Last May 2008, I wrote OnlyWire Bites the Dust, but it looks like there are new stirrings of life over at OnlyWire. Some changes have been made, and Linkatopia even blogged about the new management of OnlyWire. So, does this mean multi-bookmarking services can now deliver loads of traffic once again to your website?

First of all, let's have a look at the bookmarking services that the new OnlyWire.com can help you with:

Ask, Bibsonomy, Blinklist, Bluedot, BookmarkSync, Connotea, del.icio.us, Diigo, Facebook, Furl, Google Bookmarks, Jumptags, Linkatopia, Multiply, My Web Yahoo, Newsvine, Simpy, Spurl, Technorati, Twitter.

In other words, assuming you have registered accounts in those social bookmarking services, OnlyWire can help you automatically log into each of those and post a link to whatever web site you would like to promote. The belief here is that when numerous bookmarking sites point to your blog post, that web page of yours will rise up the search engine results.

You know what they say about getting more web traffic: produce Content and Backlinks.

Just remember, however, that this approach to building backlinks is artificial, which makes this tactic rather short-term. If someone asks you: "Why did you bookmark that site?" what would you say? Didn't you bookmark your own site simply because you wanted to promote it?

Here is the key point behind Social Bookmarking sites: People surf around and find webpages that they really like. After they've found such sites, they will bookmark it so that they can return to that site in the future. In other words, they truly like those sites.

If you're going to use SB sites to bookmark your own sites, then the purpose isn't really so that you can revisit those webpages. The main objective is to promote your own sites, right? And since that does not match the true spirit of social bookmarking, well... You can almost predict how long that fun ride will last. ;-)

OnlyWire does provide a very convenient service. Imagine, you no longer have to log into 20 different sites. Anything you post via OnlyWire gets automatically published in those 20 sites. Convenient, right?

Just ask yourself this: Why do you have accounts in 20 different social bookmarking sites? Isn't one enough for you?

On the other hand, you might prefer to create niches. For example, you can use del.icio.us to bookmark sites about topic #1, and Simpy to handle sites or web pages about topic #2. That is completely fine. If you do segment your bookmarks this way, then what is the point of having a service that logs automatically into your 20 different SB sites?

Such a service works well if you will submit the same blog or web site to each of those SB sites. Clearly, the point is online promotion aimed at improving your search engine ranking. And if that is the inescapable intent, how can we then resolve this with Linkatopia's: "We still caution against using multi-bookmarking services to manipulate search engine rankings. We feel this is unethical and that search engines should remain a level playing field."

If you want to use automated social bookmarking services, then go ahead. Just make sure you are aware of what your true intent is, and if it involves simply driving more traffic to your web site or blog, then don't be surprised if this tactic doesn't last too long.

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"OnlyWire Reborn?"
First Posted: November 16, 2008 | Filed in: Web Traffic

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