Digg Tutorial

What’s a Digg?

Digg (http://digg.com) is a very popular social news website which ranks websites and links based on votes placed by registered users. Digg users are able to submit as many websites as they like for consideration. Once submitted, a site is placed onto an “upcoming” queue and reviewed by other users. Submitted links are rated through a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” enabling any registered user to have their say on a submission. Depending on the interest received, a site can move up through the queue to eventually appear on Digg’s front page.  Each digg user (’digger’) also has the option to “bury” a submitted link by casting a vote to remove the site from the queue. A site generally has 24 hours to progress within the queue in order to have any chance of making the front page.

Now ranking as one of the 100 most trafficed sites on the web, Digg is able to send massive amounts of traffic to any site that receives enough votes to make the front page.  It is able to send so much traffic that it is not entirely uncommon for featured sites to actually go down temporarily as a result.  A site that gets front page attention can easily experience several tens of thousands of page views within a single day.  

What Can Digg do for Me?

In addition to yielding large amounts of traffic, a front page appearance generally results in dozens of smaller sites and blogs linking to the featured website.  This combined with user bookmarks can lead to a permanent increase in daily traffic.  In addition, similar social websites such as Stumbleupon and Reddit often feature similar links due to their users submitting links seen on Digg’s frontpage. A small web host that appeared on Digg’s frontpage recently sold for $2,000. It lacked clients and content, but did have several thousand dollars worth of incoming links and search engine rank.

Due to the value of appearing on the frontpage, achieving such is an extremely difficult task.  Digg uses a complex and ever changing algorithm to decide which links make its front page.  As a result it can be difficult to find a consistent strategy for front page success.  There are, however, a few strategies that can give a submission a much better chance of attracting votes.

Hows it Work?

Digg is a community and established members have a much better chance of receiving votes to their submission than newly joined users.  The top one hundred users on Digg are responsible for more than half the submissions that make it to the front page.  This is largely due to Digg’s community oriented friend system.  Established users tend to have many other Digg members networked in on their friend’s list.  Digg alerts friends to new submissions by these users which leads to dozens of positive votes in a relatively short period. 

A Digg submission climbs the queue based on the total number of positive Digg votes received.  Bury votes, votes from the same users consistently, and long periods between votes can all cause a submission to fall in queue rank and eventually be removed.  

New users can increase their likelihood of having their submissions do well by befriending other Digg users, submitting at slow periods such as the middle of the night, and by getting a few submissions to the front page.  Submitting large numbers of stories can help assuming you’re able to attract at least a few votes for each submission.  This may be subject to change as Digg’s algorithm is constantly updated and operates on several unknown variables.

The Community

Making friends on Digg requires creating an account and being friendly in contacting others.  Using Digg daily will make this easy.  One will be able to learn who the top users are (the ones with dozens of friends and submissions that routinely make the front page).  Digg allows users to message one another, so befriending them can be as simple as making friendly small talk and even discussing Digg and its inner workings.  Chances are high that they’ll be quite knowledgeable on the process of submitting links and some may even be kind enough to submit a story or site for you.

It is unwise to message the top users and beg they submit your site.  You’ll generally be ignored.  Instead, once a relationship has been established you can show them your site and ask for feedback.  If they think it worthy of submission, they’ll probably let you know without you even asking.  Less ethical users have been known to charge for submitting sites to Digg.  Such practices are heavily frowned upon by Digg and offering to pay a user for a submission can lead to trouble.

Self Promotion

Digg receives several thousand link submissions a day.  The sheer volume of so many competing sites makes it absolutely necessary to have an attractive title to help a submitted link stand out.  When creating a submission one should strive to appear amateur.  A well written title stands in danger of looking too professional, a red alarm to most Digg users.  Instead, try mispelling a word or two or purposely using slang-like grammar in your submission.  Thousands of people have tried unsuccessfully to get their own website ‘Dugg’ by submitting themselves.  One should write a title to make their submission stand out without appearing overly praising or reading like an advertisement.  If possible, have a peer with no interest in your site review your title and give feedback.

The Digg community tends to be very hostile to self promotion, blogs, and submissions that read like a commercial.  When submitting your own site you will want to try and receive as many positive votes as possible as quickly as you can.  Friends with Digg accounts can assist with this but keep in mind that having friends create new accounts, or setting up multiple accounts yourself will have a negligible effect on your submission and may actually harm it.

There are commercial services which offer a guaranteed number of votes as well as scripts which can be used to auto-digg submissions.  Use of such options can be expensive and may lead to a permanent ban from all Digg services.