Getting the Most Out of Digg Traffic Explored

Erratic Wisdom’s “5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Digg Traffic” is a good look at how to maximize your website or blog for taking advantage of being “dugg by Digg“. A really important point is brought up in tip number one, but also resounds throughout the rest of the tips:

The problem with most digg users is that they aren’t “sticky” – that is, they are not likely to subscribe to a website as they are only there for a particular article. However, simply because of the sheer number of people that will be hitting your article, at least a few will be interested enough in what you write to subscribe directly to the source.

The issue of “sticky” is critical to your blog’s success. “Sticky” represents the “adhesive value of your blog or site” to keep visitors returning for more.

A lot of search engine optimization (SEO) methods are dedicated to bringing in new visitors. Digg offers a way of attracting plenty of new visitors to your site. But the real trick is to keep them coming back for more, maintaining a steady but growing audience.

Erratic Wisdom recommends adding a “Subscribe” button to your website design. But subscribe to what? The subscribe button on that site adds the site to Feedburner, if you have a Feedburner account. Do you? I have a Feedburner Subscribe link in my sidebar, too. Are you using it?

Today, there are many feed monitoring services, ranging from built-in or added onto browsers to web based accounts like Feedburner. Do you need to include a link to all of those in order to encourage your Digg or other visitors to subscribe to your site? Well, I have, as a test, and the numbers are slowly growing, but not as fast as I think they should, based upon the rising number of consistent visitors to this site. True, WordPress.com lacks good site monitoring details, so I’m only second guessing on this.

Still, this is a good idea. By encouraging visitors to subscribe to your site, they will continue to get great information that makes your site worth monitoring and returning to, right? Maybe. Erratic Wisdom goes on:

Obviously, most digg readers are at your site for a quick read, but you should try to keep as many as you can reading. A few ways to do this include adding a “Related Articles” list under the post in question. I have also found that a “Most Popular” list of articles can be very successful. Digg users are coming to (or making) a popular article and it is logical that they would want to see other successful posts from the author.

Being dugg by Digg is great. Having people subscribe to your blog is wonderful. But have you given them reasons to keep coming back? And have you encouraged them to look around to see what other good things can be found on your blog? Hmm?

Maintaining quality content means keeping people interested in what you have to say. It means coming up with new, fascinating, and original content worthy of reading, and attracting more Digg or other social bookmarking service fans’ interests.

I’ve talked about the importance of good site navigation, and Erratic Widsom