With the popularity of sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon & others skyrocketing, website owners, marketers, bloggers and, of course, spammers are seeking to capitalize on the traffic these portals can drive. Many have taken to creating great content in the hopes that the members of these sites will appreciate it, but others have turned to manipulative practices in the hopes of cheating the systems. There's two fundamental problems with these attempts - first, that both humans & machine algorithms are keeping an eye on spam and second, that spamming Digg carries virtually no value.
The first assessment isn't likely to inspire controversy or disagreement. It's well known that systems like Digg's use human participation, but many may not realize just how deep these mechanisms run. Link aggregation sites frequently have a team of moderators watching for spam, members who can report or flag entries as attempts to manipulate and even a site-appointed watchdog assigned to monitor submissions.
The second assertion - that gaming Digg, even successfully, carries virtually no value - is hard for many to believe. However, a close look at the results of a front page Digg, a mention on del.icio.us/popular or a listing atop Reddit shows us that it's entirely true. Below, I've listed the primary benefits of making these lists and the reasons why these positive results don't apply to those who spam:
- Traffic - An average Digg sends us between 20-40,000 visitors over the course of a week, with the vast majority coming in the first 36 hours. This phenomenon exists with del.icio.us/popular, Reddit, Fark & others as well (though to a lower degree). These visitors are passionate about community, Internet news and often web development and publishing itself.
So what is the value of getting 30,000 Diggers to your site? Branding. When 30,000 new visitors get to SEOmoz, I want them to come away thinking - "Hey, that's a pretty good site for SEO. That Rand guy seems pretty smart." The goal isn't to get visitors to click ads or buy products, it's to have them remember SEOmoz. And, when we get mentioned at several of these sites 4, 5 or 6 times over 3-4 months, we're gaining a lot of mindshare and branding.
If you game Digg, you get none of these benefits. The visitors might click, they might even start reading, but if you don't have truly exceptional content, you're spinning your wheels - no one is going to remember you or your site as being anything other than a waste of their time; that's not a positive brand association.
_ - Links - In the SEO field in particular, many who seek to game the aggregation sites are hoping to achieve high search engine placement via a secondary factor that many may not realize is associated with making Digg's front page. Once a URL hits the Digg homepage, early research (that we're just now compiling) is showing us that 14 days later, Yahoo! reports an average of 500 new inbound links to that URL.
What's happening here is what I like to call, the long tail of Digg (or del.icio.us or Reddit). Many thousands of Digg's readers are bloggers, journalists, site owners and web-savvy readers who control content of their own on sites of their own. If you have a great article Dugg, it generally means that many of these folks will start writing about you, linking to you and sending you additional targeted traffic. These links carry weight in the search engines, particularly if the title of the piece (and thus many of the incoming links) include important keywords and phrases that users search for. For example, right now, SEOmoz's posts on increasing blog traffic, HTML elements and interviewing web developers all pull in search traffic thanks to rankings for popular search phrases.
However - if you're spamming or manipulating, no one is going to bother to link to the content. You won't rank well and you won't boost your site's link popularity - if the content wasn't good enough to make the top of the link sites naturally, there's little hope that anyone who manages their own content will link to it.
_ - Advertising - Many bloggers and site owners are hoping that Digg can help propel their ad revenues by creating large numbers of impressions on banners or clicks on contextual ads. The bad news here is that the visitors that do come, though high in numbers are exceptionally low in commercial ad value.
The link aggregation sites have, arguably, the most tech-savvy demographics on the web. These users DO NOT click ads. Less than 10% (from our metrics) stay on the site longer than 90 seconds (even if the article would take a normal person 3 minutes to read). Digg, in particular, has brought the lowest rate of RSS subscriptions per visitor group of any link we've ever had - under 1/10th of 1 percent. These statistics hold true for every site owner I've ever spoken to that has made it to the top of Digg or the other services. These users simply don't participate/contribute/stick around/click.
