Social Bookmarking Done Right
59How to use social marketing, social bookmarking and blog marketing without destroying your search engine rankings.
My main social marketing strategy is to use social bookmarking sites to create backlinks to my sites.
I have found 15 sites so far that Google will follow back to your site and return a backlink in Google results.
However, think about this: If Digg has 5 million users and the average number of posts, from the Digg top 100 to the user who no longer participates is 1 post per day, that is 5 million posts.
How can you possibly expect that Google will see your 1 link in Digg in 5 million others as a backlink to your site? In fact if you submit your site to Digg and no one else Diggs it, I have come to feel that is a negative indicator in Google's eyes. The worst thing you can do is submit your Digg posts yourself and then get no Diggs.
One of my friends on Social Marketing Central wrote an article that went hot on the Internet. He got like 1500 visitors in a few days and 80 comments. The bad news is that he only got 18 Diggs. Now tell me this: Don't you think that Google, that has access to the popularity of posts on Digg just like we do, would not see 1500 visitors and 18 Diggs a negative indicator of this blog and the blog post itself?
Google knows how many Diggs you get, they are hyperlinks in the public profiles of Digg users who Dugg the Digg post. Google knows how many visitors we get, we tell them when we use Google Analytics on our blogs.
It takes 50+ Diggs before Google sees your backlink as valuable.
I can easily get 100 to 200 Diggs for any article I want in Digg in 2 days. I do that through my own strategies and participation.
So social bookmarking if done wrong can actually hurt you.
Social marketing is about being social, so be social on social bookmarking sites, don't just submit you own content and expect that this will bring you results.
I want to tell you that submitting your own content over and over is absolutely the worst thing you can do on social bookmarking sites.
I have tested this heavily and if your profile is full of nothing but your own domain then this is found to be a negative indicator to Google.
Social Bookmarking SubMission Software Should Not Be Used
Also I have found that if you submit to all the bookmarking sites at almost the same time you get very little credit in Google. Think about it, if your site was actually submitted by different users at all these sites then the timestamp would not be within minutes of each other.
I did a test. My friend blogged an article on Blogger and did not submit to any social sites. I published my own article about the same time. I submitted to all my social sites within 10 minutes of one another. His article was #1 on blogsearch for 2 days, mine never even showed up. My blog is way more powerful. 2000 links, PR 3 and a 19 in Technorati. His no links, PR 0 and nothing in Technorati.
In another test we published one of my articles and then over the course of 24 hours added the post to social bookmarking sites. I went to Websearch the next day top ten and held #1 on Blogsearch for a week.
I call this natural progression and it is so far a true story. I believe that Google is testing social bookmarking sites as a indicator of a blog quality in preperation to buy Digg and begin using them as another blog ranking tool.
Your Blog is Your Social Marketing Hub
While I post, comment and build friends across 20 different networks I already have my own social network, my blog.
If you are not actively getting 5 to 10 comments per post, replying to comments, adding subscribers to your email newsletters and building RSS readership then there is something wrong with your how your are marketing your blog.
That is your number one social marketing and networking hub. No matter what you do on social networks it is your ultimate goal to bring home the bacon and get your social site friends into following your blog and subscribing to your email list.
Even if you do not have time to put out a newsletter you can simply direct your subscribers to your blog when you have a new post.
My tactics bring backlinks and move you up in the search engines, it builds you huge friends lists and doubles your newsletter list not to mention sales form each of these three areas.
I Believe Google is About to Buy Digg and Become a Social Search Engine
I truly feel Google is about to buy Digg, in fact I am betting my last dollar on it and my latest product about social bookmarking sites and how to use them correctly is all about that.
I have been testing how Google ranks blogs and what credit is given when you get 100+ Diggs or a good positive vote ratio on a number of social sites.
I even went so far as to get a nobody blog ranked #1 under one of my prime search terms, outranking my own blog just to prove I could do it.
So, this tells me Google is testing Digg to see if they want to roll them into Google in any number of ways.
I will go way out on a limb and say that I expect to see "digg this" buttons next to our search results soon.
The Google Social Marketing and Social Bookmarking Slapdown is Coming and it Will Be Brutal
A Google researcher is rumored to have posted this to the Google blog and then it was pulled, the person supposedly having talked out of turn and let the cat out of the bag:
"We are working on strategies to level the playing field, effectively bringing back natural search patterns enjoyed in the pre-social bookmarking days. For webmasters who use social media responsibly, this is nothing to worry about - we will be targetting mainly a small minority of prolific bookmarkers with a new algorithm that looks at linking patterns over time."
