Digg It: The Digg Effect
 by Mattya56
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03-08-2007
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Writing great content will always boost your traffic, increase your ranking and generally make your site a happier destination for Web surfers. User-driven, socially-powered Web sites like Digg.com can add even more value to your content.
Digg? What? Huh?
If you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you may not have heard of Digg.com yet. Essentially Digg is like a giant, user-driven RSS feed. The blogosphere is growing at a geometric rate which has made it difficult for many Web sites to separate their original content from the millions of bloggers that bite their words, dragging and dropping their content into their Wordpress, Nucleus or Blogspot accounts. Digg.com allows the readers to determine what they think is cool by “Digging” articles. If a reader “Diggs” your content they will submit it to Digg.com. Other readers can “Digg” your article as well; the articles with the most “Diggs” appear on the front page of Digg.com. It’s like a voting system for the coolest news or content available on the web.
The Digg Effect
So what does this mean for your Web site? When a multitude of readers find your content to be exceptional and vote for it on Digg.com you will experience a sudden burst of traffic. If you have a loyal fan base amongst the Digg.com community this burst can happen within a matter of minutes of your posting. Creating this community is the tricky part. Members of the Digg community are not idiots, if you are submitting crap, they’ll know it in a hurry. Your content could get “Buried”, basically the opposite of being “Dug” where readers are basically saying your content sucks.
Black Hat “Digging”
The Digg community ranks its members similarly to the Wikipedia community. Basically, there are members whose opinions are more valuable than others based upon their activity and history with the sites. Some of these members enjoy the American Dream and are more than willing to “Digg” your content as long as the price is right. At the present this practice is fairly common and has no penalties. However, if you are familiar with the history of SEO you are aware that anything “Black Hat” can get you banned. It’s only a matter of time before Digg.com figures out a way to catch “Black Hat Digging” - don’t get caught with your hand in the cookie jar.
Keep Diggin’ Holmes
Persevere, persevere, persevere. Breaking into the Digg community is not easy, but it is free! You should already by adding content to your Web site on a regular basis, so getting a community behind your content should be one of your top priorities. Add the Digg.com button to the blog section of your Web site, so your current readers can add your content. Send out a newsletter to your readers letting them know that you are adding the Digg.com button and how they can use it. Start your own Digg.com account and begin “Digging” content you like, then after you build up your own status in the community, begin “Digging” your own work – just don’t overdue it. Make you’re your titles are catchy and relevant to your article. Also, make sure you are entering your articles into the correct category. Digg.com is an awesome Web site with an awesome community, you belong there!
