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.