In recent months I have personally seen Google place a large amount of emphasis on the information coming from this type of site, usually referred to as social bookmarking sites. These web pages are generally able to assess the quality of a link’s content because a large numbers of users are able to vote the content up or down, thereby screening out useless material from the higher quality fare. Such sites have exploded in popularity in recent years for this very reason; users are able to find interesting reading material pre-judged by like minded individuals.

The problem, for Google anyway, is that they don’t spend any time determining whether a story is doing well on one of these sites or not. Google tends to think that any link submitted to one of these sites is valuable, regardless of whether other users like it. For some of the more prosperous sites, new stories are submitted on a PR 5 page and then, if voted up enough, move to a PR 8 page. Even if the link doesn’t receive a single view from other users it still gives you a shiny PR 5 link in Google’s eyes. Let’s explore some of the options when considering your social media marketing campaign.

The Social Voting Medium: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and More

One of the most popular categories of social media today is those that allows users direct control by voting on a story’s merit. This ability to give direct feed back on a link has proven especially effective in producing content that is worth reading. For the sake of this tutorial, however, we only want to focus on the reputation of these sites. Sure, if we made extremely good viral content we might get a ton of clicks, but what we really want is the PR of these sites to flow to ours to increase our rankings.

Of this type of site the most popular example is Digg, with other sites such as Reddit, Propeller, and niche sites like Sphinn trailing behind. When starting a social media marketing campaign, the best solution is to start with Digg and work your way up. I wrote a post a while back on using Digg for SEO that explains the basics of getting started with this type of site.

One of the better sites for getting targeted traffic and a few extra customers is the bookmarking site StumbleUpon. I’ll be sure to do a full write up on StumbleUpon in the next few days but we’ll hit the basic points here. This is a web browser extension that presents users with random sites that they may like based on pre-determined interests. The user can then vote the site up or down based on whether they like it, creating a voting aspect like Digg and the others mentioned above. Although it does have these features it is more like a social bookmarking site, which we’ll discuss in the next section.

Social Bookmarking: Keeping Track of Your Bookmarks with StumbleUpon and del.icio.us

Outside of the voting framework established above exists a different type of social site. These sites rely more on the use of old fashioned bookmarks to keep track of things that may interest a reader. Both StumbleUpon and del.icio.us make themselves available to a user through several different channels. Both of these sites operate upon a web browser extension that allows users to earmark sites that they find interesting or may want to return to later. This is very similar to the old school concept of bookmarking sites, but the two diverge in a social way. The bookmarks that users earmark are then shared with their friends, who in turn share their bookmarks.

These sites don’t seem to give quite the PR and ranking boost that the voting sites give, but they can often be used for a quick surge in targeted traffic. After installing the StumbleUpon toolbar you can vote up your own site and recommend it to others. I’ve personally been able to vote up three or four of my pages and get close to a thousand quick pageviews with a 20% bounce rate. It’s not the best way to find your target audience, but it sure can be used to put your material in front of more eyes.

Forming Up the Social Media Marketing Plan

Social media marketing is by no means a science, and what works for one person may not work for another for a number of reasons. Depending on how competitive your field is or the way in which you go about your campaign can make drastic differences in your results. If you tend to send out a large number of links on social sites users will often flag your entries as spam, likely disabling your account and hurting your reputation. When done right and spread out over a longer period of time social media marketing can make a drastic different in your Google search engine results.

The search engines have quickly realized the merit of this content and are increasingly relying on these sites to provide fresh, up to date search results. The users of these sites basically do the search engine’s job by judging which sites are particularly relevant to a given topic. Major players, especially Google, have realized this and have begun placing links from such social stalwarts as Digg toward the top of their ratings.

By learning how these rankings work you can easily start to gain top ten listings on a very routine basis. In my experience I have seen someone use social voting sites to take 9 out of the top 10 results on Google’s front page for a term with more than two hundred thousand results. This may not seem like much, but this will certainly workfor a large niche market. If you’re ready to jump into the world of social media marketing go ahead and check out our basic social media marketing for seo tutorial.

I Digg It (In Case You Haven’t Before)

Digg revolves around the traditional social voting scheme as I laid out in my first post. Under this model users submit a link to content (articles, videos, photos) that is then placed in an “Upcoming” queue page. Users viewing this page then vote on links that they deem newsworthy. Links that receive more votes, or “Diggs”, then move to the front page of the site, reaching an exponentially larger audience. If a link becomes one of the most popular on the site for the day it is placed in a special sidebar where it usually remains for the course of a full day.

Why Digg?

Digg can be useful in a digital marketing strategy for a number of reasons. For those simply looking to spread content and increase Pageviews Digg can be indispensable, with most sites reporting 25,000 pageviews on a day that they reach the homepage. This can help if your site generates revenue via AdSense or a similar advertising program, although some people find that Digg users don’t click ads and provide an unwanted strain on resources.

My favorite use of Digg pertains to the search engine optimization side of the spectrum. Usually my client’s content is far from what Digg users would find appealing, but Digg can still provide some very real benefits. Search engines, especially Google, seem to be relying on social media sites to point toward quality content. Because users are allowed to vote on the best content this serves as an easy way to filter out poor content. In the next section we’ll learn how to use Digg to get an instant boost in the search rankings.

