Since the creation of the nofollow tag, there has been much debate over the validity of it. But, lately many SEO professionals are speaking out against it. Add Loren Baker’s rant against nofollow to the against pile. Loren gives 13 great reasons not to use nofollow, and he is absolutley right. I’ve never really said what I think about this, but I agree with him. I do not intentionally use it, but I use Wordpress so I guess my blog comments have it. I moderate all comments anyway, plus I have Askimet, so as Loren says it’s irrelevant.

Google created the nofollow tag with good intentions of stopping comment spam on blogs. Two years later, it hasn’t worked, and Google is now using fear tactics to get webmasters to use it by basically saying “use nofollow or your links won’t count.” This is the equivalent of SEO blackmail. (Hey, cool idea for a domain name!)

It’s time for a new solution. Google has a history of solving problems with software. So why are they relying on webmasters to solve a problem they should be trying to solve on their own? I would guess that the non-SEO educated has no idea what nofollow is anyway. Come on Google, wise up and listen to us. Nofollow does not work. Do what you do best and use the data you are already collecting to make your own determination on the authority of links.

Friday night, I submitted my first blog post to Digg. The next day it made it to the popular page and then proceeded to rack up over 2700 diggs in one day. As I write this, the post has over 3000 diggs and almost 300 comments and counting. It got as high as the number 3 technology story of the day. It is still on the Top in 24 Hours page. The post itself has 67 comments right now. So basically in this blog post I am going to tell you how I did it. It has everything to do with what you write about and knowing Diggers likes and dislikes.

Your Writing is Crucial

Now when I started writing it, it was not my goal to make the Digg home page. I never really even expected that to happen. However, once I began organizing the ideas in my post, I realized it was perfect diggbait.

To really get people to respond, you need to write about something controversial, and the more controversial it is, the better. Knowing what diggers like and dislike really helps you here. Among their likes are Google, Apple, Steve Jobs, Firefox, Linux, etc. Among their dislikes are Microsoft, Bill Gates, Internet Explorer, SEO, President Bush, “The Man,” big corporations in general, other than Apple and Google, etc. They also love conspiracy or the appearance of a conspiracy. That’s how I figured out that my topic was perfect for Digg.

Once you have your topic, write a title that makes a bold statement and back it up with the article itself. Remember that it’s the title that gets people to read the article, so be creative here. The information in the post itself should be factual, but you shouldn’t be afraid to suggest things that may or may not be true. Posing a question is a good way to appear controversial while not saying anything definitively, and it gets people to participate in the discussion and add their own ideas. It doesn’t have to be very long either, just long enough to back up your claim and get people interested.

In the digg submission itself, I made the title even more controversial. The title in your submission can be different from the article itself, but it still needs to relate to the article. They will not allow you to deliberatley try to trick people though, and if you do, you could possibly have your account banned. My point is I made the title on Digg more controversial than the title on the actual blog post, and it paid off big time.

The day of the week may also have something to with the success of your Digg. I submitted mine on a Friday night. On Saturday, it got 2700 diggs. I don’t know for sure, but submitting it on Saturday may have had something to do with it since it was a weekend and most people are not working.

The Newly Popluar Page

Once your submission is done, it goes to the upcoming stories page. From here you really only need about 30 or 40 diggs to make it to the newly popular page which is on the home page. That is what you have to do to really get it to take off. If it is good enough, it can really skyrocket, like mine did.

I really don’t know the secret to getting to the newly popular page though. I am fairly new to Digg, so here is what I did. I started searching for people that had submitted articles that were similar to or had covered topics in the past related to mine. I began adding those users as friends. I don’t know if that’s what did the trick or not, but adding someone as a friend lets them see your diggs. If they have similar interests, they are very likely to digg your story as well.

I think the crucial thing though was being the first one to the table with my story. No one else had pointed out what I was going to, and that seems to be the clincher to me. You need to search Digg before you post to be sure. Digg also alerts you when you submit stories that may be similar. They also won’t let you post something that has already been posted. If someone else has written about your story, you need to be substantially different to stand out. Usually that just requires a little thinking and is not too difficult if you try.

