If you are a webmaster, you probably have heard of Digg.com, the massively popular social networking web site that attracts thousands of unique visitors each day. The web site has users who promote or “digg” stories, and those that are most popular get on the homepage. Getting on the home page of Digg is huge and can do wonders for your web site and the traffic it gets. It is estimated that the #1 spot on Digg will get upwards of 10,000 unique visitors within an hour. Many of these visitors may check back frequently and help get your new web site or blog of the ground and running.
Obviously, it is very hard to get a site on the home page of Digg. According to the founders, there are currently over 2,000 stories being posted a day and only 40 of them will ever make the homepage. However, that does not stop webmasters and bloggers from submitting their stories in a glimpse of hope for making the front page at one of the top-100 Alexa ranking web sites.
Digg’s story ranking algorithm takes into account a number of factors, including number of votes (called “diggs”), number of vetos (called “buries”), time of day when the story was submitted, and digg user history, etc. Some avid digg users submit their stories in a specific day of the week (e.g., Friday day time) when the average front page diggs are known to be the fewest, and thus attempt to beat the odds of getting the front page spotlight.
Buying, selling or trading diggs is against the web site’s policies and will often result in account termination and possibly even legal action, so this is a route you do not want to take. To get a lot of diggs, you need to find someone with a popular web site or forum to link to your story. As more and more people see it, it will get more diggs, and be likely to rank higher. Eventually it will make it to the homepage. The amount or traffic/exposure you will get will be astounding. It may even take down your server with the amount of traffic it delivers within an hour or two. So take that into consideration before you click submit button for your story! :)
