Social Bookmarking Experiment: Sending Visitors to See the Penguins

Here is a little experiment. Using only social bookmarking websites, we are going to see how much traffic we can send to an article about penguins. Penguins.

This article is from automotive.com, which is a high traffic website, but this article surely will not receive a ton of traffic. It's from the American Bus Association (already a tough article to get views) and their campaign using penguins to promote bus services.

The story itself isn't important as long as it doesn't draw its own traffic based upon the material. The article is Take the Bus for Penguins, which as you can tell, won't get too many people looking for it on Google. We are submitting it only to SB websites. The benefits from a search engine optimization perspective are well documented, but how much direct trafic comes from SB websites. I'm betting high, but we'll wait for the empirical data first.

As a control article, we are also submitting a potentially more popular article from the same website. Since concept cars and information about them gets its own traffic, 2008 Nissan Skyline GT-R will be submitted to the same social bookmarking websites as a traffic comparison. People at SB sites will often click on an article, but leave immediately, so this will purify the data.

PLEASE, if you contribute to the social bookmarking of either of these articles, post it here. Every effort must be documented to make sure that the data is real. We want to know the instant traffic boost as well as any residual traffic in the future.

Thank you for your support.

Search Engine Optimization Bookmarking

Adjusting to the New Digg

Okay, it isn't that bad. It took forever to make it to the homepage (12 days) but once there, I realize that it isn't that bad. Here are the adjustments that I made:

1) Getting 30, 60, 90 Diggs isn't as easy as it used to be. Before, having a ton of friends and doing a ton of Digging was enough to ensure that you could get a bulk of Diggs to anything. Now that people actually have to click on to the page, there is a chance that they will read it, which means that spam submissions is out, for the most part. This is a HUGE plus for Digg users, especially those who hate the spam. Will it continue? Of course. But the chances of a spam submission getting more than the initial Digg is greatly diminished.

2) Shouts don't work for most. I've been tracking some of the "shout spammers" out there and it just isn't an effective way to get Dugg. Sure, you'll get some, but for the most part, you might as well email spam and get the same results.

3) Quality of submissions is ever more important. Catchy headlines will always play a major role in the quest to make it to the homepage, but the story needs to be a good one.

4) Keep it up. Like I said, I wasn't a power Digger by any means, but I used to be able to count on at least one story making the homepage every few days. Now, it seems that the gap is growing. As much as I want to dump the efforts, I just can't. If you are thinking about it, keep going. It'll happen if you stick with it.

5) Fans are nice, but most are meaningless. There are "Fans" out there who never Digg your stuff. Because there doesn't have to be the same gap in time between adding friends, many are trying the bulk friend approach. This may actually work, but you can't just befriend them and go. Digg their stuff, keep digging their stuff, and hopefully you'll get noticed, added, and Dugg.

6) The time it takes to make the homepage seems to have increased. Where before, 24 hours was usually the cutoff, there are more and more popular stories that approach 2 days before becoming obsolete.

7) Submit less. Before, submitting a ton of stories every day would land you somewhere with something on the homepage. I've examined some of the mass submitters and seen literally hundreds of submissions in a row without going popular. Submitting good stories is much more important.

In conclusion, I was completely against the new Digg. I've changed my mind. The quality is improving, and after all is said and done, that is really what will make Digg great again. It was getting too easy to post crap and make it the homepage, or at least get a ton of Diggs for it. Now, you have to submit good stuff to have a chance. This is a great thing for serious Diggers, and even a greater thing for those who read Digg for the news itself.

Digg SEO

Web 2.0 Tool

Automating your social bookmarking is an important aspect to using the various SB sites for search engine optimization. While using social bookmarking is becoming a valid method to getting pages ranked, it can also be a long process, one that requires you to fill your browsers with buttons and links.

One tool, the Web 2.0 Toolbar, is an asset that every SEO should incorporate into their arsenal. While it doesn't truly automate the process, it does consolidate many of the top sites into one toolbar, saving room and time.

Many use OnlyWire. It's another tool that submits to 20 or so SB sites. Luckily, the Web 2.0 Toolbar includes OnlyWire in its toolbar.

