A few months ago I decided to check the status of my campaign to get a PR 3 ranking in 90 days by generating thousands of backlinks. I entered my url into the backlink checker and to my surprise, the majority of my backlinks were generated by social networking sites. That was not what I was expecting, to tell you the truth I thought that my article marketing efforts was going to yield me the best efforts, but that was not the case. Social networking and Social bookmarking sites was responsible for 40% of my total backlinks.

In the past my best backlink tool was the use of article marketing. I generated backlinks using article marketing by submitting 3 articles to a minimum of 50 directories every week. Using this strategy I was able to triple my backlinks because many of the articles that I submitted was picked by other directories or website owners looking for content for their websites. The process of generating backlinks while using article marketing generally takes few months. Lately with the use of a social bookmarking software, I am able to generate hundreds of backlinks daily.

The social bookmarking software I am talking about is able to post to hundreds of social networking and social bookmarking websites like Digg, Facebook, Sphinn with just one click. Being able to submit to so many high PR ranking social networks is like having the best of both worlds. One benefit is that you will receive high quality backlinks and the other hand you will also generate more traffic to your website. I use these social networks to announce every time I submit a new blog post or article to the directories.

In addition to the obvious possibilities of traffic generation and backlink building, there are other advantages to social networking websites. If you are lucky enough to have your article or blog post make the front page of some of these social networks, you just might need a new server. There have been many stories of servers crashing due to too much traffic from social networks such as Digg, Sphinn and Stumble Upon.

It took me a while to learn how to take advantage of these social networking websites, but I am glad I took time out to catch up with the rest of the world. Web 2.0 strategies has introduced internet marketing to whole new masses of people, adding these strategies to my backlink building arsenal has created better results with less time.