Online Marketing Blog » digg

Digg to Remove its Toolbar and Unban Domains

George — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:53:50 +0000

At last there seems to be some good news from Digg, which is sure to evoke a positive response from its users. Digg have decided to remove the much controversial Digg tool bar and has is also set to remove the bans that they have imposed on a large number or websites. According to Kevin Rose, these changes will take place only after the launch of Digg V4.

The DiggBar is being removed since the framing of content with an iFrame is not an healthy practice. The use of iFrames will cause serious Internet issues and was constantly criticized by the publishers and search engine marketing professionals.

According to Kevin Rose,

Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet. It causes confusion when bookmarking, breaks w/iFrame busters, and has no ability to communicate with the lower frame (if you browse away from a story, the old digg count still persists). It’s an inconsistent/wonky user experience, and I’m happy to say we are killing it when we launch the new Digg (sign up for the beta here). That said, we will continue to iterate on our browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and IE. Look for seriously revamped versions of those in a few months.

The unbanning of domains will also bring huge relief to all web owners and search marketers, as many of their genuine websites were banned by Digg for some or other reasons. Even after the unbanning of domains, Digg will keep an eye over certain things to prevent malware / virus / TOS violations etc.

Previously any topic which were not liked by the Digg community was buried consistently and as a result many of the brilliant domains got banned by Digg. But this announcement means that we are free to submit domains related to any topic ( except malware, virus, TOS violations).

Read the original announcement at Digg Blog.

Bad Phase for Digg?

George — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:19:57 +0000

Digg seems to be going through a bad phase these days due to some reasons and the most recent departure of its CEO Jay Adelson has added to its long list of woes. The 39 year old Jay Adelson has decided to call it a day with Digg and is looking ahead for other better prospects. Jay Adelson have played an integral part in making Digg one of the most popular and efficient social news sites and his absense is sure to make some negative impact on Digg.

There is a strong opinion that Digg is gradually fading and losing its relevancy due to the emergence of other social media channels which are somehow becoming more efficient in spreading the news than Digg. The management and staff were all working hard atleast to keep Digg afloat with its competitors. The quitting of Jay at this critical time has made matters more worse for Digg.

Mean while Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg has taken over as the acting CEO of Digg and is hopeful in taking Digg forward for more success. Read more at TGDaily.

5 Digg Tools That I Cannot Live Without!!

George — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:58:48 +0000

Managing and tracking your Digg account and its activities manually is not an easy task, particularly if your are an active Digg and have a strong Digg profile. There are a large number of tools which helps to track and manage your Digg profile and I have also tried a lot of them. But there are 5 top Digg tools which I have found more useful and much easier to use.

1) Friend Statistics
FriendStatistics is an online tool which helps you to get an overall statistics of your Digg activities. It helps you to find out the list of your friends who has been Digging your submissions on a regular basis (last 10 submissions). It also helps you to find users who are not your friend, but Diggs your submission on a regular basis (last 10 submissions). The tool also gives the option to remove deadbeat friends from your list. Dead Beat friends are those who have not dugg any of your last 10 submissions. This tool is best considered for cleaning and maintaing your Digg account.

2) Biggboard Tool
The Biggboard tool is another exiting online Digg tool, which helps to track where your submitted content is going. It helps to know whether it is the the top 10 of a particular category, in top 10 of the hot section of a particular category or if your story is buried or not. It also displays the number of Diggs and comments that your submission has got.

3) Digg Alerter
This is a desktop tool which helps to keep track of your Digg submissions. It updates you every time whenever someone Digg your story and it is just easy to use. You can download this Digg tool from here.

4) Social Blade
Social Blade is another complex online tool to measure your Digg activities. It provides a lot of interesting data such as top users in Digg, top banned users in Digg etc. It also helps you to review your popular stories, the number of Digg it took to pop up, number of Diggs from friends, average Digg per hour etc.

5) Digg This! Firefox browser button
Digg This! is another smart browser button from Firefox, which helps you know whether a page is submitted in Digg along with the number of Diggs. It also helps you to submit if it is not submitted in Digg yet. You can Download this tool from here.

