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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Digg Baiting - The New Link Baiting

If you're a webmaster looking to promote your site, ask yourself - 'why spend time building a link-bait that only will get you a handful of high profile links?' Savvy web marketers are quickly developing means of baiting a single location and getting an army of excitable nerds doing the linking for them. What am I blathering about? well, it's an interesting new sport that's catching on in the search marketing arena called Digg baiting.

The theory is simple, write an article especially targeted to either enrage or specifically focus on the interests of Digg.com's specific demographic. This is a newish take on Digg spamming, which has been around a long time already. In the early days of Digg it was cited as one of the factors that made Digg work, although it's not so welcome now.

When spamming Digg the focus of the target article is less specific than with Digg baiting. With Digg spam, the articles you're spamming are about what ever your website is about. There are a number of ways of getting your story up the ranks, from buying Diggs to asking everyone you know to Digg you. Contrast the classic spam with the newer trend in Digg baiting - in this instance you focus your articles specifically on Digg users and their highly defined interests, tastes, political leanings and behaviours.

If you succeed in getting a high profile Digging, the payout is the same either way, and it's not financial. It's notoriously difficult to monetise Digg traffic, but the benefits of being Dugg are more SEO focused - mainly a large amount of fresh new back links. There is the added branding benefit of exposure to your site from interested bloggers and other commentators who've spotted your story. In a way, many Digg spammers are missing the point, expecting financial reward for their effort, the payout is much more subtle than dollars in the bank.

Hell hatn no fury like a digger scornedTo illustrate Digg baiting, here's a selection of some of my favourites of recent months. Back in October, SEO Blackhat's 10 Steps To Guarantee You Make The Digg Front Page gave a great insight into the leanings of the Digg crowd.

Taking that a step further, Graywolf, the master of social networking media manipulation recently posted a guide to Creating The Ultimate Digg Post. Not content with one Digg bait, he's trying for a two pronged attack. He followed the guide up with an article that points out the Secret Army of Digg Trolls in a follow-up post.

Whilst not actively attempting any Digg baits via his blog - the ever outspoken David Naylor, co-host of the ever listenable Strike Point can be often heard laying into the army of 'clueless diggers' on the show. He's even gone as far as challenging his own staff to attempt to get an article on to the Digg front page, to highlight the trouble with making it on Digg. It makes for entertaining listening. I'm sure if he followed the ongoing trend and made Digg bait via his blog, it would be fun to watch.

Like David Naylor, Shandy King's also been on the receiving end of Digger's flames for stuff that Diggers should know better about. It seems hell hath no fury like a nerd Digger scourned.

Ok, so you're already thinking this article is a Digg bait, but if my usual experience with the place is anything to go by that won't happen, nor am I bothered (I'd be too worried my server would fall over) - I'm highlighting this so you can be on the look out for entertaining Digg baits yourself. At the moment it's still fresh, so enjoy it while you can - it won't be long before Digg baiting is as tired a merry-go-round as link baiting is. But if you're looking for an easy way to quickly gain back links for your new site, it could be just the ticket.

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Posted by Dio Bach at 9:58 AM  

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