An examination of the social network called Digg and how it can be used as part

An examination of the social network called Digg and how it can be used as part of a successful search engine strategy.

One of the newest places to submit articles that you have written is Digg. This is a huge social network whose readers actually despise anything that looks like marketing. You probably won’t last two minutes on this site, which has a “burial” feature that kicks overt displays of advertising right off the sight. However if you are very clever about the way you position yourself on Digg you can use it as a marketing tool to bring more visitors to your site and that may mean potential link partners and advertisers. If you are successful at posting writing on Digg then you will likely experience a ton of traffic being brought to your site.

Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the digg community. After you submit content, other people read your submission and Digg what they like best. If your story is popular and receives enough Digg vote, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see. So how can you turn this into an SEO tool?

The first challenge is to get people to give a Digg vote to your posting. This means having an article on the top page or linking to someone who has a story on the top page. However even after you manage that you need to have a fantastic title and summary or the savvy, marketing hating readers on Digg may not even glance at any URL that is attached.

The main way that Digg can be part of a good SEO strategy is in driving a lot of traffic to your site quickly by getting in the top ten read articles on the first page of the site. This creates the kind of buzz and credibility for your site that just cannot be bought using keyword articles only.

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share, and search Internet bookmarks.

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share, and search Internet bookmarks. In 2005 and 2006, social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Ma.gnolia, Netvouz, and StumbleUpon became popular. Sites like reddit, Digg, Newsvine, and the new Netscape portal apply social bookmarking to news items. In 2007, IBM announced plans to enter the social software market.

There are a variety of ways to use bookmarks to improve your overall site popularity. What I personally like about social bookmarks is that it’s easy to do and very similar to other optimization methods I use. The way it works is as follows: A user registers for a social bookmarking site. Once they have an account, they browse the internet. When the individual identifies a webpage or piece of content they want to share with others, they bookmark it. Once that content is bookmarked, the bookmark site keeps a record of the bookmark and waits to see if others bookmark the same content or website.

When others bookmark or vote for the same content, that content increases in popularity and the social book marking site ranks it higher than other content on their site. Some of these bookmark sites also let you see the bookmarks of others. That’s what makes it a “social” bookmark. Not only is the general web populace rating Internet content collectively, but they can also see what others are book marking.

What’s even better is that you can use a site like Social Poster (free) found at http://socialposter.com/generator.php to post multiple bookmarks from one location. You will need to register for each of these sites, but once you do the submission process is simple.

After book marking your home page on each of these sites, consider book marking specific content of channel level pages of your site. Creating deep links into your site can enhance your overall Google rankings. And of course, make sure to use the proper link text in your site title and description.

One final word on social bookmarking. Now that you know how to bookmark your site, the next logical step is to make it easy for others to bookmark your site. To do this, simply add a Social Bookmark applet (free) to your site by visiting AddThis.com. They offer a small piece of Javascript you can add to your site in the form of a button.

When users click on the Bookmark button, they can select their specific book marking tool and book mark your content. This makes the process of book marking simple and easy to do.n its own terms.