Using Digg as part of your search engine marketing campaign

Many optimizers try to find new traffic in a variety of ways. One more modern method is by trying to create a stir on a social networking or social bookmarking site. One of the bigest sites, as far as new, informative content is concerned is Digg, a site that allows users to recommend (digg) or 'bury' a story according to their perception of its usefulness to the community. This can be a hit & miss affair, subject to whimsy and to the fact that you are promoting something rather than doing something for altruistic purposes. The results, though, can be more than worthwhile, with massive numbers of browsers being drawn to a site that has something which evokes zeitgeist.

The frustration of trying to work out just what makes a good story or just how Digg works can be eased in knowing that Digg has an algorithm in order to assess which pages are the most popular at any given time & should be thrust into the limelight of the Digg homepage. The algorithm is used to ensure that community participation is fair and that no one can unduly influence content promotion. Therefore, the algorithm is kept secret from the community to prevent people from bypassing or manipulating it.

Unlike editorially driven sites like Slashdot where news is handpicked by a tiny group of individuals, socially driven sites use the votes aggregated by the community to decide what content gets promoted to their home pages to be viewed by the masses. At the same time, content promotion isn't as simple as just comparing absolute number of votes that each submission gets and then promoting the ones with the most votes. There are several other things to consider:

Recent participation rank of user and followers

Depending on how successful you have recently been on Digg, subsequent successes may be more difficult. The rank and recent successes of a user are taken into account both when you are submitting a story and also while Digging (voting on stories). If you get a quick succession of Diggs from "high-value" users, you are likely to be promoted faster and at a lower number of Diggs, than if even dozens of new users Digg you. This, of course, is to ensure that the Diggs are of good quality and the community is actually doing its work by voting for good content and burying bad content.

Voting activity

The number of Diggs your story will require to reach the home page is correlated to the number of votes (Diggs) generally being cast on Digg at any given time and how your story compares to the average.

Submission category and activity in the category

Competition in some categories (Technology, Word and Business) is much fiercer than in other categories (Sports, Entertainment) and therefore it is much easier to submit and have something promoted in the Sports/Motorsport category than Technology/Tech. Industry News. Also, along with being compared to general voting activity on Digg, your content is compared more directly (and probably with more weight) to content in its category. For example, it is possible to have a story promoted at 50 Diggs even though it's not high on the upcoming queue for all sections, as long as it is at the top in the queue for its category.

Speed of votes and diversity of voters

The faster a story gets votes, the lower the vote count has to be at which it is promoted. For example, a story may collect 120 Diggs over 24 hours and not be promoted. If the same story gets 90 Diggs in one hour it will almost certainly hit the front page. At the same time, however, it is incredibly important to have diversity in votes. Diversity helps prevent people from banding together into "voting-rings" and unfairly pushing their stories to the top. This is one of the reasons why you see stories from top-ranked users sit at the top of the queue for hours waiting to fulfill the algorithm's diversity requirement (i.e. they are penalized for having a following of users that Digg every one of their stories).

Buries received

This is quite straightforward. The more buries you, the longer it will take for your content to be promoted. If the Bury to Digg ratio (which is not 1:1; buries are weighted more heavily than Diggs) is too high, your story will completely be removed from the queue. That said, it is possible for a story to acquire enough votes to outgrow the Buries it gets.

Comments and comment ratings received

Participation in the comments can help push a story over the edge. People think that inserting "great article—thanks!" will help further their cause, while in reality these fake comments have the exact opposite effect. There is nothing easier than spotting a spammy submission with fake comments and burying it to oblivion. Naturally acquired comments (and ones that are voted up by the community), on the other hand, help tip the content promotion algorithm in your favor.

Myths

There are a number of misconceptions about the algorithm that are worth addressing. Following on from above, most of them are common sense but they can save you masses of time whe you know them. These mosconceptions are:


An absolute number of votes is required

There is no absolute number. The number varies daily and even hourly. As mentioned before, the number of Diggs you need varies based on submission category, recent participation record of the submitter and subsequent Diggers, as well as the number of votes and the time in which they are aggregated and the diversity of the voters.

You're doomed if your story isn't submitted by a top-user

There is no such thing as content being automatically promoted to home-page. Even the best content, submitted by the most consistent user can get buried if enough people don't like it and Bury it. The algorithm tries to ensure a level playing field for all users (though this doesn't always work), and in fact is sometimes harsher on top users than on newer ones.

Wrong: Number of friends is important

The number of friends you add on Digg is completely irrelevant. What Digg looks for is diversity in the Diggs a story receives. Digg friends are likeminded people & will not help your diversity.

There is a 24-hour window for success

A small number of submissions do get promoted after submission if people continue to regularly show interest in them. The key is in the story being interesting rather than in a timescale.

Planning your web presence

These days, a website is a must for businesses. With over 8 in 10 businesses using broadband, the Internet has become as useful a resource as any to find information.

Ask yourself how you find information about potential suppliers. Do you use the Yellow Pages, do you look in the newspaper or in trade magazines or do you finds search engines like Google are far quicker and can deliver informaiton that answers all your questions?

The planning of a web presence should never be taken lightly. You are creating a shop window (or even a shop) that is acting as your online ambassador 24 hours a day. If you judge the people you do business by how they appear then people will judge you by your website. This can be truly liberating, however, as the Internet gives even the smallest business the chance to shine. This can only happen, though, if thought is given to the following aspects of your online arm:

Domain Name - The first step in gaining a web presence comes with registering a domain name. Ensure that your name makes it clear what your company is about as this will help your search engine rankings in the long-run.

