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April 29, 2008
Spamming Sphinn, Digg, and Others...
By Scott Goodyear
While it is important to get the word out about your site or service far and wide, there is a fine line between submitting something interesting and spamming social sites like Sphinn, Digg, and others. Some are surprised to find out that some of their self promotional efforts may be construed as "spam". In this post I want to point to an example that I saw over at Sphinn.
Essentially Sphinn serves as a central hub where search engine marketers can come together to post and discuss the stories, images, links, and other bits that are related to the search industry. In many ways, Sphinn is a clone of sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, and others but with an overall topical focus. While any one can submit to Sphinn, some submissions are so topically out of touch, that you wonder what people were thinking.
In the Sphinn post above, the submitter "MitraMyers", submits a link to http://www.lexansystems.com/ with the description: "Enterprise Information Security & Data Security Products and Solutions". When you go to the link provided, this has nothing to do with search engine marketing, optimization, etc. This is obviously spam either from Lexan Systems, their SEO company, a competitor trying to put a black eye on Lexan's marketing efforts, or just some clueless person. Either way some one (honestly, not me) reported this and an admin has taken the post down while I write this.
Here is another example, a Women's news/info/donation site called Bringr that is being spammed to death. Go back a few pages and you see that some of the info is actually pretty good but every once in a while some spammer starts submitting their pages over and over again...
While Sphinn has been pretty good about quickly removing spammy posts to their service, not all such services act as quickly. Some places use a "bury" system where it takes a critical mass of users to root out and either remove spammy submissions or at least get them out of the front page or "new" section which is in the public eye. In the meantime, it makes the submitter and/or target of the link look bad. And of course, for our industry... people tend to lump us as all together. Many equate spamming social sites, blogs, and the like as "SEO" even if it is not. As Patrick Altoft mentions in a post at Blogstorm, spamming with out thinking should not even be considered "black hat" seo.
Before submitting to a social site two things to consider:
1) Read some of the posts. Is there even a nominal theme to the social site?
Not really. Yes, internet marketing. Sharing women's information/resources. Celebrity news and gossip.
2) If your submission is actually related to the site's topics, will it be found interesting?
Even on Digg, which is generally about anything... a link to your home page, about page, pricing section, contact page, etc. is, quite honestly, lame. Submitting a link where you've posted interesting photos, a novel way to use CSS rather than a graphic, etc. is not a bad idea. The point is to gain links and references from people who appreciate what you've submitted. These people will go on and link to either your page or the social network page that promotes your submission.
I know that for some this is marketing 101 discussion. For some this is new information. For others, this is information that may help you to explain to your boss, CEO, etc. why some search marketing efforts remain fruitless despite the labor or cost expended by a PR team or consultant. The idea behind marketing and submitting links to sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Sphinn, and others is valid but what you actually submit makes all of the different in the world.
Good luck in your in your search marketing efforts!
← What is this?
This is very timely and very correct Scott. Being a very skilled social marketer I have Dugg deeply into Digg on this very issue.
In fact Digg allows you to shout your latest post on Digg to your friends list and you can ask them to Digg it.
The problem I see here is that in your public history your shouts can be seen. I have come to feel very deeply that continually submitting, Digging and shouting your own content builds up a history of self promotion all pointing to your domain.
Google has got to be monitoring this and if they are not doing it already will be soon viewing this as a negative indicator of your domain's quality in Digg results.
I was doing this myself and I kept seeing my blog sink deeper and deeper until I quit shouting my own Digg items.
I went into great detail on this, analyzing it deeply with multiple tests and and 20 screen shots showing that your public profile exposes that you are continually shouting you own content.
http://www.keywebdata.com/?p=79
I would love to know what you think about this Scott and what your readers here think as well.
Looking forward to your response! - Chris Lang
Posted by Chris Lang at May 7, 2008 04:30 AM
If spammy tactics, esp. in social computing slip through the screen, they really don't do much for SEO or converting traffic these days. It's really not worth even the short-term effort in the largest percent of cases. If you're looking for long-term results, spend the time fitting in, not spamming.