Now apply those statistics to advertising - the results are dismal. The page views are extremely low, meaning those banner ads you serve on an impression basis are barely pulling their weight. Factor in the high number of Diggers who use ad blockers in their browsers and you're barely covering bandwidth costs. Clickthroughs on AdSense or other contextual programs are equally miserable - I've heard others indicate that a day atop Digg brought fewer ad clicks than 100 visitors from Google - no surprise there. If earning revenue is your goal, you need to create fantastic content that gets legitimately featured - the real earnings come when you get traffic via the engines and the other sites that link to you, not from the initial surge of uniques.
_ - Conversions/Sales - With what we already know about the link aggregators' demographics, it should come as no surprise that getting these visitors to buy is like finding a needle in an ocean. Once again, the goal has to be to build a relationship with the audience - entice them to visit your site in the future and think of your brand as an exciting, dynamic one that's in touch with their needs. Then, in the future when they do need your products or services, that positive brand association can help to steer traffic your way. I've had more than a few clients say they first saw us on Digg (or del.icio.us) and started reading the blog after a few mentions, then got excited to see what we could do for them. Guess what - these are the best kinds of clients in the world - they love your brand, they're excited about what you have to say and they're already 90% through the sales cycle. Gaming Digg gets you nothing, but building great, naturally Digg-worthy content has direct rewards.
So where do we draw the line? What are the rules on spam vs. natural results. On the far extreme, there are those who would say that any use of these services by anyone related to the content being discussed or promoted is spam. I'm of a more moderate opinion and I think the following guidelines are clear enough and broad enough that anyone who follows them should stay trouble free.
- Yes, you can submit your own content
The rule to remember here is that you absolutely should not submit more than 2-3 pieces per week. If you starting posting every entry to Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, the administrators and moderators are going to get mighty suspicious. This limit doesn't apply to sites like Del.icio.us or Spurl; they're designed to accept any and all submissions. - Do not have everyone at the office "Digg" it
First off, most offices share a single IP address, so even if you do all have individual Digg accounts and you really do all think the content is Digg-worthy, don't go trigger happy. Again, moderators will see 20-30 Diggs from the same IP and raise their eyebrows. Instead, if you really all do want to Digg something, go home and do it there - my view is that if your co-workers are really that excited about something that they'll do it on their own time, that's reasonably fair. Just watch out - if you're the only Diggers of the URL and the 30 of you are based in Billings, North Dakota, the spam filter will probably still catch you. If you're in Seattle or New York or the Bay Area, you're probably fine. - Avoid having the same group Digg time and again
Even if you have an email group of 50 friends who all Digg content together, you can be targeted for attempted manipulation. Spotting patterns of the same Diggers voting on the same content is a cakewalk. - Don't build bots to Digg for you
This is an obvious one. We've already illustrated that low quality content won't get any value out of being Dugg, and the users of the site will probably be clicking thumbs down faster than you can churn out crap content, so find a better use for your time. If that doesn't convince you, just remember that along with the above two ways of making yourself look suspicious, having 50 new accounts generate Diggs for one particular site over and over looks awful fishy, too. - Submit only your best material
Before you start submitting content, read the entries that do make the top of the charts and see what types of pages you find. If you've got something equally clever, relevant and interesting to offer, go ahead. If not, go back to the drawing board. The highest value comes from phenomenal quality material. It's almost not worth your time if you're only going to get 80 Diggs, a few visits and a lot of people in the comments voting your site down. - Design intelligently
Knowing that link aggregation users are incredibly web-savvy, consider turning off ads while the rush is hitting the site. You'll also benefit if you provide high-relevance links to other articles/blogs/pages on your site (and possibly improve on the typically awful browse rate). - Don't spam the comments
Using the comments at Digg/Reddit/StumbleUpon to bring participants into your pages is OK if you're providing on-topic, worthwhile material. Be wary of linking just for the sake of the traffic boost, though - it's another way the moderators can track down people who might be abusing the system.
I've been giving out this advice for several months now, but it's good to have it on the blog. I'm guessing there are a lot of sites aspiring to the top of the link aggregators out there; hopefully you'll heed the recommendations and make it big on your own merit.
p.s. I just saw that Loren Baker reported on an automated Digg spam system. Save your $71 and invest it in content creation.
