I was number 2 on some really hard keywords for in Google. However, I did some social bookmarking for that page and actually got dropped down to 14th? Do you you think this has to do with getting multiple clicks from various social bookmarking sites?
Should I have done it slower, like add digg and then the following week mixx, and so on?
Any advice?
Well Google keeps updating its Index and more so for the most frequently searched keywords.
IMHO I doubt that getting links from Social Bookmarking sites will hamper your ranking of your site if not otherwise.
However many doesnt realize that when they put “Bookmark / Share” on their own sites like Share this on Facebook, Digg, mixx… you are not diluting your PageRank. And make sure that those links are “nofollow” or you implement the same through Javascript.
Cheers,
You’re not going to be penalized for social bookmarking your website. That being said, it may not have actually helped your website either depending on how the bookmarking was done. I’m one that doesn’t actually believe social bookmarking helps your ranking at all, but that’s another argument for another day.
There’s some folks on SitePoint that have evidence to believe that bad links pointing to your site can actually hurt your ranking. My opinion on that is that if you can’t be easily tied to the bad links then it’s not going to hurt your ranking. The major social bookmarking sites aren’t seedy or spammy so I don’t think you need to worry about that.
However, you may want to look into some more useful ways of boosting/keeping your ranking other than social bookmarking as the links generated from that are essentially worthless.
actually it is climbing again. Not sure why I went down after being number 2 on Google. Really kind of weird.
I have to agree with Jeff on this…Social bookmarking are as good as web directories it might be actaully worst, because you have thousands of web directories which CAN boost your ranking while you have a very few may be 100 max social bookmarking website that will do so so little to you rankings.
So just forget about them or atleast keep them as your very last resort
I will have to say I disagree that they don’t help. If used properly they can help you a lot. I tend to stick to 6 or so and deeplink them per page. I have done it for seo clients in the past. I think I over reacted in my thread when listing this 
Agreed.
… other than social bookmarking as the links generated from that are essentially worthless.
Why are links from social bookmarking sites “essentially worthless”?
If the SBS’s homepage is PR4, just an example, and I get a clean, followable
link from that page to my page, why is that worthless?
What am I missing here?
Bompa
Exactly, Your keywords are dancing on SERP’s that’s kind of normal these days when you build some links to your pages, I would also like to know how old is your site as this happens a lot with older sites with no domain history.
No it is not because of social bookmarking, it is always good to promote your site< i thing it happens because of competition. At the same time also distribute articles and also bookmark them to get link back…
Social bookmarking never and ever affects your PR. Most of them are no follow now a days and they have no effect in PR. These SBS are used just to bring traffic if you had given an attractive title and description. So try to get proper backlinks and concentrate on your On page optimization.
Sure, it could be worthwhile if:-
Many SBS fall down on points 2 & 4, and I think there are very few 3’s around. So that’s why I wouldn’t chase Social Bookmarking Links (other than to actually get people viewing my stuff).
Would always appreciate being proved wrong though 