Here’s how you should be using Tag and Ping, and if everybody did this, then the value of tagging and pinging would be maintained:
1. If you’re going to tag your own site at the social bookmarking sites, that’s fine, but do it one time only for each site. Don’t set up multiple accounts to do it; that’s cheating the system. Instead, encourage your users to use a social bookmarking service to bookmark your site. You could even find it worthwhile to tell your users about social bookmarking sites and the benefits of using them, because there are plenty of people out there who still don’t know about these sites.
2. Make sure you give your users the opportunity to bookmark your site easily, with links to common social bookmarking sites on each page.
3. In my opinion, products designed to subvert the search engines by making use of multiple accounts on social bookmarking sites should be avoided. Even if you do secure a high ranking for important keywords, this will not last. The search engines employ people to search for sites that are using “black-hat SEO” techniques, and this is about as black-hat as they come. As soon as what you’ve done is discovered, you will be de-listed.
4. Why not make use Jean Philippe Schoeffel’s excellent, new Socialize-It service? It’s free, using advertising revenue to pay for itself; it’s easy to set up; and if space on your web pages is at a premium, it’s ideal! You don’t need to keep track of the social bookmarking sites, as this will be done for you, and it means that whatever the user’s favourite social bookmarking site is, they’ll be able to add it quickly and easily. If you click through the link, you’ll see the variations of code that are available. I’m using the Javascript version here.
5. Don’t neglect other methods of optimising your site pages for specific keywords, such as article writing, link exchanging and emphasising desired keywords within your page layout.
David Thomas, The Affiliate Marketer
