Definition
Social bookmarking SEO is a link building technique that involves submitting web page URLs to social bookmarking platforms (formerly Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, and today Reddit, Mix, Pocket, Folkd, etc.) to generate backlinks and accelerate search engine indexation. Historically, this technique was very popular because bookmarking sites had high domain authority and links were often dofollow. Today, the vast majority of these links are nofollow and their direct ranking impact is negligible. Nevertheless, social bookmarking retains value for link profile diversification, referral traffic generation, and signaling new pages to crawlers. Massive automation of this technique with tools like SocialAdr or BookmarkingDemon is considered spam and can trigger penalties. Google has explicitly cited automated bookmarking as a spam practice in its guidelines.
Key Points
- Submitting URLs to social bookmarking platforms to generate backlinks and traffic
- The majority of bookmarking links are now nofollow with minimal direct SEO impact
- Massive automation is detected as spam and can trigger Google penalties
- Reasonable use remains useful for link profile diversification and referral traffic generation
Practical Examples
Frequently Asked Questions
The direct ranking impact has become negligible since most links are nofollow. However, organic and relevant sharing on platforms like Reddit or Hacker News can generate quality referral traffic and indirectly contribute to SEO via engagement signals.
Massive automation leads to account suspension on bookmarking platforms, creation of very low-quality links, and can increase your spam score. Google explicitly considers automated bookmarking a link spam practice.
Go Further with LemmiLink
Discover how LemmiLink can help you put these SEO concepts into practice.
Last updated: 2026-02-07