Digging Your Own Stuff

Remember that it does not hurt to digg your own stuff as long as you are digging other people’s stuff as well.

The Effects and Benefits of Digg

As to what the benefits to being on Digg are, I’m not sure there is a definitive answer to that. A big benefit is traffic, but sometimes your site can crash under the weight. Mine stayed up, fortunately. Also, the traffic is only temporary. But, you can see other benefits, such as an increase in the number of links to your site. This will increase the authority of your domain and could potentially drive future visitors through resulting search engine traffic.

In addition, you may see an increase in your site readership. Most diggers will just go to your site to read the post and then leave, but if someone really likes your site, they may become a regular reader. So you could notice an increase in repeat visitors, but nothing like the original traffic spike you will receive.

In conclusion, I think to do what I did, you need to be controversial, you need to cater to the digg community and you need to be first. If you do that, you may just have what it takes to be a Digg superstar. Really though, I did not find it that hard, and it may not even be that beneficial in the long run. I have to admit, it sure was fun though!

There are all kinds of ways to allow your users to submit your site to Digg. Digg itself even has a section with tools that allow you to do that. One of the ways is adding a “Digg This” button to your site.

Adding the Digg This button is pretty straight foward. All you have to do is add this piece of code into the page you want to get dugg.

<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

For blog users, this can be tricky. The reason is that you want the post to be dugg, but not usually the main url, so that people can go directly to the post itself. Every blog software displays the most recent posts on the front page. If you have this button on your blog post and it gets dugg, it will display how many diggs the post has. But when you look at the home page, it will show 0. This is because nobody has dugg the homepage, they dugg the blog post.

Digg itself provides a way to fix this problem. All you have to do is add an extra line of javascript with the URL of the dugg post in it, like this.

<script type="text/javascript">
digg_url = 'WEBSITE_URL';
</script>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

When you do this on your blog, the home page will show the correct number of diggs on your post, and it will display correctly on the actual blog post as well.

However, you may have a problem adding this code to your post in wordpress, as I did. I added the code to the post editor in wordpress, but it kept automatically escaping the single quotes in the javascript by inserting a backslash in front of them. This causes the javascript not to work once it is posted.

To correct this, I added double quotes instead of single quotes. This fixed the problem, and it now displays as it is supposed to.

On a side note, I would only add the “Digg This” button to your post after it has recieved more than a few diggs. It looks stupid if it only has one digg, and you were the one that dugg it.

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.org posted on their blog the best way to find out how many external links a web page has. It is widely known among SEO’s that of all the search engines Yahoo! returns the most complete and accurate numbers when it comes to links. Yahoo even has a tool called Site Explorer that show you have many pages of a site are indexed in Yahoo and how many links that site has. But, Rand reveals something here that you may not know. Check it out.

We’ve seen lots and lots of link search data from Yahoo!’s many sources - site explorer, web search, APIs for both of these, results from the engines they serve (see below), etc. To date, the most accurate link counts we’ve ever found are done via the search.yahoo.com URL. Once you get to the results page, surf to the last page of results available - you can also append &b=999 to the end of the URL manually. Yahoo!’s count will update to be more accurate and if the page only shows “results X through Y of Z,” you can use those numbers to get a good idea of how many truly unique links you’ve got.

There you have it. According to Rand, you can get the best results by going to http://search.yahoo.com and using the link: or linkdomain: commands to get the most accurate link counts for any url you want to research links for.

In doing research lately, I have come across a paid directory I am recommending for some business owners that have relatively new web sites. I don’t normally recommend paid links unless it’s really neccessary. However, I think a listing in Business.com can help many businesses with web sites that have had trouble building links and traffic. It costs $199 to be listed for a year and then can be renewed for $149 a year after that.

I suggest paying the initial fee and trying it for a year. After that if you are not satisfied, you don’t have to renew. I think in most cases, it would be worth the money. You should see an increase in targeted traffic not only from this directory but from the search engines as well. I believe that also you could receive more links on other sites just for being listed there. This will then bring in more traffic from those sites as well as increase link popularity in the search engines. Here is the link to the sign up page if you are interested.

http://www.business.com/info/ad_products/annual_inclusion.asp