I’m sure most of you have heard of, and I’m only blogging about it for archival purposes only. Shout Wire was started by the folks at Torrent Spy and later aqquired by Tubearoo Video Network. The site is layed out nicely with a great web 2.0 look and feel with a VERY active community to boot. You get banned very quickly here if you do not submit quality content, so please don’t bother spamming this all day and night long. If you’re into viral video marketing like me, Shout Wire offers a very active video section, and if you hit the front page you’re going to get thousand of viewers in a matter of hours.
Link Building With Plime
Plime is a well known social bookmarking service that passes along some link love. Plime currently holds a pr6 and tons of pages indexed. Plime makes use of a “karma points” system where it rewards user accounts the more they participate. You can move up in levels which helps get your content seen more on the site. Once you’re account reaches a certain level you can also edit other peoples submitted material if you notice a problem or error. It is Wiki-Like in that fashion, and adds and interesting little twist to this social bookmarking service. I would recommend checking out the heavily written FAQ which provides you with just about every answer you’d need..so if you’re ready head on over and sign up to Plime.