I tried an experiment with Stumbleupon last month with a few of our eCommerce sites. I got a large (for our sites) influx of traffic from submitting a few product pages, but the traffic was extremely poor. We averaged 1.5 pageviews per visit (SE traffic normally averages 20-30 pages per visit), so my guess is almost all of them were one click and gone.
del.icio.us on the other hand provides better traffic. Some of our customers have bookmarked pages, and we get much better page view averages (including a few actual sales conversions).
As an aside, what are your views on encouraging the use of del.icio.us and other link aggregators by adding links on your pages? Bad, good, indifferent?
Thanks for a great site!
Contentpop looks like a poor cousin to the much more feature-rich and better designed fan portal, Fanpop
In addition to Digg and StumbleUpon, I use Content Pop which is relatively new.
It's hard to get an article super high on Digg, but some of the other sites, it's much easier.
I guess the question that I would ask is could you game quality content? I.e., can you create a quality site and a quality submission to digg and then use a network of friends, colleagues, or associates to help get that content some initial exposure (at which point you can let the digg community take over). I imagine that you would say that this is unnecassary, because all quality content will automatically get found and promoted. Are you sure, though, that that is true? Perhaps as you start to build brand you also start to build momentum on sites like digg wherein people will automatically notice and digg your articles because they know and like your site. Other sites, though, may not have that advantage and therefore can benefit from "helping" their content along. In other words, I 100% agree with you about the need for quality content and a quality site, I'm just not sure that if that alone is enough to do well on digg.
Good point from DazUK up there somewhere about the penetration of Digg etc in the UK. I'm increasingly finding that we're about 2-3 years behind the US in adopting this kind of social technology, and there seem to be frustratingly few UK-centric equivalents. I can generally generate a bit more traffic, but one page visitors from Santa Fe aren't of much use to my UK clients... more wistful transatlantic gazes from us poor relations...
Thanks Rand. This was very helpful. Believe it or not, even though i see Digg all over the place, i just never took the time to learn about it or use it until your post.
What you say makes sense - as usual, it doesnt pay to spam.
Thanks Rand! I am very new to Digg.com, so I have learned a lot from your article. Better to learn how to use these things the right way from the start!
Great points Rand although I would suggest one correction:
Billings is in Montana not North Dakota :-)
That's why it's even more dangerous to do it from Billings, ND :)
Seriously - thanks for the catch.
You're picking on irrelevant technical details :)
I know, but I'm from North Dakota so it stand out to me! :-)
https://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota
“Why is North Dakota so windy? Because Montana blows and Minnesota sucks!”
Just to cheer you up :)
Great link! I haven't seen that before... :-)
That high percentage is predictable for seomoz because it is not an entertainment site, or a consumer site. It is a blog of a company in a special area of internet marketing. The general audience either doesn't know what SEO is, or isn't particularly interested. However, for people who spam digg (again I don't condone it), usually they have commercial or entertainment websites, and most of the people using digg are just looking to pass their time, get a laugh, and learn something interesting if and when possible.
The point of my comments are basically to say that right now spamming digg is working out for the spammers, not like a goldmine, but well enough. And the fault of that is of course the evil spammers, but also the management of digg, which is not moderating its service well enough.
I dunno Rand... I agree with most of your post but some of the comments you made will actually make spammers feel more motivated to "game" Digg with the hopes of getting quick traffic. A certain few individuals have been spamming Digg with their blog posts recently and they are profiting from the Google adsense revenue. It doesn't seem like they will be ending it.
Just a random thought about Digg - why are their such limited categories? If it was more diverse like About.com or Wikipedia - that would be a whole new ball game.
I agree with Simmal Tree on both counts. Digg seams so limited and focuses on select catagories. That's what turned me onto crabapple.cc (shameless plugg?)
It seems to focus more on everyday bloggers and tries to "fix" the problems found at places like Digg where the top stories stay on top.
Anyway, I "Plugged" this so I hope you see some traffic from it.