"Webmasters who rely heavily on bookmarking their own sites to gain traffic will likely see a drop in pagerank before the end of 2008, and we will be working closely with two major social bookmarking sites to find a solution that will have no detremental effect on the average internet user."
Last year in October Google downgraded the pagerank of many PR 6, 7, and 8 sites that were using linking strategies that violates the Google webmaster guidelines. Very popular and powerful sites dropped heavily in the Google search rankings.
In 2004 Google did the same thing, slapping down sites that it felt were overly comercial and had little valuable content just before Christmas.
I believe the same thing is coming this year, just before Christmas, with Google downgrading the PageRank and rankings of sites that have artificially inflated their backlinks with social bookmarking sites.
If you change your ways now, stop submitting your own content, shouting your own content of Digg and basically spamming social bookmarking sites and Google you could be amoung the sites left standing.
Chris Lang is a social marketing consultant living in Mesa, AZ. Working from home, he constantly devises wickedly evil social marketing tactics and tries to take over the world.
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Comments
I just have a few questions about your article:
1. Are you able to provide any proof that having low number of diggs for your article is detrimental to your page rank?
2. How do you know for certain that it takes 50+ diggs before your page rank is affected by your backlink?
Also, you say that you are able to get 200 diggs lickety-split whenever you want so don't you think this quote pertains to you?
"We are working on strategies to level the playing field, effectively bringing back natural search patterns enjoyed in the pre-social bookmarking days. For webmasters who use social media responsibly, this is nothing to worry about - we will be targetting mainly a small minority of prolific bookmarkers with a new algorithm that looks at linking patterns over time."
I am not too sure this article is entirely correct. I have submitted my own links to social bookmarking sites and have gotten diggs honestly. Where in the social bookmarking code of conduct does it say that someone other than you has to digg your article? I would think that if you are excited and happy about an article you wrote you would want to publicize it... Imagine a restaurant that never advertised because they were waiting for all their customers to do the work for them.
John, let me answer these question one at a time and let me thank you for bringing up these issues!
You said: >> I just have a few questions about your article:
You said: >> 1. Are you able to provide any proof that having low number of Diggs for your article is detrimental to your page rank?
I never used the words PageRank except in the last portion about the coming (I believe) Google slapdown of social bookmarking abuse and Google manipulation.
PageRank does not affect how you rank in Google results. Stop using the words PageRank, it is misleading.
You might note that NEVER did I say that Social Bookmarking has any affect on PageRank. I view PageRank as an indicator of how Google sees my site, noting more.
Incoming links affect your blog posts rankings. I call this Google juice, picked it up from Andy Beard. I do not call it PageRank. Remember that blogs are supposed to be about news.
News is NEW, and blog posts sink in the SERPS with age and lack of a PROGRESSION of incoming links.
Right now Google is testing Digg and trying to find positive and negative indicators. Getting very few Diggs RIGHT NOW does not directly affect rankings. It is very easy for a great blog post to get only a few Diggs.
Just because I feel that Google is testing a high Digg count and a low Digg count as indicators of a blog post's quality, getting few Diggs will not sink you post's ranking.
If your blog post and my blog post target the same keywords in the title tag, and you get 20 Diggs and I get 100 Diggs I will well out rank you. That is fact. FACT at this time.
We never really know what Google is doing, and they do not want us to know. One week it maybe this way, the next it is different. That is the nature of Google.
It is a factor in how Google ranks blog posts right now. I feel that Google is going to use this more and more once they figure out how unethical users can manipulate the system.
You said: >> 2. How do you know for certain that it takes 50+ diggs before your page rank is affected by your backlink?
Because when you post a new article on your blog you rank in Blogsearch. If your get 20 or so Diggs, you rank higher. When you hit 50+ plus you rank #1 in Blogsearch for a long time, maybe a week.
If you get 100+ Diggs then you quicly start ranking better in Websearch. If it is a niche term where the big sites with 200,000 incoming links have not bothered to dominate, you can easily rank top 10.
All the testing AND evidence is public on my site, go look. Better yet, sign up to my autoresponder and I will walk you thru it, step by step.
>> Also, you say that you are able to get 200 diggs lickety-split whenever you want so don't you think this quote pertains to you....
