We’ve been scouring the internet for all social sites that we can use in LavaLinx. Does anyone have suggestions or favorite social sites you use most frequently? Please comment and leave suggestions below.

There seems to be a surplus of social networking websites everywhere, some with amazing traffic, others with barely any. I think creating your own social site is all the rage right now. It’s a great way to create revenue through Adsense or banner ads. Another huge benefit of hosting one is the content is user-generated. Most SEO-ers believe “Content is King” so user-generated, possibly daily, is even better. There are a few sites out there with plugins to make your own social site (such as Pligg) or you can create a subdomain through Ning.com. And there’s always Squidoo, where you create your own ‘Lens’ on your topic of choice. Am I missing any? Let me know if you have created your own site and how it’s going so far.

Let’s round up some general guidelines for LavaLinx users and social bookmarking…

Tagging. This is not referring to graffiti lettering on the side of trains or abandoned buildings. Tagging is a great way to spread out the information you want to share with a wider variety of people within the social site. Think about it. With every ‘tag’ page, someone will be able to find your bookmark on that page. Basically the more relevant and descriptive your tags are, the better your site will be found by those who are looking for your product or information, and thus the more traffic you will see from social bookmarking.

With that said, sometimes for work we’ll slip in our keyword phrases we want to optimize the site for. This isn’t always the case, but yes sometimes we do it. We’re trying to work with the system. Now I’m not saying everyone should flood the tags with all of the keywords they are going after. Please don’t do that! Too many tags listed is a pain for the other users, whereas some bookmark sites will only allow a certain number of tags. Please keep this in mind.

Make sure to give at least a few tags when adding a new social page in LavaLinx. Plus, including the proper title you want and description helps everyone out as well.

I’ve been noticing more and more websites allowing you to auto-bookmark your pages into social bookmarking sites. The SEO world is finally catching onto our idea. Well, none of them introduce “exchange” into their websites. LavaLinx still has the trump on exchange. We need more users in our pool to create social exchanges from.

We will continually improve LavaLinx into the most successful SEO-management tool. Constantly, we research new social sites to include in our growing list of bookmarking sites. Please check the list of sites often, after logging into LavaLinx.com, click on Social Bookmarks, then click Social Bookmark Accounts. Any sites you have signed up for and saved in LavaLinx will show up there. With any new sites you may not have a profile yet for, we will have a sign-up link for that social site.

For whatever reason, we come across social sites that work for some time and then encounter problems within their own site, or change their URL (we have to update LavaLinx to this fact), or that site simply is down one day. All these reasons can create issues for all of us users where we might not be able to complete a social trade right away. The LavaLinx team is out on the front lines, making social trades, so hopefully we will become aware of the issues as soon as they happen. Please be patient with us if you have to wait a bit longer than expected. Or shoot us a quick email letting us know your issue. We are happy to receive feedback from our users. With all of that said, I hope we continue to gain more quality LavaLinx users, just like the ones we already have.

As of yesterday evening, Google’s search results are now automatically customized geographically based on each user’s IP address. Previously, Google did customize search results for users that were logged into their Google accounts, or had cookies enabled (which would be the majority of people). But now, even if you have manually turned off your cookies, Google search results will now be customized geographically whether you like it or not.

Geographical customization does make sense for certain industries. However, for many online industries, it makes no sense at all. If you were searching for something like web hosting services, online education resources, or product reviews, wouldn’t you want to see search results that are actually relevant - not ones where the company headquarters simply happen to be local? I know I would.

Customized search results can make SEO more complicated. What happens if you have SEO clients? They will probably be seeing very different results from the ones you are seeing. Until you are in the top spots where you see major traffic increases, how can you effectively measure your progress? How will search engine ranking tracking services report their results?

When it comes to Google, there are always changes and surprises around every corner. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how it affects traffic across the board.

Social bookmark trading is nothing new, it’s been happening ever since social bookmarking sites grew in popularity. Lavalinx just took the idea of exchanging bookmarks to a whole new level.  We created a system that makes social bookmarking, management and exchange more efficient, easy and effective.

To help you better understand what we’re doing I have included a few frequently asked questions and our response to each.

What is a Social Page?

A Lavalinx Social Page is any page in your site that you want bookmarked in social sites. You can bookmark these pages yourself with our easy-to-use bookmarking wizard, or you can initiate social bookmarking trades with others and have them bookmark them.

Why should I bookmark my pages using Lavalinx?

Current bookmarking tools help you to effeciently bookmark your own pages on multiple social sites, which is great if you want to fill your social accounts with all of your own pages. The problem with this is that, by bookmarking too many of your own pages, you’ll eventually be marked as a spammer by most of the social sites, and could get your account banned.

With Lavalinx you have the option of bookmarking your own pages, or entering into social bookmark trades that would have other users bookmark your pages. For social bookmarking, this gives Lavalinx a huge advantage because now your social accounts will be filled with diverse, interesting pages from other users, and you will be getting other users to discover and vote on your pages.

How many social sites can be involved in a bookmark exchange?

In a social bookmark exchange you are only limited by the number of social sites you and your trade partner have. In a each trade scenario an equal number of social sites are used for fairness in trading. If you have 10 social sites and your trade partner has 10, you can trade with up to 10 social sites in a single trade. If you only had 4 social sites and your trade partner had 10, your trade would be limited to 4 social sites.

Does social bookmarking help my organic rankings?

Yes! Most of the social sites that have been added to Lavalinx give you a hard “dofollow” backlink.

Does Lavalinx automatically add links to social sites?

No. All links posted to social sites are made via a wizard that populates your page information into a submission form. We make it easy as possible, but it is not automated.

What’s the difference between a Public and Private social bookmarking site in Lavalinx?

All social bookmarking sites in Lavalinx marked as “public” are social sites that offer a public and spiderable user account. Because these sites are spiderable Lavalinx can verify that social bookmarks have been made or not. So, in a social bookmark exchange we can verfiy that both parties fulfill their side of the trade.

All social bookmarking sites in Lavalinx marked as “private” are social sites that can be used for your own bookmarking, but cannot be used in a social exchange.

Does Lavalinx keep track of the pages bookmarked?

Lavalinx will keep track of all the pages you bookmark yourself and the bookmarks that are received via trades and exchanges. Lavalinx also keeps track of which social sites your pages are bookmarked on ie. StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx etc.

How many social bookmarking sites can I submit to?

Right now Lavalinx has 45 social bookmarking sites, but we are adding more weekly. We make every effort to add social sites that will either have social traffic value, or SEO link value.