However, the way Digg works is still a mystery to so many people doing business online. So, let's pull back the curtain and reveal the secrets to successfully building links to your site via the power of Digg.
Digg is a Link Building Tool, not a Traffic Generating Tool
The whole point of getting listed on Digg is to expose your content to as many people as possible in the hope that some of them will link to you. Getting on the front page of Digg will send you a huge surge of traffic, often 5,000 to 10,000 people within the first few hours of your page reaching Digg's frontpage. However, that traffic surge will be extremely short-lived and few of those people will return to your site again.
So forget about selling them anything. Instead, you're operating on the principle that the more people who see your site, the more likely it is that some will link to you. If 10,000 people visit your site and you have content that they find highly interesting, it's not uncommon for 100 of those people to link to you.
That's 100 natural links that you didn't have to ask for. All you did was create the content and expose it to a huge group of people—and some of them liked it enough to link to it. These are exactly the types of links that Google responds favorably to when ranking pages in the search results.
Whenever marketing with social media—whether through Digg or other sites like Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit, or Netscape—remember that it's primarily about exposing your content to as wide an audience as possible and getting them to link to you. It may be ego boosting to see your traffic stats go through the roof for a day or two, but if none of those people link to you then you haven't accomplished anything beyond increased bandwidth charges.
With that in mind, let's examine how a story makes it to the top of Digg so it can start acquiring some of those links.
Everybody Needs Friends
Whether or not a story makes it to the front page of Digg depends primarily on two factors:
- The number of Diggs that story gets. A general rule of thumbs is that it takes about 60 Diggs within the first 24 hours to hit the front page. That can vary depending on the category the story is in (sports and entertainment tend to require fewer Diggs) and the reputation of the person submitting the story (if they're a top submitter it often requires fewer Diggs).
- How fast the story acquires Diggs. For a story to have any chance of making it to the front page it generally needs to get at least 20 Diggs within the first hour of being submitted. Otherwise it begins to quickly fade into obscurity.
One way to ensure that your story gets a sufficient number of Diggs quickly enough is to use Digg's friends feature. If you can, get a few of your coworkers, friends, relatives or other people you know to sign up. If your story is able to get 5 or 10 Diggs right off the start it goes a long way to establishing the momentum you'll need to get your story to the front page.
You can also add other Diggers to your friends list. It's best to add Diggers who have similar interests as you. Find stories on Digg that are interesting to you, Digg them, then view the profile of the person who submitted the story. If they have submitted several other stories you find interesting, add them as a friend.
Once you do, Digg will keep a running tab on your Digg sidebar of the stories they submit and Digg. Be sure to Digg and comment on some of those as well. If that user adds you as a friend, they will be notified of the stories you Digg and will be likely to Digg them for you to help increase your chances of reaching the Digg frontpage.
Having more friends increases the chances that other Diggers will see and Digg your story. However, befriending people is only really useful if those people befriend you back. While it's tempting to add the top Diggers as friends, most are likely to ignore you. Instead, seek out users with common interests who are likely to also befriend you. They should also have a fairly regular history of Digging stories; because friends won't help you much unless they Digg the stories you submit.
As you can see, consistently succeeding with Digg (or any other social media site) does takes commitment. While it is possible to just submit a great article and have it reach Digg's frontpage, you'll find that getting involved in the community and regularly submitting, Digging, and commenting on quality stories, all the while building a solid friend base. will greatly increase the chances of your own articles reaching the Digg front page.
Users who submit a large number of stories that make the front page can attain top submitter status. While Digg's ranking algorithm is kept secret to prevent abuse, it does appear that top submitters do require fewer Diggs to have their stories reach the front page. Unless, of course, those top users are perceived to be abusing the system.
Digg Values Diversity
Some Diggers use the friends feature to vote in blocks, consistently Digging each others posts in order to increase the chances that stories submitted by users in their group make that front page. Digg does monitor abuse of the friends feature, and if they find that the same people are always Digging the posts you submit then they will increase the number of Diggs required for you to reach the front page. Users with a consistent pattern of abuse can even get their accounts deleted.
Getting Diggs from a diverse range of users is important, as is Digging stories from many different users. Don't create a situation where you're Digging and being Dugg only by users in your friends group. The friends feature can be very powerful, but branch out a bit to keep your account natural looking.
Diggers Don't Digg SEO
Digg's members tend to view anything related to SEO as spam. In fact, several popular SEO blogs have already been banned from Digg and not because they were spamming. In most cases these SEO blogs weren't even submitting their own stories. Instead, readers of these blogs were submitting posts they liked and some small-minded users on Digg were labeling them as spam simply because the posts were SEO-related.