I want to make it real clear that I DO NOT ABUSE DIGG! That is the worst thing you can do. I can get those 100 to 200 Diggs by NOT ABUSING it. If I did it all the time, I would be ABUSING that power and killing my Google rankings. I only submit other people's content and then only when it is worthy of being submitted and being Dugg. I bring value to my frineds list, Digg and Google.
Blogs are about NEWS, it is natural to get a few hundred Diggs in twenty 24 hours. It is supposed to work that way when the post is brand new. That is what Digg and Social Bookmarking is about. NEWS and user interaction.
Look at the Digg front page. Digg items get 2 and 3 THOUSAND Diggs, it is natural to get alot of Diggs fast.
It is NOT NATURAL for a Digg user to constantly submit all their blog posts and then shout the URL everday to his friends list.
You said: >> Where in the social bookmarking code of conduct does it say that someone other than you has to digg your article?
John, that would have come from MY social bookmarking code of conduct and it is the only one there is. It is called "Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Tactics"
Look at your Digg profile, then go to "submissions" where it shows what you submitted. How many of your own posts resolve to your won domain?
A lot more than you suspect.
Look under your Digg profile where it says "History" and see how many times you have shouted your own content. Probably a lot more than you know.
I bet you even added your site to the links section of your profile. Not a good idea John.
Google KNOWS what sites you own. Google KNOWS that you are submitting your own content. Google KNOWS that you are shouting your own content to get more Diggs.
This would be called "artificially influencing the ranking of your site" and is are reason to get banned from Google. It violates the Google "terms of service."
From the Google webmaster guidelines:
"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, 'Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?' "
If you are submitting your own content, then shouting it to your friends list you are using "tricks intended to improve search engine rankings" whether or not you are doing this intentionally.
Thank you for helping me to clarify these points. It helps my to explain things that are not fully understood to my readers.
And YES, John, I do sell a product. A product that is intended to HELP my readers. When I sell an eBook I always happy to make the sale. I make my living this way and I feed my family by making my living on the Internet.
EVEN BETTER, I am glad that someone is smart enough to spend a measly $57 to find out that what they are doing is going to hurt their site and then THEY will be having problems feeding THEIR family.
What other questions do you have John? Where else have I been unclear?
To all of you who have bought my book, you have made a considerable wise decision and I thank you!
Great research, and even better evaluation.
I am guilty of some of these faulty procedures, and will be changing the way I do my social bookmarking activities. WIll be experimenting a bit too.
Thanks for sharing your results.
Hi Chris,
Man, for your first Hub page, this one's a doosy. Excellent information to ponder and reflect upon.
Your response to John was longer than your actual Hub post. You should be credited with a 2nd Hub post! LOL.
Very well articulated.
"I can get those 100 to 200 Diggs by NOT ABUSING it. If I did it all the time"
WOW, I wish I could! I don't see any links to your book, and I don't have it budgeted at the moment but I'll work on it!!
I have had EXCELLENT results in the SERPs with Propeller, Digg (but I never get very many) and i do article marketing on steroids - but I can't wait to find out more about your book!
Marianne,
Since this is not a commercial article I did not link to the sales page but you can get a full social marketing walk thru here: http://www.keywebdata.com/seo-tactic.php
Chris, I wonder what effect Google would have if groups of mutual friends submitted articles for their friends to gain Digg? Sooner or later wouldn't Google see the reciprical link process at play again?