Factors Determining Digg’s Upcoming Hot Section

George — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:31:45 +0000

Digg is the most active and hottest social media site around which is used for sharing online content, by link submissions, voting, commenting etc. Rather than calling it a social media site, it is better to call it as a social news site. I have already mentioned about Digg, managing your Digg profile, tips for submitting contents to Digg etc in my earlier posts.

In this section I would like to write something about the factors that influences the stories in Digg’s upcoming hot section. Before that you need to know something about the upcoming section in Digg. The upcoming section is that part where the stories are stacked before being popped out into the front page. There are mainly 3 types of upcoming section which are the recommendation section (based on your profile), upcoming most section(links having most Diggs) and upcoming hot section (the hottest link in upcoming section).

The upcoming hot section in Digg is usually shown for 10 links in a particular category and is displayed after taking many factors into consideration. Some of the factors that takes into account for displaying in the upcoming hot section are given below.

1) The number of Diggs – This is the most important factor as the link post should get some amount of Diggs to be listed in the top 10 upcoming hot section.

2) The Time for getting the Diggs – The time in which the submission gets the Digg is also counted when considering it for the upcoming hot section.

3) The number of comments – The number of comments on the submissions can determine whether if would be featured on the hot section. The number of up votes for the comments are also taken into consideration.

4) The number of views – The number of views for the original page of the submitted stuff via Digg also determines the chances of making it appear on the upcoming hot section. The number of views can be seen while using the Digg URL shortner tool for that particular submission.

5) Website Popularity – The popularity of the website plays a major role in deciding the fate of the submissions. There are certain websites which are highly white listed by Digg and they are much popular among the Digg community. If an article or news from a popular website is submitted, it has higher chances of featuring in the hot section.

6) Diggs by Power Users – There are certain power users in Digg, whose Diggs and comments could play a major role in determining the fate of a story. If a story has got some Diggs or comments from power users, that could make the story appear on the upcoming hot section.

There are some of the parameters that I have noticed while using Digg, but the above list is still incomplete. There may be lots of other factors which I am not aware of. So if anyone has any suggestion, just post a comment. Till then happy reading….

10 Tips for submitting content to Digg

George — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:28:57 +0000

Digg is one of the most prolific social book marking site, which helps in generating traffic to any website. People submit content, images and video to Digg and the best stuff will be voted by other users and would be promoted to the front page, which in turn generates huge traffic to the site where the content, image or video is hosted.

There are various factors to consider and check while submitting something to Digg. These factors plays a major role in deciding the fate of the content, which is being submitted. If these factors are positive the chances for a content, image or video to pop out onto the front page is high. Here we would be discussing some major things that we should take care while submitting content into Digg.

1) Never Submit Duplicates.
Never try to submit articles that are already posted in Digg. This will reduce the chances of your submission getting the potential Diggs, and may also result in your submission getting buried. While submitting the content, Digg always shows you some potential duplicate content. If you are sure that your content is not duplicate, then you can go ahead.

2) Always submit unique and interesting posts
Content with uniqueness and high level of enthusiasm is the major factor determining the fate of your Digg submission and you can’t dare to compromise on these.

3) Be creative
Creativity is another aspect of Digg users and you need to be little creative while playing with Digg. Always try to write Titles and Description for your Digg submission in a creative and compelling way, so that users are forced to have a look at your submission, which increases the chances of getting more votes.

4) Submit in the right category
This is another part to take care while submitting in Digg. Even though you have a great content and you have submitted in a wrong category, it is sure to be buried down and vanish away. So always select the most appropriate category.

5) Check the authenticity of the Site.
Usually most of the Digg users submit anything that they find interesting. They get these stuffs by searching on the web, through some feeds etc. But before submitting please check the site thoroughly and confirm that the site is not against the rules and regulations of Digg. Such sites are usually black listed by Digg and you may even get banned for submitting stuff from those sites.

6) Avoid submitting pages with Ads.
Digg community hates to people who try to make money through Digg. Most of the sites which have good articles, often has a large number of Ads placed on it. This results in the burial of the story and a total waste of time. So make sure that the submitting page is not over stuffed with Ads and similar things.

