What are the differences between social bookmarking and traditional link building?

There are some key distinctions to understand between social bookmarking and more traditional link building for SEO purposes:

The main goal of traditional link building is to earn high-quality backlinks from authoritative, relevant websites in your niche or industry. These links directly signal authority to search engines and help improve your rankings and organic traffic.

Social bookmarking, on the other hand, is more focused on sharing and promoting your content on sites like Reddit, Stumble Upon, etc. The primary aim is increasing content visibility and driving some referral traffic. Any backlinks you get are more of a secondary perk.

Speaking of those links, that's where a big difference lies. With traditional link building, you're going after links from powerful, reputable sources that carry a ton of weight and credibility. The links from general social bookmarking sites don't really move the needle much for SEO.

How you actually go about getting those links is another key differential. Traditional link building involves a lot of manual outreach, creating linkable assets, guest posting, and really earning those links. Social bookmarking links are usually obtained by just sharing your stuff on those platforms, often in a more automated way.

There's also a difference in your target audience. Traditional link-building is targeting other influencers, bloggers, and folks in the same niche. Social bookmarking is sharing stuff with the general user base of those sharing platforms.

Long-term, traditionally earned links from authoritative sources are much more durable and impactful for maintaining high rankings over time. Social bookmarking can provide some temporary visibility boosts, but the links themselves don't hold much lasting SEO value.

Don't get me wrong, social bookmarking can be one element of a broader online promotion strategy. But if you're really trying to move the needle for organic search traffic, it shouldn't be a replacement for good old-fashioned strategic link-building within your market and niche.