Chris, I think Jason brings up a valid point... your reply to John was worthy of being given the credit for a 2nd hub post. LoLThere's a couple of things said by John that I would like to address. The first one is:"Where in the social bookmarking code of conduct does it say that someone other than you has to digg your article?"In order to answer this, I first would have to see an actual "Social Bookmarking Code of Conduct". I've been looking for one of these things for 3 weeks or so and it seems as if there is no such animal. You see a "Social Bookmarking Code of Conduct", also known as "Social Bookmarking Etiquette", would have to be something that is written down and widely accepted by the experts in the field because it is they who set the tone for what Social Bookmarking is and what it is not. Non-experts have the tendency to follow the leaders... or they totally ignore what is said anyway and do their own thing. As far as I am concerned no legitimate Social Bookmarking Code of Conduct would ever say "When posting to Digg, never submit your own content. Instead have others post your content for you!" The reason for that is because it is too specific for something that affects Social Bookmarking across the boards. Instead it would say something along the lines of "When making a submittal to social bookmarking sites, do not submit your own content. Instead have others submit items from your sites for you." or "When submitting to Digg, Sphinn, Searchles, and other social bookmarking sites... never post your own content". Another thing, just because something is said, or not said, in some Code of Etiquette does not mean that whatever is said is either good or bad advice. In other words... just because "Don't submit your own stuff" is something that people do not tell each other until they get sick of hearing it doesn't mean the advice is bad or wrong. One really has no bearing on the validity of the other.So I see the question as a moot point.The next thing said was:"Also, you say that you are able to get 200 diggs lickety-split whenever you want so don't you think this quote pertains to you?'We are working on strategies to level the playing field, effectively bringing back natural search patterns enjoyed in the pre-social bookmarking days. For webmasters who use social media responsibly, this is nothing to worry about - we will be targetting mainly a small minority of prolific bookmarkers with a new algorithm that looks at linking patterns over time.'"For the record Chris actually wrote:"I can easily get 100 to 200 Diggs for any article I want in Digg in 2 days. I do that through my own strategies and participation."I, personally, don't call 2 days as "lickety-split" for I've seen far too many submittal get around 100 diggs in a matter of hours. On the other hand most submittals spend their entire lives on digg never getting more than a few Diggs. I do suppose to the person getting 10 diggs in 3 weeks that someone getting 150 Diggs in 2 days would be superfast. It reminds me of the old monkey joke about the perspective of the monkeys in the trees. The monkey on top of the tree looks down and sees nothing but smiling faces, the monkeys on the bottom looks up and sees nothing but... well you get the idea. :)Chris quoted the Google Webmaster as saying:"Webmasters who rely heavily on bookmarking their own sites to gain traffic will likely see a drop in pagerank before the end of 2008, and we will be working closely with two major social bookmarking sites to find a solution that will have no detremental effect on the average internet user."The operative word here is the word "Heavily". Google isn't interested in the person occassionally posting their own content, they are interested in people who heavily use the social bookmarking sites by posting their own content in order to get page rank. They are looking at the links being used and finding out who those links belong. If the person is meeting the required "magic number" set by Google, then they will be viewed as a person trying to manipulate the system -- whether the person is intentionally trying to gain rank in Google or not. They don't say how many submittals for one's own page constitutes "Heavy", nor do they say a percentage. All we know is that it is said that people who post too much of their own content will likely see a drop in page rank. You may be able to post one submittal out of ten from your own blogs or sites, you may be able to post 5 out of 10... we don't know. All we know is that the "Smackdown", as Chris calls it, is coming.There are ways around posting too much of your own content... or posting it at all. Why not just utilize those ways and be done with it? Sooner or later Google will catch on to this and want to make a change again... we worry about that when the time comes.
Tom,
This is one way to do it, if abused, like anything, this will be found to be a negative indicator by Google. The problem with any blog, and social bookmarking sites are blogs, there is a history invloved.
What can be done with such a history? It can be spidered by Google, saved in a database, and analysed for patterns. Remember that Google already SAVES OUR PAGES is a database.
Remember that Digg shows everything you do no matter how you set your profile settings to private. I did a masive case study test on this.....
http://www.keywebdata.com/?p=79
From Google's database we see our Google results, it comes from Google, not live from the web. Wanted to make sure you all understood that.
Now that Google has the entire internet stored in their database they can run analytics programs against this database and look for patterns. When they find patterns, they can check to see if these patterns are moving sites up in rankings.
If these PATTERNS are artificial and blackhat linking strategies then Google will adjust their algorythm to degrade these sites.
If I can drive a nobody site to #1 on a phrase that they should not be ranked under, then Google is just fully analysing Digg and about to DOWNGRADE anyone they feel is using linking strategies only for the purpose of gaining better search rankings.
So to answer your question Tom, yes Google will find you using a Digg group IF YOU ABUSE IT. You definitely do not want to be submitting every blog post to social bookmarking.
I see you bought my book today Tom, you have made a wise decision and I thank you for purchasing "Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Tactics"
Cheers Tom! - Chris Lang
very informative article. thanks for sharing with us
Chris, thanks for this enlightening post! Tons of information. I too will be changing the way that I social market.
Brenda
Great post!!!!!!!!!
This is a great post, I get so much from this and your Blog postings. Thanks for keeping us informed.
Rocque says:
17 months ago
This is a good article for Social Marketing. It will be fun to see where your prediction takes us over the next few months.