Since the invention of social bookmarking its been a great way to promote content and some of your favorite websites. Its also been unaffected with all of the Google updates in the past year or so. Although to make the most out of your bookmarking whether you are using it for your content, other websites or videos you will want to ensure you are following some of the tips below.
Many webmasters will usually bookmark to more then one social bookmarking site for an increased effect in traffic and exposure so most of these tips will apply to that. The first common mistake when bookmarking is bookmarking only your own websites, blogs or content. I often notice people will bookmark every inner page of their website just to self promote. Why is this bad? Most sites will eventually pick up that you are only promoting your own content and you can risk getting the account locked or banned. So make sure you are also bookmarking other websites that are not yours or even sites in other niches from your own so it looks natural.
Another common mistake made when bookmarking to more then one site is using the same title and description of your bookmark. While often times it will make sense to bookmark using the same title you want some variety there especially after the Penguin update. In this case you can come up with a list of titles and descriptions and rotate them when you are putting them on multiple sites. Not only will this look more natural you will also have better results for the bookmark in the search engines as you will be able to cover more keywords with variation in the titles.
This brings me to my next mistake, avoid using advertisements as the title of your bookmark. An example would be “Franks – Best hotdogs in Boston”. This is pretty much purely advertisement and people will most likely not even read about the story/bookmark. The title of a bookmark is probably one of the most important aspects of a bookmark. This is what is first seen on the site and a good title will get a lot of exposure. For SEO purposes it also helps to use a keyword in your Title as long as its relevant to the bookmark, just ensure not to overuse any keywords.
My last tip for common mistakes is bookmarking pages with low quality content or little to nothing useful for other people to see. A good example of this would be a to a list of products for sale and there is no content but a few photos and prices. On the other hand if there is a sale going on like 30% off it may be helpful to others. Try to bookmark pages with helpful information or entertainment value with videos included.