Plugged
Simmal - which comments are you referring to? I'm suggesting that 100 users from Google will click more ads than 30,000 from Digg. That, to me, would be incentive to spend more time getting search traffic and less time gaming the link aggregators.
Rand, I agree with you that spamming is wrong and I do not condone it. However, how accurate is your 30, 000 to 100 statistic? People who click a link on Digg are also "motivated visitors" because they clicked a link with a title and description that appealed to them. So they are coming to your website with some interest in your content and I think they would still be likely to click on your ads. How about we actually ask some of these spammers to give a hint on how well their Google adsense does when their single blog post has 400 digs?
Just looked through our stats and I see a bounce rate for Diggers of 86% (left before clicking any other page or staying on the site for 60 seconds).
We served ads at one time on SEOmoz and had three Diggs over that period. They produced less than 10 total clicks.
Just out of curiocity, where is the ad at? I have been looking for about 5 minutes and I haven't been able to find an advertisement anywhere on the site.
We removed them several months back - hence I said: we served ads at one time on SEOmoz...
Ah, missed that part. That would completely explain why I couldn't find them.
I'd add a couple of more things about digging your own stories:
1. Be really really sure that it's actually a good article. Of course you think it's good, but will others? Or are you just cluttering the site with stuff nobody wants to read? (you're not doing this, Rand, but plenty of others do). Don't post what's called "blog spam" (a blog post that just references another article).
2. Write a good title and description. Make sure it doesn't sound like market-ese. Try admitting in your description that you wrote the article. It's easy to match a digg username to a name on an article, so you might as well admit that you wrote it rather than looking like you're trying to mislead people. (or maybe people would react badly to this, I'm not sure...)
3. Make it easy for your site visitors to digg your stories. A lot of people aren't good at writing titles and descriptions, so provide a good summary at the start of your article that people can plug into Digg. Digg Tools are also available to help you.
4. Watch the digg counts on your self submissions.If people aren't digging your stuff then maybe you shouldn't bother submitting it.
This is a bit of a pet issue for me because I think these sites have a lot of potential to be compromised by spammers and other self promoters. I've got some experience with this sort of thing from running a webmaster forum. There's no limit to what people will try to do to get their link on a good site and it just makes the whole experience worse for everyone else.
Another thing - submit stories from other sites too (not just your own). A member who submits only stories from one site will probably look suspicious.
To get a front page digg, it is almost a requirement to have at least three people digg it all at the same time. If it is a great article and you do it at the correct time of day, digg readers will do the rest.
Also, if you are a website owner who is sending posts to digg, make sure your server can handle the load that you get if you go front page. My first front page digg, dropped my server. I wasn't at all expecting it to make it to the front page, so it totally took me by surprise. 2000 visitors in just a few minutes took the server down to a stand still.
Wow 20 to 40 thousand visitors a week?
I think we're a bit slower to catch on to the likes of Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us over here in the UK. If I asked the majority of my friends and colleauges over here I'd doubt they would have heard of them (and some of them are Network Admins)
StumbleUpon works for me in generating visitors to my site but alas only the 80 or so visitors a month. Still its branding - just to a smaller audience!
Daz
StumbleUpon traffic is great. Without getting into the details (there is a blog post about it here somewhere), I've had StumbleUpon send 2000+ uniques per day for 2-5 days before. The interesting thing is, the users are very targeted, and look at the sites they find as resources rather than temporary entertainment.
Caydel - I believe you're referring to this thread. We've seen StumbleUpon send 3-400 visitors per day for weeks at a time. It's a shockingly popular service.
I firmly agree Rand, while Digg has helped a lot in the best link bait i've created so far, i do agree that spamming it is of no use what so ever.
Rand, excellent post and I wanted to add that I do not suggest using one of those services to Game Digg... I was just writing about them.
Best, Loren
Loren - Don't worry, I certainly didn't mean to suggest that you were - merely that you had written about it at the same time :)
Great article. I said on my own digg-ish post:
Good article. I think I'll be linking others to this one.
Rand, I especially agree with you on nr. 1.
Great review.