Digg Survival Guide: How to Avoid getting Buried

Submitting stories to Digg & seeing them hit the front page is something that many webmasters love to see. Especially when someone else has submitted the story for you. If a story is well received then it can give you good motivation to write more often about a particular topic or perhaps if a story isn’t well received then you may drop that topic alltogether.

What can be frustrating however, is seeing a story get bumped to the front page then seemingly disappear into the depths of the Diggosphere never to be seen again. This has plagued many digg wannabes for months.

To put it simple, Diggers have the ability to bury your story if they believe it to be:

1. A Duplicate
2. Spam
3. Off Topic
4. Innacurate
5. Just Plain Lame

So how can you make sure that your story doesn’t get buried?

Well if someone else is submitting your story I guess there’s generally nothing you can do about it. However here are a few general rules that I like to go by:

SEO/Affiliate Marketing Stories: The Digg community loathes SEO blogs. Think of what Kryptonite does to Superman. These are a big nono & will most likely get nailed right away. The occassional few make it to the top but never really last the distance. Notable sites that were banned for submitting too many SEO Related stories were John Chow & Digitalpoint who have since been unbanned. If you want to submit these types of stories I strongly suggest that you get onto Bumpzee it rocks!

Ads on Website: Diggers hate advertising on websites. If your site is plastered with Adsense or possibly even has one tiny adsense ad on it, it will give them more reason to bury the story. They don’t want to see people “making money” from Digg.

Write about Ubuntu, Linux, Mac, Steve Jobs, Kevin Rose or a Top 50/100 list: I don’t know if it’s because they have a severe case of ADD or “Birds of a feather flock together” but these topics always seem to make it to the front page, even if they’ve been recycled 100 times over. If you look at the Top 10 in “Category” you’ll always notice a few of these stories. Take right now for example:

Yeah so at any given time about 4 of the top stories relate to this criteria you can be almost certain of not getting buried writing about them.

Making sure your server can handle a Digg: If your server goes down & can’t handle the traffic then chances are people will bury the story faster than you can curse blindly at your webhost. If you’re actively planning to do well on Digg at least be prepared for it. For example, I am not prepared because I never expect to get anywhere on digg with this blog. However if I had a blog about linux then I’d make sure I was.

Don’t be an Asshole in the Comments: Quite often if you submit a story & get some negative feedback Webmasters will do on the defensive & try to protect themselves or the article in the comments. If you attack the community your story will get buried. So try to take a step back & let them comment. I find the hot topics that are controversial do well as you get many more people actively participating in the commenting.

Paying for Diggs: If your story is so rubbish that you need to pay for diggs then you shouldn’t be upset that once it hits the front page the Digg Community will bury it faster than a Dog with a bone. They’ve been using the system long enough to know when someone is trying to game them or not & I guess thats part of the beauty of the Digg system. The downside is that the whole system is pinholed inside “specific topics that work (mac, digg, mac, mac)” rather than just the good cool stories making it to the front page. Although I’ve been seeing a lot more cool stuff hitting the front page recently.

Promoting a Product or Service: Digg is not the Yellow Pages. It’s not the place to go to promote your new Car Washing business website. Only products or services that strike a common interest with the people that use Digg will get voted. I guess even if they do bury the story it’s still good for a backlink :p

Don’t post your own stories: If you repeatedly post every blog post you make to Digg you’ll more than likely get banned. I post my own stories now & again to see how they’re received but I don’t take the piss. Users will notice this too, they’ll also look in your history to see what you’ve been digging & submitting to get an idea of you’re genuine or not.

That about wraps up this part of the Survival Guide. More to come