Nowadays a lot is talked about social media marketing. In every second article, press release, and blog on internet marketing you will come through the term Social Media Marketing. Now the question here is what social media marketing is, and how it's in search engine optimization for a website?

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing means promoting your website, business through popular social media channels. Social media marketing is a very powerful marketing strategy and it not only brings quality links but is also helpful in brand marketing and getting massive traffic to a website. Reason why I am posting information about "Power of social media marketing and SEO" is that while I was analyzing web stats for a few clients' websites for whom we have recently finished social bookmarking campaigns. Below is my observation:

- Number of visitors from social bookmarking websites were equal to number of visitors from search engines

- Websites like Stumbleupon, Digg and Del.icio.us were among top referrals.

- Social bookmarks created get indexed by search engines very quickly.

- Social bookmarks pages appear in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) in a short span of time whereas a website may take anywhere from three to six months to get in top ranks

- With time, social bookmark pages get good PR value. Thus you get a link from an authority website and a content rich page with good PR value.

Importance of Social Media Marketing In SEO

Social media marketing is important for every type of business. If your website is selling products, services or even if it's targeting adsense/ad publishing revenue social media marketing is an effective way for making your website profitable with time. Below are some benefits of social media marketing for your website:

- One way links: All of us know links are the key for getting top search rankings. It's difficult for a new website to gain links through traditional link exchange methods. Quality links from authority websites can be achieved through social bookmarking. If your article is posted at home page of Digg or Delicious, then you can get hundreds of one way links within no time.

- Targeted traffic: Social media websites get millions of visitors daily, who browse through their favorite categories to read articles on them. If your articles/bookmarks sound interesting then the user starts following your bookmarks/website for more interesting information.