So, apparently Digg unbanned certain domains from having stories submitted but feedback I've been getting and direct observations show that any stories submitted from these allegedly non-banned sites are quickly "buried".

Connected Internet shows how the "Digg mafia" buried a story within minutes from their site. Pronet Advertising found evidence of a Digg "bury brigade". It's all childish nonsense and pretty much relfects the user base of Digg.

I understand the rush from getting thousands of new visitors within a few hours but it's nothing more than Digg crack and can hardly be taken as a serious marketing channel any more than playing poker in Vegas is a viable career.

Labels: digg

Today I noticed on a trackback link from Pronet Advertising that Digg has decided to un-ban a number of domain names. Neil Patel's name is listed as the author of the blog post and he lists Online Marketing Blog at the top. I appreciate the heads up.

I suspect there are people wondering what the owners of the sites that are not on Digg have to say about this.

Here's my reply: Sigh.

We weren't relying on traffic before toprankblog.com was banned and certainly haven't missed it since. In fact, our visitors, RSS subscribers and page views are up by 30%.

What I do appreciate about being "unbanned" is that if someone submits a story from our site to Digg, they will no longer get the "This domain name has been banned from submissions" type of message.

More importantly than re-including sites, I hope Digg implements policies similar to search engines as far as identifying and dealing with spam along with re-inclusion. I understand as well as anyone that mistakes can be made on both sides. But without a better process, Digg will alienate itself from growing its user base.

Labels: digg

Larry Chase has published Web Digest for Marketers for a very, very long time. What amazes me is that he still finds great online marketing resources to share. His latest newsletter shares 12 Insider SEO Tools & Tactics.

HitTail - This tool reveals in real time the most promising yet least utilized keywords that drive traffic to your site organically.

Link Hub Finder Tool - This tool will help you find the hub sites for any niche/category. BTW, you need a Google API Key to use this tool.

Quintura - Use this tool to figure out where you live in your "keyword neighborhood". Quintara is a search engine that displays your results both visually and as a standard list.

What the Buzz? - A keyword research tool that will tell you who's talking about a certain keyword.

SummitTOOLS Spider Simulator - This tool tells you how a search engine spider reacts to your pages and what can be done to boost your visibility and subsequent search engine ranking.

SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool - This tool combines the results from or links to all the useful SEO keyword research resources out there into one single interface.

Virante Keyword Theme & Link Relationship Tools - Submit a single keyword and it will serve up a list the keywords most often found in conjunction with your keyword in the content of all the sites on the World Wide Web.

Microsoft AdCenter Labs Search Funnel - The Search Funnel tool is for those of you who are interested in visualizing how your average Joe uses a search engine.

Google Webmaster Central - One-stop shop for from-the-source information about how Google crawls and indexes websites.

Stephan Spencer's Blog and RSS Feed Search SEO - Tips and tactics for optimizing your blogs and RSS feeds for SEO purposes. (You can also search Google for "blog optimization" and click on the number one listing, that's TopRank!)

How Linkable? Tool - This tool lists all the factors that go into Phillip Lessen's good-or-not-good filter producing a score and an explanation as to why or why not your blog posts are linkable.

Mobile Search Marketing - Repository of tips and tricks on the nascent topic of mobile SEO.

Not included in Larry's list of SEO tools was Jim Boykin's updated list of free SEO tools with 17 different, useful tools to identify links, check keywords in content and many more.

SEO tools are great, but if you want hands on knowledge of how to market a web site, then check out the Minneapolis High Rankings Search Engine Marketing Seminar.

Labels: search engine optimization, seo