Hosting - In order to put your site on the Internet, it must be hosted on a web server. There are a myriad of hosting companies offering different services. You need to think whether you're going to stream video or audio from the site, whether the site is built on a database, what scripts the server needs to run (do you just need a contact form or will you need something more elaborate) and how many people will use the site in order to make an informed decision.

Copywriting is an important part of selling online. Our research has shown that clear, well-written copy on the homepage of an e-commerce site increases sales by 40%on average.

Design encompasses a number of subjects from the logo to the look, feel and structure of your site. Be sure to set up your site in a way that emphasises what you do and why you do it better than anyone else. Try to devote seperate pages to different elements of your business as this will help larger portions of your site to be of relevance for those searching for you.

Optimization is a key part of any business's web strategy. Without trumpeting yourself to the general public you are practically invisible. Without favourable search engine rankings you limit your audience to those who already know about the site which is not helpful at all.

Try to find an optimizer that knows the specifics of the UK market and the details of UK searches. Be sure that the firm offers statistical packages showing not only how you are improving in the rankings but how many people are visiting your site as a result of the optimization process.

Marketing - A good design firm should be able to offer marketing services. Marketing can cost as much or as little as you want it to and it can bring massive rewards. Try to include a news page so that your site's content is kept fresh and up-to-date. Include anything that is newsworthy in this section and people will begin to pick up on it.

Advertising - If you are advertising products or a high-value service you may need to consider a pay per click advertising scheme. This can bring you instant traffic and sales. See if your design firm has pay per click services.

Email campaigns - In order to keep your clients and customers up-to-date, an email campaign can be an unobtrusive but highly effective way of increasing sales. Try to run a campaign before every special offer or change in your company's practices. Be sure that your campaign tracks the number of emails that are read, the number that are bounced back & treated as spam and the number of sales made as a result of the email so that you can calculate your return on investment.

Before planning a new website or upgrading an existing one, it is important to bear all of these things in mind. If you can find a firm that can offer a comprehensive service or at least if you think about these aspects of a web presence for yourself, your site will be better planned & there will not be problems down the line. It is easy for an optimizer to get involved beofre a site has been designed than after and some simple advice can make a massive difference to your rankings.

Link Building - Starting Out

The most important part of any optimization campaign is link-building. Getting relevant links from relevant sites to your content will improve your rankings like nothing else.

In order to get you started, I've assembled a few pointers:

Apply to the Open and Yahoo! directories

Submit to solid directories such as Joe Ant, Skaffe and Gimpsy

Join your chamber of commerce, industry association, marketing organisaition, masonic lodge or anything to get your name out.

Issue press releases on a regular basis. Printed media gets you know & media websites will include the printed text & links.

Buy a list of high-profile journalists and contact directly for one-on-one interviews

Backlink your competitors and those ranking ahead of you for link and advertising leads.

Announce your new site in targeted industry magazines. Buy advertising, if necessary.

Comment on the sites of prominent bloggers in your industry to get your site known.

Create a blog and update it regularly. If your site is seen as a destination rather than a passing-place, you will receive more weeks. Add the blog to all the blog directories & RSS feeds to RSS directories.

Some of these things cost money. If you are just starting out, you will learn far more by not paying in the first instance, you will find out how to get links for free & you will quickly find what works. If you have a budget, split it wisely and do not exceed it.

Finding Quality Directories

There are a number of directories on the Internet. From the Yahoo Directory which started out as Jerry Yang's way of cataloguing interesting sites, to the Open Directory, Google's pet project, your entry in a directory can show your site's intentions as being serious. However, there are thousands of directories out there and, with last month's shake-up many have lost their value as they fail to provide useful or filtered information.

Paying for an entry in a directory may appeal as it is a guaranteed way to get your site listed and linked on the Internet for free. The problem is that this can be unending. It is hard to know if you should pay for a listing and where you should draw the line. Matt Cutts, Google's mainstay on optimization issues, gives the following guidelines on the usefulness of a directory:

I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a
directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:-
Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets
closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.- What is the quality
of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the
urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That
doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.- If there is a fee, what’s
the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for
the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.

If your fee is extortionate, if it guarantees you entry to a directory or if it enables you to get the anchor text you want on the link, you should not
entertain buying it.

Do not rule out directories altogether, though, as the good ones include an element of human interaction that search engines cannot provide. Search engines reward such resources as they inform searches and help to make them relevant.

Keep assessing your keywords

The Internet, more than anything, is subject to fashions, fads & whimsy. Everything is transitory and people and their wants change too. Keywords are the same. As users become more savvy & niche markets are opened up, trends in searches change. It is worth keeping on top of this if you want to continue to drive qualified browsers to your site.

In order to research your keywords successfully you need to seek out keywords within your niche; analyze your keywords for potential profitability & decide which keywords are appropriate for your business. Just because a keyword is popular doesn’t mean that it will be profitable for you. That’s where you have to analyze the keywords themselves as search terms and weigh them against your own site concept.

Recheck the keywords you are using every six months. You might not need to make changes but you may get a sense of how your market is changing and what your company needs to do in order to keep up.

Localise your website

It is often very difficult to make your website's local advantege count for anything. UK-based companies look to find advantages to having a UK-based website but don't want to be seen as UK-only enterprises nor do they like beign lost in the global results that many search engines can give.

Last week, Google began to offer a solution. Business location can be registered through Google Webmaster Central. In the tools tab, thee is an option to set the geographic location.

This is especially helpful if businesses trade over the web with a .com domain or if large companies have country-specific sites.