We all understand that bookmark is a way to mark a page on book so you may find it quickly and continue reading. Originally, bookmarking in computer is usually associated to saving a link on the web browser for faster access on the future.

However, social bookmarking sites are intended to mark an interesting or important web page so you and other people can find it, by bookmarking a Web page in top ten social-bookmarking sites you may get a trickle of steady traffic. In the case of highly experienced social bookmarking users, they may easily get a burst of massive traffic that in some cases can overwhelm the web server.

Social bookmarking sites are all the rage a few years ago but today they are still important in promoting new Web pages. Del.icio.us and Digg command a presence among social bookmarking users on the Internet. People love to bookmark “interesting finds” or let others know about interesting pages on their sites. Therefore social bookmarking sites serve as a guidepost in the convoluted realm of Internet.

Webmasters and site owners hoping to capture the attention of Web users may still find social bookmarking sites useful. These are six ways a webmaster can benefit from social bookmarking sites.

1. Repeat Visitors: Considering that most people don’t take action/register/contact/buy on their early visits to a site, repeat visitors are important for the success in online business. You can gain a large number of repeat visitors as long as they know how to find your site again. You do this by placing bookmarks of your website on many social bookmarking sites. You may also need to urge new visitors to bookmark your site in their browser.  Obviously, you need to offer absorbing content, or nobody will bother to visit your site again to find latest updates.

1. Viral linking: Before the advent of social bookmarking, marking a Web page was a private thing. But now people can share them to others easily. Other people may see them and visit the sites. If the content is attractive enough they may share and bookmark them to other sites. Websites like Del.icio.us, SpicyPage and Ma.gnolia are perfect for this. As a matter of fact, many experienced social bookmark users use more than one social bookmarking sites. However, you really need to have attractive contents, or nobody will bother to bookmark your pages. Sometimes they might also add the bookmark or your site URL or may even discuss them. All of a sudden a bookmark attracts many links to your pages, presumably from relevant sites, which will improve your position in search engine result.

1. Good Quality Links: Many social bookmarking sites offer no SEO value whatsoever. The links might use the NoFollow tag. If you’re using Firefox you may easily right-click a bookmarked link, choose Properties and see whether the link use no-follow relation. Some bookmarking sites may even use indirect link, which can’t be followed by search engine bots. But there are still many social bookmarking sites that offer SEO-friendly, do-follow links. Even if a no-follow link won’t give you direct SEO benefit, don’t underestimate its traffic potential. If you can build your reputation as a top bookmarker in a site, you may get a large amount of incoming traffic each time you post a new bookmark. Many people also attempted to fool the Del.icio.us and Digg algorithm, knowing that if a site can stick on the main page for just one day, it may mean hundreds or even thousands of new inbound links from fairly relevant portals, blogs and fan sites. And it is natural linking mechanism that may tremendously improve your search engine results. Remember that the most important requirement for success in social bookmarking sites is interesting and high quality content.