Moving forward Lavalinx is going to only allow for API generated social bookmark exchanges. This means that all trades will be fulfilled via an API, the user will only have to make accept a trade and all bookmarks are generated automatically.

We now have a significant opportunity with Lavalinx that wasn’t available to us a couple years ago. Because of the advancements in the technology and functionality of WordPress (WP), we can now create a Lavalinx plugin that will allow a WP user to do all social and contextual link exchanges in the WP interface. We can utilize the WP’s UI, look-and-feel and styles to create a plugin that will function and look like every other WP tool.

We plan on growing the Lavalinx network dramatically by catering to WP. Here’s why:

1. There are about 50 million WP sites http://en.wordpress.com/stats/
2. Most if not all SEOs use WP
3. There is no social/link exchange plugin available for WP
4. Guestposts have been one of the fastest growing SEO methods in the last couple years. With Lavalinx we can accomplish the same links without the cost and man hours required to write an article and find publishers
5. As mentioned above, the plugin will allow a WP user to do everything in WP, it’ll be fully integrated
6. WP can provide Lavalinx with all the information needed regarding posts, tags, titles, descriptions etc. making signup and integration easier than ever
7. Every SEO knows that contextual, keyword-based links on a relevant page is the best link they can get

October was a big month for LavaLinx as we added over 25 new social sites to our system, with a large part of the focus on Twitter-related social bookmarking domains. This brings the total amount of social sites in LavaLinx to over 80! Below is the list of new social sites:

Retweet.com
Twittley.com
FriendFeed.com
Identi.ca
Bebo.com
Url.org
Xerpi.com
Aboogy.com
Acoopit.co.nz
Buzzbookmarks.com
Topstumbles.info
Onlinesocialbookmarking.com
Bookmarkyourpost.info
Smash-up.com
Bookmarkyourlink.info
Onestopbookmarks.com
Bookmarkingweb.com
Izeby.com
Newsmarked.info
Tagsnest.com
Veryhotlinks.com
Muti.co.za
2collab.com
Savethislink.net
Votetags.info
Bookmark4you.com
Topstumbles.com

Don’t see your favorite social site on the list? Leave a comment with the URL of the site you would like added.

Now that you’ve sent a social trade, this tutorial will take you through completing it.

Below, the system indicates that there is one pending social link. Click on “Add Social Links”.

That will bring you to the review page. From here, you can see the date the trade was created, the site it is from and its details, and who created the trade. To begin, click “Add Bookmarks”.

The bookmarking process is the same for each social site – simply bookmark the link, then use our link checker to ensure that it was done properly, and complete the trade. For this example, we will bookmark on Digg.

Above the bookmarking window, LavaLinx gives you all the details you need to add the link – the URL, title and description of the page you are bookmarking. This page had already been inserted into Digg, so we simply have to click “Digg”.

Now we hit the “Check Bookmark” button in the bottom right corner.

Our system will let you know if it has been added properly. If there was an error, you will see a warning with some troubleshooting tips on how to correct it. Here it says the bookmark was added properly, so we’ll move on to the next step.

We have our link bookmarked and we are ready to hit Complete Trade.

Now, if you were to return to the admin page, you would see it a completed social trade.

Now that you have your accounts set up, you are ready to start trading social bookmarks with other LavaLinx users. First, login to your LavaLinx account.

From here you can click “Manage” on a particular site, or you can go straight to the “Create Social Trade” button in the bottom corner of the screen.

This will list out all pages that are available to trade social bookmarks with, starting with those most recently added. It also lists the “Type” of trade.

The “Bookmarks Remaining” is the number of remaining times you may bookmark that particular page. The “Social Accounts” lists the number of social accounts that site has available to bookmark your site.

Select the page you would like to bookmark and hit “Social Trade” on the right column.

Social bookmarks are different than link trades. With link trades, relevancy is key, but with social bookmarks, you will want to use variety. This will show the social sites that you are interested in a multitude of topics, which will help your social account appear more natural.

The next screen lets you select which page of yours that you’d like them to bookmark.

Click on the page you prefer and hit “Next”.

Now you are able to choose the page of theirs that you will bookmark. Here there is one, so select it and hit next.

Then, select the user you would like to bookmark your page. We have this feature for sites that have multiple users on one account.

On step four, you get to choose which social sites you and the other webmaster will bookmark these pages on.

LavaLinx has a counter on this section that ensures it is an even and fair trade. If you select an uneven number, our system will remind you that you must select an equal number of sites from each side.

When you’ve selected the social accounts you want, click next and you will be taken to the review screen. This is where you will look over the trade for any errors. Hit back if you need to fix anything, or if you’re finished click “Submit”.

You are now finished with creating a social trade, and it has been sent to the other webmaster for review.

In our prior post, we discussed how to create social accounts. We also touched on how to link social accounts:

If you have more than one LavaLinx account, you can select which accounts you would like to use a particular social site on. For example, lets say you add Digg as a social site. You have it on your main account, but you don’t want it on your secondary account. This is where you would navigate to change that, and vice-versa; If you want to bookmark on a secondary account site, you will need to go to [the Social Boomarks] page and link your social account with it.

This quick tutorial will go over in detail how to link up your social accounts with all of your LavaLinx accounts. Below, we have five social bookmarking accounts created, however in the bottom left box, you’ll see that there are zero of five social bookmarking accounts currently linked. To change this, click on the “Manage” tab of “Linked with (your account name)“.

Now you can see our five social accounts, our username, and a check box on the far right side.

Check the box of whichever social accounts you would like to have linked to this LavaLinx account. We’ve checked three. By selecting these, you are indicating to LavaLinx that during social trading, other LavaLinx users may request trades to your site using those selected social accounts. It also enables private bookmarking on those accounts.

You will NOT be able to bookmark on a social site if it is not linked. For example, you can see the Delicious and Reddit are not checked, so you would not be able to save a bookmark on either Delicious or Reddit for this LavaLinx account.

If you return to the Social Bookmarks page (middle button on the top navigation), you can see that we now have three of five social accounts linked with this LavaLinx account.

You would continue linking whichever social accounts you prefer on each LavaLinx account.