These days, most websites have a bookmarking buttons under their contents e.g. images, videos, blog posts, etc.

The main reason for putting these social bookmarking buttons is to increase traffic and external links.

These social bookmarking buttons work by making it easier for your visitors to bookmark your page. If any of your viewers bookmarked your page and make it to the home page of any of the social bookmarking sites then you will get a huge influx of traffic.

Few pages actually make it to the front page of any major social bookmarking site. But even so, other people browsing those bookmarking sites may stumble upon your links and click on your site. And even if they do not actually click into your site, you may still gain something with search engines for having more external links.

However, you may think twice about putting too many social bookmarking buttons. They might make your site look a bit unprofessional and a bit desperate. The best thing to go about it is to choose a few choice buttons that will still reach the widest audience possible.

Which buttons to choose?

To get started, you need to add popular social bookmarking sites that accept bookmarks and stories on any subject. Some examples: StumbleUpon.com, Del.icou.us, etc. Generally, these sites' buttons are expected to be included. You can also try Google, Yahoo! and/or Live.com. Always be careful how you put them in your template. They might look too invasive.

The next thing to do is to pick some sites that are related to your specific genre. The tricky part is how to balance your audience and your website content.

For instance, if your site has a blog or regularly-updated content then you may want to add a button to Technorati.com. The thing is to do research on which sites your visitors most often visit by putting up a survey or look into new social bookmarking sites in your genre.

No time to pick out buttons

If you're either too busy, too lazy or your template just doesn't have enough room for social bookmarking buttons, you always try services like AddThis.com.

Addthis.com is like a catch all. It has a dynamic drop down to show either several bookmarking buttons or just a link to a page on AddThis.com which allows for easy submission to several social bookmarking sites. Plus, adding just this one AddThis.com button keeps things nice and clean.