7) Do not post promotional content.
Never try to post promotional content to Digg, as it may get buried easily and you may also get banned from Digg.

8 ) Check the bandwidth of the website.
If you are submitting content from your own website, make sure that the site has enough capacity to withstand the enormous traffic (Digg Effect) generated by Digg. Otherwise even if your submission hits the front page, nobody would be able to see your content.

9) Stay within the Limits of Digg’s Terms and Conditions
Your content should not violate Digg’s Terms and Conditions, doing which may result in the Termination of your account.

10) Don’t Game with Digg
After submitting don’t try to do any auspicious activities to promote your submission. Always be prepared with a good Digg network, so that you get the votes naturally.

8 Basic Steps For a Better Digg Profile

George — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:24:49 +0000

In my earlier post on Digg, I had given a brief introduction on Digg. That was just for the beginners who needed to know something about this social book marking news site. In this post I would like to brief, how to be an active Digg user.

1) Create a Profile
If you would like to be a part of the Digg community, the first thing that you should do is to create your own profile with Digg. Try to create a unique and catchy username, so that we it would be remembered by other Digg users. Upload a profile picture and also add a small bio through which people would be able to understand something about your interests.

2) Start Reading
Start reading the news and articles on the front page as well as the upcoming section of Digg. You can see a lot of interesting and amazing news, facts, images, videos etc which might be interesting to you.

3) Start Digging
Start Digging or voting the articles that you find interesting both from the front page and from the upcoming sections. You can Digg by clicking on the Digg button provided along with the story headline. The vote that you give to the items in the upcoming sections may help them in popping up to the front page of Digg. Don’t digg blindly, rather digg stories that are worth it.

4) Help in removing spam
Lot of people has started using Digg and the number of Digg users has increased considerably. As a result a lot of spam, duplicate or inappropriate contents are being submitted to Digg, which are at times very much annoying. Help in removing such contents from Digg by burying them. You can bury such stories by clicking on the bury button. But remember that once you have voted for a story, you would not be able to bury them.

5) Start Commenting
Start commenting on stories which you think can be commented. Good comments are always appreciated by the Digg community. Also don’t try spamming while commenting on stories, i.e promoting your own links, inappropriate comments etc.

6) Add Friends
Make friends, those who submit contents that are similar to your interests. Once you add anyone as a friend, you would become his fan. Once he adds you back as a friend, then both would be mutual friends. Never try to make friends in an aggressive way, rather always try to keep a limit on the number of friends. Make sure that you get active and relevant users as friends.

7) Make Your Presence Felt
Make your presence felt among your friends by reviewing and voting for their content on a regular basis. Here also make sure that you won’t digg blindly. Never Digg a story only because it was submitted by your friend. If that story is a spam, inappropriate or irrelevant you can bury or leave it.

8 ) Start Submitting Interesting Stuffs
Once you have started doing the above steps in the proper way, now you can start submitting contents on your own. Select good and unique contents for submission and never try to submit content from your own blog or website on a regular basis. If you want to submit your own content, submit it once in a while rather going for every day. When the content submitted by you receives enough votes and comments, it may pop up to the front page of Digg, thereby sending a bulk of traffic to the website where the content is hosted.

Start exercising these steps on a regular basis and see how your Digg profile grows. Also take care while managing your profile, other wise you could get banned by Digg for which the reasons include many factors which I would be explaining in this blog later. Happy reading!!!

5 Social Bookmarking Sites that Drives Huge Traffic to a Website

George — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:58:01 +0000

Social Bookmarking sites allows you to bookmark your favorite websites / web pages and access it from anywhere in the world. Social Bookmarking sites are the best sources to get traffic to your site, provided used in the proper way. A lot of social bookmarking sites have surfaced since last few years and all these book marking sites are used in order to get adequate traffic to websites. Social Bookmarking also serves as a good resource for getting back links and these sites are regularly indexed by search engines. Among all the social bookmarking websites available, there are some sites which send enormous traffic to your site. As per my experience, I would like to list the top 5 social bookmarking sites that have send traffic to my websites all along. The listing is in the order of the amount of traffic generated.

