Today I want to talk about how to get traffic from Digg.com.

One of readers emailed me the following:

I have been told that using Digg can be good for bringing traffic to a business website but when most of the links seem to be to news or humourous sites what is the best way to get people to look at your submission.

This post is my attempt to answer his question.

1. Submit things that of interest to the Digg community

Instead of asking “How can I get Digg users to look at my submission?” you should ask “What kind of submissions are of interest to Digg users?”

With so many options available to people on the Internet it will be difficult to force/persuade/conjole visitors to look at your submission.

So if your goal is to get traffic from Digg then your first concern should submitting things that are of interest to the Digg community.

It won’t take long looking at the home page of Digg to determine what kind of submissions routinely become popular:

• Breaking News
• Things that are controversial
• Funny photos and videos
• Apple News
• Firefox News
• Political News, especially things dealing with Obama or Ron Paul

If your site is about Poodle Manicures then Digg may not be the best way to get traffic unless you of course you post some outrageous photos of crazy poodle manicures.

2. Write an enticing headline

Once you have something that will be of interest to the Digg community you need to position it in a manner that will get it noticed.

The first step to doing this is to write an effective headline. People looking at Digg submissions skim the headlines and ignore the description unless the headline was very interesting.

So the first thing to do is to pay attention to the headlines of things that are popular.

Many popular posts have headlines that can classified into one of the following groups:

• Numbered Lists (e.g. 5 Ways to…, 10 Horrible…, etc.)
• Top Lists, Best Lists, & Worst Lists (e.g. Top Reasons…, Best Methods to…, Worst Things to Say…, etc.)
• Bizarre, Controversial, or Outrageous

3. Select the right category for your submission

If you place your submission in the wrong category no one will vote for it.

This seems rather obvious but is a common mistake.

If you are not sure which category to choose then do a quick search for related submissions and see which categories people before you chose.

4. Send ‘Shouts’ to your friends

At the bottom of a post you’ll see a share link:

Clicking on this allows to send a ‘shout’ or email to all of your friends.

Of course this supposes that you friends on Digg.

5. Get more friends

Having more friends means you can send more shouts and get the word out on your submissions.

To get more friends simply find people that have submissions with 50 or more diggs, digg some of their submissions, and then add them as a friend. Some of these will reciprocate and add you as a friend.