Social Bookmarking began back in 1996 when itList launched, since then hundreds more have popped up and now you can find social bookmarking sites for almost any niche market. Social bookmarking is essentially an online place to store your bookmarks, which you can tag, summarize, and submit to the various bookmarking sites. Most online bookmarking sites are public, meaning when you post your bookmark anyone that searches for the tags you used when you created the bookmark can find it. This is what makes social bookmarking an excellent tool for internet marketing, website promotion, blog marketing etc. When utilizing social bookmarks in select targeted niche categories you can drive quality highly targeted visitors to the blog, website, article or any online page you are promoting. Social bookmarking is free, so you can receive hundreds or even thousands of highly targeted visitors in a short amount of time if you utilize these websites to their full potential.

The most popular online bookmarking sites include Digg, Propeller, Stumbleupon, and Reddit. This list is just a short sample of the many bookmarking sites available.

To find thousands of these types of websites just open up Google and use search strings such as these:

"Social bookmarking sites"

"Popular social bookmarking websites"

"Social bookmarking lists"

"Automated social bookmarking tools"

These simple search strings should allow you to find the most popular and widely used bookmarking sites. If you're interested in targeting select niche categories you can simple add your category at the beginning of each search string. For example, if you're interested in submitting a bookmark that is related to science you might try searching for "science social bookmarking sites".

One of the advantages of using these services include creating back links for your websites and blogs, Google and other search engines use back links to determine the position you rank in the search engine and under what search terms. Using these social bookmarks is an extremely easy way to create quality backlinks pointing back to your work. To utilize these services correctly always make sure to place your bookmark in the correct category as you will not only receive traffic from search engines from using social bookmarking sites, but also from the other visitors to the bookmarking sites.

Digg.com is by far the largest of the bookmarking websites. If you create high quality content you can easily receive thousands of votes and visitors just from this website alone. It is not unheard of and happens frequently, especially if you get enough votes to reach the front page. A good tip to maximize the potential of digg is to acquire as many friends as possible. Add other members of the website and they will have the chance to befriend you and become a "mutual friend". What this does is allow you to "shout" out your bookmark to all of the people who have added you as a mutual friend, giving you instant votes for your bookmark. The more votes you receive and the more popular your submission becomes will enable you to move up the ranks and hit the high traffic areas of the website such as the "upcoming hot news" or "most popular stories" pages. These tips should help you create a high quality stream of free visitors to your content in no time.