1) Digg

Digg currently tops the chart in terms of traffic generation and is the most used social bookmarking site. Digg enjoys an Alexa rank of 114 and Google Page rank of 8. Digg allows you to submit web pages and Digg’s voting and commenting system enables to get the webpage to the Front pages or most popular section of Digg. Once your site gets on to the front page, the traffic that you are going to enjoy is enormous.

2) Stumbleupon

The second most traffic generating social bookmarking site, StumbleUpon is also know for the quality of traffic it generates. With a Google Page rank of 6 and Alexa traffic rank 298, Stubmleupon helps in getting relevant traffic and that too in bulk. This social bookmarking site also uses the user voting system for the submitted items and is a major source for traffic generation.

3) Reddit

Reddit is another social bookmarking news site which has a unique way of operation. Reddit also has user voting and commenting system, which determines the fate of your website. Once your site gets on to the front page of Reddit, get prepared to receive an outburst in the website traffic. Reddit holds a Google Page rank of 8 and Alexa page rank of 475.

4) Delicious

Delicious is a classic example of Social Bookmarking site and as compared with sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon, Delicious is not focused on votes. Rather the popularity of a story in Delicious depends upon the number of users who have saved a particular page as bookmark, along with the tags. Delicious has a Google Page rank of 6 and Alexa Page rank of 527.

5) Mixx

Mixx is a small social bookmarking site which is growing in the right way. May not bring the enormous traffic to you, but still have a lot of varieties which makes it one of the best social bookmarking sites. Mixx is also based on voting system and the articles with sufficient vote reaches the popular page and as a result traffic flows to your site. Mixx enjoys a Google Page Rank of 8 and an Alexa ranking of 911.

Digg – A Beginner’s Guide to Digg

George — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:40:07 +0000

This posting is for those who are new to Digg, the King in social media site, or those who wish to know more about Digg and its functions.

Digg is among the top social bookmarking sites around and is known for its popularity and the amount of traffic it brings to a site. Digg is mainly used to submit and promote sensational news, articles, blog postings, videos, images etc which creates some sort of wave among the users. Digg is one of the most used social media sites, and is one of the best social media sites to drive traffic from, if used in the proper way. Digg was started back in 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. Many other social media sites today has drawn inspiration from Digg.

The basics of Digg is discovering and sharing content on the internet by submitting links, and voting and commenting on those links. Basically Digg has two sections.

1) Front Page or Popular Section
Once the stories submitted in Digg acquires some amount of Votes (Diggs) and comments in a particular time frame, it is promoted to the Popular section or the Front page. The stories that appear on the front page of Digg is supposed to get a huge traffic depending upon the nature of the story / Image / Video submitted. The amount of traffic mainly depends upon the time the story spends on the front page. The more time an article stays on the front page, the more the traffic to the site.

2) Upcoming Section
The upcoming sections lists the submissions that are yet to hit the Digg Front page, and is mainly categorized as the Most Recent, Most Digg and Most Comments subsection. Once you are logged into Digg, you would also be able to see the Recommendations section which is classified into Most Recent, Most Matches and Most Digg subsection. The Recommendation section shows articles based on the behaviour of your profile. There is also the Hot section in the upcoming section, which is displayed on the right navigation, which helps in getting Diggs for that particular articles on the Hot section.

These are the most basic things about Digg, and to remind you – do not use it for spamming purposes. Digg might ban your profile, your IP address or even the particular website that your are submitting. So Digg has to be handled with care. Apart from this there are many other things which are required to be successful in Digg, which I would blog about in the coming days. Still then get an idea about Digg, and stay tuned for other Digg related articles on this blog. If any one has some queries you can mail me at georgescifo at gmail dot com.

Now You Will not Miss Your Friend’s Digg Submission…….

George — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:26:20 +0000

Digg is one of the most popular social media site and is mainly based on social bookmarking. This is generally a social media site for news and other interesting stuff, where the best articles and news gets more votes and enter the popular page of Digg. Once it enters the popular page it would stay there for a few days depending on the quality and popularity of the articles. An article or news on the front page of Digg is sure to get enourmous traffic till it stays there.

