Posted by on June 19th, 2010 View Comments
Posted in Social Media |
Digg is one of the most popular and influential web directories today. Many companies use Digg in order to get ahead in search engine rankings. Aside from this, Digg also provides web developers with a tool that can make their link building processes much easier and convenient.
Points to Considering in Maximizing Digg
Endorsed by Google and other search engines, Digg has become one of the top choices for websites and their developers when it comes to building link popularity. Basically, Digg is a web directory that features web articles visitors can link to if they found it interesting enough. But more than this, there are a lot of aspects to Digg that web developers should know and take advantage of.
Building link popularity only comes as a result of the links produced by being published in Digg. Getting listed on Digg mainly serves the purpose of getting as much natural links as possible. You write an article, have it published on Digg and hope that readers and visitors find it interesting enough to link to it and share it in their websites.
The traffic that Digg will direct to your web page is already a given. It is the natural inbound links that will be disputed here. Having ten thousand customers troop to your website does not mean anything if no one links to it, at least from the search engines’ point of view.
Are they interesting enough to read especially for your target readers? Are the titles catchy enough to entice even those who are originally not searching for your topic? Are they keyword rich, enough to convince readers that yours is a good site to be linked to?
These are just some of the questions that web developers should consider in seeking publication on Digg. One can drop the thought of making Digg a selling place. Instead, developers should focus on the things that will encourage readers and fellow web developers to link to your webpage. Once this is done, you can say that you have successfully used Digg; sales would almost always follow.
You can be assured that when you get published in Digg, all those links back to you are almost always natural. Search engines turn a favorable eye on pages that have natural links in them. They frown on those that have links that seem to have been bought and unrelated to the topics of their pages.
Out of the thousands of traffic that your website will be receiving, a small number of them will probably be interested enough and link back to your site. These are natural links that you actually did not exert that much effort for.
How to maximize the Usage of Digg for your Website
Digg, as was said above, provides an easy process for websites who would want to avail of its services. Here are a few steps that developers can do to maximize the use of Digg for their websites:
1) Write readable and keyword-rich articles
Of course since this is Digg, a well made, researched and original article is a must. This is the main bullet used by developers to get published in the Digg directory.
2) Have your story “dugg”
Having a story published on the Digg home page is the main goal that developers would want to achieve when they sign-up for its services. Digg basically ranks articles according to two criteria. These are:
60 Diggs is the magic number that an article must achieve in order for it to be considered being featured in Digg’s homepage.
For the first hour at least, an article is required to accomplish a third of the 60 Diggs in order to get published in the front page.
With so many developers submitting articles everyday in the hopes of getting published, the windows for opportunity are very thin.
3) Invite and take advantage of your Digg’s friends feature
Invite a few friends, family members or officemates to sign-up for Digg and remind them to Digg your articles whenever you publish something. The more friends and relatives present in Digg, the better.
You can also try adding other users that also Digg. Though you do not really know who the person are, connecting to them and linking back to their websites can form a bond between you and another Digger. This can lead to exchanges of Diggs which is a WIN-WIN situation for both parties.
4) Publish as many articles as you can and aim to be a top-submitter.
There are some developers that are confident enough to make just one article and pass it on to Digg. Before you can become like that, make several articles and submit them to Digg for publication. Authors who submit a lot of articles and then make it often to Digg’s front page can be awarded as top submitter by the directory.
5) Web developers can focus their articles on topics that are not about SEO.
In Digg, anything SEO is almost always rejected outright. Although it may be a well-written article about search engine optimization, Digg users usually have the tendency to categorize these pieces immediately as spam. Web developers however still have a lot of choices left with regards to topics they can write about and pass to Digg to be published. Top subjects include:
It has been proven that “Diggers” have the tendency to link to articles that features funny everyday happenings. Hilarious reviews of shirts from Amazon have been one of the most “dugg” posts during the past year.
These articles usually get thousands of Diggs per day. Digg users usually are people from various backgrounds so articles made from any viewpoint can be expected to be received popularly in the directory.
Not only can Digg be applied to text articles, authors can also submit and post other media such as videos and photo files. Hilarious and cute videos usually do the trick for Digg users.
• Celebrities and other Entertainment News
There are a lot of people out there who use Digg to find for the hottest and latest celebrity issues or gossips circulating the Internet. Writing about these can guarantee you Diggs all day!
If you are a technology buff who likes to blog about technology news and developments, you’ll score big when you write about Linux and other topics related to Open Sources. For example, Digg users usually favor articles talking about Ubuntu, KDE, and Debian.
The release of the iPad by Apple has created write a buzz in the Internet and reviews about it are searched by lots of Digg users out there. Diggers are generally more biased towards Apple when it comes to technology than other companies such as Microsoft.
There is always gaming news popping out of Yahoo or other News Pages everyday. From reviews to releases to planned releases, gaming is always a popular topic in whatever website. Digg is no different. Never a day goes by when one article about gaming and other gaming related news do not make Digg’s front page.
Or if there’s no other choice left, you can talk about Digg itself! Articles about it, like its developments and new features, usually score well among Digg users. Also, articles talking about its founder Kevin Rose usually find their way to the directory’s front page.
Digg, a Valuable SEO tool
Making use of Digg as an SEO tool may not be as simple as others but equally as effective. For link building, Digg and other similar websites are crucial not only in providing customer traffic but more importantly providing the links that will make your web pages matter in the eyes of search engines. Taking advantage of Digg may be one of the best moves you will ever do in the whole process of your link building.