Once enough Diggers tag pages from your site as spam, your domain gets banned from Digg. So if you want to succeed on Digg, our recommendation is to avoid any references to SEO as much as possible. Most articles about SEO instantly get tagged as spam, regardless of whether they are or not. Instead, pay attention to the types of topics that are making the Digg frontpage and create content based around those. Some of the most popular topics on Digg include:
- Digg – Digg loves itself. Anything about Digg or its founder Kevin Rose stands a pretty good chance of making the frontpage.
- Photography – Cool pictures and how to take them are a consistent hit.
- Linux – Diggers heavily favor Linux and most of its variants, especially Ubuntu, KDE and Debian. In fact, open source software in general does well (especially BitTorrent).
- Apple – Talk about how great Apple is or how much Microsoft sucks. Either one should do the trick.
- AJAX, Web 2.0, Firefox – You get the idea, trendy tech-related stuff.
- Bad stuff about Bush, Iraq, or Fox News – Yep, Digg attracts a pretty liberal crowd.
- Gaming – We've never seen a day go by that a story about the XBox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii, World of Warcraft, or Second Life didn't make the front page.
- Alternative Energy – Especially popular are stories about fuel cell cars. Global warming is a related popular topic.
Once you choose a topic, you can see what previous related stories were most recently successful by going to: http://digg.com/search and selecting Front Page Stories, Last 30 days, Sort by Most Diggs from the drop down menus provided.
At this point you're probably wondering, won't 100 links from Linux-related blogs pointing at my site about baby shoes look a little weird to the search engines. The answer is: Yes, a bit. There is the problem of off topic links skewing your link profile and making it unclear to search engines as to what exactly your site is about.
That's why, whenever possible, you should do your best to submit content that is, at least, loosely related to what your site is about. Again, monitor what types of stories are making the front page and see if any match your topic. Better yet, use the search we just mentioned with some of your top keywords and see if stories related to your topic have made the front page recently.
At any rate, 100 natural links from tech blogs is still far better than 100 artificial links from reciprocal linking or link farms, even if they are off-topic. But try to work in an angle that's related to your topic. Our previous report on marketing with Digg covers this subject in greater depth.
By the way, avoid looking like all you ever do is submit your own stuff—and it isn't smart to make your Digg username the same as your business or domain name. Obviously, that would be an automatic tip-off that you own the page being submitted. It's better to have a friend or coworker submit your page for you using their account. And be sure to Digg and submit stories from a wide variety of sources so it doesn't look like you just signed up to promote yourself.
If at First You Don't succeed...
...try, try again. Remember there's a certain amount of randomization concerning which stories make the front page. Not all stories with a lot of Diggs get frontpage treatment. Many of the frontpage stories are chosen randomly from a pool of popular stories. There's often too many popular stories for them all to be on the frontpage and by randomizing the selection process Digg makes it more difficult to manipulate their system.
Also bear in mind that stories that seem like complete failures on Digg are often still seen by enough people to build at least some links. Even if you only get 3 or 4 links, they still help your overall incoming link popularity on Google. And, as long as you're creating the kind of content people are likely to link to, you're always going to be helping your site—regardless of whether you make the front page of Digg or not. It's impossible to lose if you're developing link-worthy content.
Another Powerful Addition to Your SEO Toolchest
As powerful as Digg is, it's just one of many social media sites which invite users to choose the featured content. And, once you've learned how to use Digg effectively to promote your website, you can move on to any of the others where you can apply this link building strategy. You may even find that one of the other popular social media sites we previously covered achieves better results for you.
One good reason to zero in on other Digg-like social media sites is the fact that Digg's explosion in popularity is making it gradually more difficult to produce great link results. In part, this is because there are so many more stories competing for front page attention. Also, Digg users have gotten a bit more cynical and quicker to remove stories that flagrantly attempt to manipulate the Digg system for marketing purposes. And, of course, Digg's algorithm is rapidly getting better at recognizing unnatural patterns of Digging—such as when groups of friends are all Digging each other's stories to the frontpage.
In spite of all this, Digg remains one of the biggest link building opportunities on the Web. But you must take the time to learn the system, create a presence within the community, and create the stories that appeal to the other members. As social media continues its rapid growth, the skills you learn with Digg can be reapplied again and again to other communities to garner links and exposure on a truly incredible scale.
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