Earlier there was an option to share your news or article with your network in Digg, but a few weeks back Digg removed the sharing / shouting option. Now you have to promote it via Twitter or Facebook, for which you need to have a good network in both Twitter and Facebook. The problem now is that you are not able to recieve your friends submissions or share via your Digg account. Instead you have to search Twitter or Facebook for that and with this you wont be able to see most of your friends articles who are not active on Twitter or Facebook.
Few days back I found a tool named Sub Digger Plus, which helps in keeping track of your friend’s submissions and also saves a lot of time.
This tool has a lot of facilities and would surely prove to be a much useful Digg tool. The tool is easy to use and you just need to enter your Digg user name into the box provided and you would be getting your friend’s submissions for the last 24 hours. You would be able to view your friend’s submission one at a time, and to view the next submission you have to click the next button provided at the bottom. You can also get the complete Diggs in last 24 hours listed in a single page by clicking the List View button. You can also easily mark the stories as read or unread.

The tools shows the original page or article submitted to Digg along with the Digg toolbar, which shows you username of the submitter, his avatar, title, url etc. With the List view option, you can also filter and sort the complete submission list. The Sub Digger Plus tool bar is compatible with the major browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Hope ths tool makes your Digg campaign a successful one and lets also hope that Digg would not penalize or ban us from using this much useful tool….

5 Social Media Sites that I Use

George — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:46:08 +0000

Social Media sites have become an integral part of online marketing and has made the online marketing process and traffic generation much more easier. Social Media sites includes social networking and social bookmarking sites, which are mainly based on Web 2.0 technologies. To have an excellent social media profile one must be hard working and would be willing to spare time on these sites, growing the network, reading and appreciating others stuffs. In social media sites, you are able to interact with the other users through sharing and participation. I am also a Social Media addict and is a member of various Social MEdia Sites. Here I would like to share a few Social Media sites that I find more important.

1)Digg
Digg is the most popular social bookmarking site where you are able to post interesting articles from the net. If the articles of news that you are posting is of great interest, it would be getting more votes. Once it gets a certain amount of vote (Diggs) in a particular period of time, you post would get into the most popular pages. Once you post gets on to the most popular pages, the site which contains the submitted article or news is bound to get a huge amount of traffic. Since Digg is too sensitive avoid doing spammy stuff and creating multiple accounts from the same domain, as your Digg account, your IP adress and even your website may get banned from Digg.

2) StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is another interesting social media sites, where you are able to submit interesting articles and get traffic based on the interest it generates among the other users. In Stumbleupon your post can get an upvote (Thumbs up) or a down vote (Thumbs Down) based on its quality. In StumbleUpon also you have to maintain a good network which contains users of similar interest as you. You can also Join certain groups, which suites your interest and requirements. StumbleUpon is said to derive quality traffic with lower bounce rate and is very popular among social media enthusiasts.

3)Twitter
Twitter is another famous social media site which is growing at a rapid pace. Twitter is actually a microblogging social media site, where you can share your stuffs with a character length which is limited to 140. Twitter has emerged as a powerful social media tool and is also know for generating high quality traffic. More and more users are registering for Twitter and many companies and Organization has found Twitter as an effective tool for marketing and lead generation.

4)Mixx
Another social bookmarking site, which is based on voting up / voting down, some what similar to Digg. Even though not as popular as Digg, it is soon carving a niche for itself in the social media world. It also has the popular section, where an article / news is displayed after it has attained a certain number of votes and user comments. Mixx has the options of creating and joining groups and communities, which helps in getting votes and traffic. This site also derives quality traffic to the site, but requires constant work and participation to build a reputable profile.

5)Twine
Twine is the latest Social Media site that I have started using and have found it to be extremely good for quality traffic generation. Twine also requires you to build a good network and regular participation to stay afloat in the competition. If you have a good network you would be able to share and bookmark good stuffs among your network. In Twine you have the facility to create and Join groups, which would prove to be a major source of traffic generation.