It also includes:
Digg
del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
Spurl
Blink
Yahoo
Newsvine
Reddit
Ma.gnolia
TailRank
Blogmark
Shadow
Furl
Simpy
and Rawsugar

While some of these are duplicates from OnlyWire, it allows you to vary the anchor text more often. Pound for pound, it's the best free tool that I've found for social bookmarking.

Social Media Marketing
Automotive SEO

"I Support Bush" and 9 other reasons this won't make the Digg homepage

1) Bad title. It mentions a top 10 list and doesn't bash the Republican party in any way. Plus, it's too long and doesn't say [pic].

2) Nobody important in Digg visits this blog, so it will probably be submitted by a loser (or me if nobody submits it at all by tomorrow, which they probably won't).

3) It doesn't fit into any category other than "Offbeat News" but it's really not that offbeat and it's definitely not news.

4) The Ron Paul Online Army doesn't know my blog exists. If they did, they would spam it, so I prefer the anonymity.

5) It is posted on a free blog that was created a few months ago, so it would take 150 Diggs and 50 comments to get it past the Upcoming section.

6) I'm broke -- can't buy Diggs.

7) The story description will probably be really bad. In fact, they'll probably just cut and paste reason number 7 (if the digger reads that far down).

9) It will be buried as inaccurate since I skipped #8, thus, there aren't "9 other reasons this won't make the Digg homepage". (did that make sense?) Plus, there is a mispelling somewhere in this post.

10) The picture in the story is boring -- just a list of the top Diggers according to votemoojj.com.


Social Bookmarking Blog

Anchor Text: Switch it Up

From time to time, I check the bookmarks of SEOs who are using SB sites for link building. One thing I've noticed that is a big no-no -- you're not alternating the tags.

Anchor text is one of the most important indicators that Google and MSN use to determine what a website is about. Having the same tag, or anchor text, associated with a link on all of your SB sites will diminish their own effect, plus minimize the possible advantages granted for the link itself.

There is always a temptation to use onlywire or one of the other automated bookmarking tools. If you do use them, make sure to split it up amongst 3 or 4 different submissions. In other words, use the tools, but submit a site once with only a few SB sites checked, then resubmit with another set, and on and on.

Google doesn't like it when the same anchor is used constantly. They want websites rankings and link building to be natural. They don't want googlebombing or any other form of SERP manipulation.

It will take more time, but it is worth the effort.

Kevin Rose's First Digg that DID NOT Go Popular

It's official. Kevin Rose, the Digg Master, has submitted a story that did not make it to the Popular front page. His 285 submitted story, "XREP - Taser via Shotgun", was submitted on August 7th.

It has stalled at just over 100 Diggs and did not make it over the hump.

Proof positive, in case anybody doubted, that Digg is truly algorithm based without manual override.

The funny part is, that story will probably get more hits now than it would have had it gone popular. You have to admire the guy, not just for creating the most powerful social news network on the planet, but also for "keeping it real" in most situations and not abusing his fame and power. Unless...

Why would he have submitted this story? It doesn't seem to fit with his standard Digg-related or tech related-story submittals. Did he just find the story interesting, or was it one of my possible conspiracy theories?

1) He was paid. Lots. The company with the product or the website with the story (or both) sent him a large check with a url.

2) Someone close to him was kidnapped. The ransom was one crappy Digg submittal.

3) Blackmail. Someone found a deep, dark secret about Kevin and they forced him to submit the story in exchange for their silence.

4) Hackers. His account was hacked and he either hasn't noticed or he's keeping it quiet until there's a full FBI investigation.

5) Disinformation. The algorithm IS rigged and they wanted to ruin his perfect record just to prove it.

6) Stocks. Kevin bought a ton of stock in a company that manufactures the Taser XREP and he's trying to cash in.

7) Attacked. Someone hit Kevin with the XREP, knocking him unconsious. They had just enough time to submit the story, and since there's no way to unsubmit or correct errors like there should be (like with comments) he was unable to correct it and just hoped for the best.


Whatever happened, I give my full kudos and respect to Kevin Rose...

...but something seems fishy.

Social Media Marketing