Digg and SEO

Here’s what you’re going to need to make Digg work for you:

• A Digg Account (really easy, takes less than 5 minutes)
• The URL of the content you want to link to
• The keyword phrase that you would like to rank for. For example, if you want people searching to Google to see your site when they search for “wooden widgets” this would be your phrase.

Hit the “Submit Link” on the top right of the screen. In the next screen you’ll enter your URL as well as the type of content you’ve found, whether it is an article, video or picture. I’ll go ahead and say that one of our goals in this tutorial is to keep our link on one of Digg’s top pages as long as possible. Selecting your article type can make a very big difference in this. The majority of submissions to Digg are articles, thus the articles section has a very high turnover of links. In my experience the video section moves the slowest, but play around with selecting different content types to find what works for you.

The next page is the most important of the submission process. Here you’re going to put your keyword phrase that you selected earlier into the “Title” submission field. It doesn’t have to be your exact phrase; for the example I gave above a title like “Find Wooden Widgets Online” would serve our purpose just as well. Be creative. For your description enter a short description of your site, but be sure to reiterate your keywords as well as a good sales pitch to get users to click (although it won’t matter if they don’t). Don’t get carried away with your title and description, though, as Digg users are often apt to flag spam and advertisements as such.

The thumbnail in the next step doesn’t matter so select any one you would like. Be especially careful in the next “choosing a topic” section. As I mentioned before, our goal here is to make our link stay on a front page of Digg as long as possible. Be as specific as possible when selecting your category, but also pay attention to the amount of traffic each one receives. From the Digg homepage you can select different topics on the top navigation menu to view the front page for that topic and then view new stories by clicking the button at the top right labeled “upcoming”. Now might be a good time to research the activity of a few topics where you could paste your story. For example, I usually have good results with my hockey sites by posting them to the hockey subsection. This category receives little normal activity and thus a link will stay on the upcoming hockey page for twelve hours at a stretch. Once you have selected your category enter the code at the bottom and follow the rest of the pages to complete your story upload.

After all that you may be wondering why we want to stay on a page as long as possible. That’s where Google Pagerank comes in. Say that we went through the steps above for a hockey article. After submitting the link it will appear on the general upcoming article page as well as an upcoming hockey page. The general page has a Pagerank of 7 (woo!) and the hockey page is a Pagnerank 5 (still awesome!). Our link won’t stay on the general page for very long because so many articles are submitted, so Google probably won’t see our PR7 link before it disappears. Our link on the hockey page, however, won’t disappear as fast because there aren’t as many hockey articles being submitted. Chances are if we stay here for at least half an hour Google will pick our link up and give us credit for such an authoritative link. This holds true for any category that you may submit to. If your content is really popular and gets enough Diggs it will move onto the “Popular” page for that category and then onto the front page of the entire website. These links can often be in the PR range of 5-7, with the front page being a PR 8 link that Google will credit you for.

The Results

After Google picks up your high PR link from Digg the results can be quite dramatic. When a user searches the keyword phrase that you placed in the title your site will be included in the results. Your individual mileage may vary with where you place in these results, but I’ve seen Digg links temporarily propel some of my pages that were previously on the third page to the number one result. The effect generally loses steam after a few days and your ranking will begin to slip, but the temporary effect is very noticeable and will also contribute to longterm positioning.

Not only will your site rank higher for your selected keyword phrase, but Digg also provides another link in the Google search results where others can find your site. A link is created to the content’s entry page on Digg and this link will often place high in search results as well because of Digg’s authority. In my experience these links will linger around the second page for a less competitive search phrase, sometimes permanently ranking higher than your site’s initial ranking ever was!

In Conclusion

So there you go! In less than ten minutes you’ve submitted your site to Digg for others to see and vote on while instantly boosting your rank in Google’s search results. This trick can be used numerous times to target different keywords and phrases, but be careful doing this as the Digg community is often quick to catch blatant seo tactics and spamming. Try experimenting with different categories and keyword phrases to find what works best for you and have fun with your new toy.

Check back next week when I’ll be discussing the site StumbleUpon.

Friend Sites

The most popular types of social media sites in modern times are those based upon the “friend” structure. Under this model users set up a profile page with basic information about themselves accompanied by photo galleries, songs, and other personal tidbits. Users can then browse the profiles of others, befriending real life friends in addition to those they have met online. Major examples of this type of site include Myspace and Facebook, the #6 and #8 most visited sites, respectively. Myspace currently has over 100 million users, with Facebook clocking in at just over 60 million. (Check all of these facts). To explore these types of sites futher be sure to check out our Facebook section and Myspace section.

Voting Sites

This type of site is fast gaining in popularity and is revolutionizing the way the younger generation reads news. With this model users upload items of interest, such as articles, videos and photographs, which other users then vote on. After an item receives a certain number of votes it moves to the front page of the website, making the item exponentially more popular. The majority of these sites also allow users to establish profiles and befriend others as well, but do not focus on user profiles. Major examples of this type of site include Digg, Reddit, and Fark. To learn more about these sites read our guide to social marketing.