Posted by Bill Sebald at May 7, 2008 06:05 AM
Hello Scott,
My name is Christopher, and I am the CEO of Lexan Systems L.L.C. You are correct in your assessment, a link to our site is not appropriate on Sphinn, an Internet Marketing site.
I am looking into how this happened, it appears this is likely the result of a third party SEO firm.
If this was the case, I would like personally apologize to the Sphinn community as we are firmly against spam of any sort.
-Christopher R. Spence
Posted by Christopher at May 7, 2008 02:20 PM
Hi Chris, Bill, and Christopher,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Chris, I read your article. Good stuff! I know that there was a post a while back at Sphinn which purported to quote some googler saying that they were devaluing links from Digg and other places. Eventually, no one could find the post anymore or Googler quote... SO, who knows. It would make some sense if Google devauled Digg or at least links from certain profiles, with certain qualities. But this would involve a bit of extra cycles to process and wheels within wheels, it's hard to know with out confirmation from Google. And even then... it may or may not exist, or be intentional, or it maybe a test to see who this changes rankings/perception. As I've told people before, I don't think that even if you had a top Googler in the room, that they understand all of the bits/pieces that make up the algo. It's like the -60 penalty that they denied then said it might be a bug... the sandbox which was denied then admitted that it might be a beneficial bug... This overall idea sounds like an interesting thread to follow up on at a conference, with a Googler.
"they really don't do much for SEO or converting traffic these days."
Truly. But it seems like it is an ongoing battle where some of the spamm is found and killed while others take a while. While not all links have the same benefit, not everyone outside of the industry knows this. If your client does not know any better, and you show them that they've gotten X number of increased links, they may not care that percentage of those links (or if all of them) come from topically relevant sites, from devalued links pages, spammy social submissions, etc. It's like the guys that buy the turn key web site operations who are overjoyed about all the "hits" they get in the first months, but then get concerned when they have no sales. Then hire some one who knows what they're doing, find out that it was the same IP address hitting them over and over again... I feel for those fledgling online businesses.
While it is possible to get -some- link pop from sites like Digg, it seems to me that it is more useful for spreading an idea. The more people talk about something, the wider the idea can spread. For example, I have little doubt that this page:
http://www.romancortes.com/blog/homer-css/ being highlighted on http://reddit.com/info/6hhe6/comments/
had some influence on the web design site then being covered over on http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/05/0047225&from=rss
a few days later. Interesting ideas can spread. And while it is not a one for one, even if you get no link pop from say Digg, Slashdot, etc. other sites (like this one even) go on to mention and link to interesting pages.
Christopher, sorry if you were caught in the cross fire on that, but it's a good example of some of the challenges online. And it's good that you post to let people know that you don't approve of that. On a related note, here is a simlar example of things gone unintentionally awry in the world of SEO:
http://www.ask-kalena.com/rants/dumbass-of-the-week-web-propeller/
Posted by Scot Goodyear at May 7, 2008 04:41 PM
I do want to add that this is usually how Digg links go as far as passing on link juice to blogs.
First the Digg item does nothing for you. Then as Digg votes mount the Digg item starts to show up in the blogsearch.
As more Diggs mount, your items starts to show in blogsearch.
With more Digg votes both yours and the Digg's item show in blogsearch, usually right at the top.
Soon because you are at the top others start to link to you in their blogs.
With a few more links quickly your blog starts to show in websearch on Google.
With 100+ Diggs you stablize at the top of Blogsearch and can stay there for weeks. You will also stablize in websearch at some period too, until a blog with more incoming links outranks you.
At least that is the results of testing I have done with my sites and for the content of my social marketing eBook.
Oddly enough since I deleted both my Digg accouns and the Digg links I have risen even higher in Google and Google UK. That is really interesting.
Posted by Chris Lang at May 8, 2008 11:56 PM
