After the recent post on Gaming Technorati, I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve seen about gaming Digg.
For obvious reasons, I won’t go into great detail, but I can share a general idea of how it happens. And, I won’t be talking much about the top 100 users either…
I hardly have to tell you WHY you might want to game the system, but I can tell you why you may NOT want to game Digg.
The reasons for doing so are obvious to most (traffic, links, attention). But I will point out that the reason spammers do their best to game the system is not for blogosphere glory, but because they want long term links going to their affiliate sites via search engines.
What I mean is that if I get Dugg with a title like “Buy Some Viagra Fellows: Top Ten Women Searches on Google” I have probably just given that Digg story *great* placement for the keywords ‘buy viagra’. Of course, after the Digg story dies down I can go back and add my affiliate links into the page, giving me a highly ranked SERP for my trashy keywords.
Now, getting Dugg on this and making it work means Digging it yourself. But, you can’t do it as a new user and you can’t do it on your own account. Here’s where it gets shady (or way more shady, if you’re white hat like me)…
There are bots, two that I know of, that will assist you in creating Digg users (you’ll need several hundred to ensure a Digg will get traction). If you want to get to the first page you’ll need to get there in the first 30 mins or so. It takes few Diggs to do that. Not saying it isn’t possible, but it’s much easier right after posting.
And, of course, if your story isn’t Digg-worthy, it’s not going to get traction anyway. The above story would have to have pics of the ladies (clean) and would have to be written either very authoritatively (ie no passion) or with classic tongue-in-cheek humor (and it’d need to be accurate).
Anyway, there is one bot *I have heard* that is excellent for creating a large base of Diggers. Of course, this is work, and you probably earn your high SERP for the effort involved, but that is how spammers are gaming Digg.
I did hear one tip on a WebmasterWorld show that I really love, SEO Rockstars. Their guest shared that his technique is to make all of his bot Diggers’ names start with the same letter as the day of the week he works them (random Diggs stories so they aren’t caught on). In other words, Monday’s Diggers might be Mandy, Morris, Mitch, MegaMan, etc.
Now please, please don’t ask me about that bot. I won’t divulge my source(s) on that one you evil spammers. 😉