This graphic, mentioned in the comments (but not created by the OP), is a pretty good example:
http://www.onlineeducation.net/bottled_water
Note url and anchor text.
AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
21–30 of 33 posts
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#22This isn't surprising at all. In fact, I met and worked with someone on an unrelated contract who ran a small shop that did just this. It made me happy I stopped using digg years ago.
Digg could have solved a lot of these problems early on by introducing a couple very simple features: first, allow users to block domains, and second, allow users to block users. I can't remember how many times cracked.com or holytaco.com would show up on the frontpage and make me cringe. Reddit is starting to suffer from the same thing.
The fundamental problem with Digg and also with Reddit somewhat is that nobody wants to sit and curate the upcoming stories, and upcoming stories require far too many votes to catch steam and have a chance at hitting the front page. So it falls to a small handful of power users who have a network of friends built up who are willing to vote on their stories.
Digg essentially became an aggregator of cheap, popcorn content; the kind of stuff non-tech savvy people forward around on email.
Hacker News is still good because it's a small niche of highly tech-savvy people, but if it gets to popular it will run into the exact same issues.
I think the new Digg is actually a good step in the right direction. The truly best way to get good content is to decide yourself where it comes from. I get my best links from Twitter because I follow people who are interested in the same stuff I am. If I could define my network, the content would remain relavent. I think it would take around 500-5000 people to really generate great content, provided those people are all people you align with well.
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#23I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money. They drew up an info graphic that you thought was entertaining. In exchange you show your friends by linking that site. This is no different than any other type of link bait, be it an inflammatory article or some sort of interactive map you would see on the New Your Times website…
When it's possible to make it a business model like this, churned out on a routine basis, it makes me think it's more exploiting a sort of brain-hack than providing useful services. They've found a formula for baiting digg/reddit/etc. users into clicking on chartjunk, and are selling that formula to anyone who will pay: if your college-textbooks site needs some SEO, we'll whip up an infographic about bottled water th…
I think you have touched on something here. As you mentioned as well, what ultimately frustrated the individual who posted IAMA, is not that the content was hastily put together or is even inaccurate, in fact it was very carefully crafted with the intention of being interesting. As such, infographics have become a viable medium that people like and share, and the sum of the message/information is easily shareable on blogs (which is why most on the web are long and skinny)...most people wouldn't grab an entire article to repost on their tumblr or whatever, but a whole graphic looks cool on their site. Like you mentioned, this is the simple formula, but in itself isn't malicious anymore than realizing that people like big photos and funny videos and link to controversial/inciteful headlines.
That said, these campaigns have been tremendously successful even using completely irrelevant topics to gain links back to sites for very important keywords, and the content is not showing them to be an authority in their niche, be it financial or insurance or travel or gambling...they have shown that they can attract attention very well, that they are VERY good at SEO, and that they can (some of the time at least) design decent looking content.
I do agree with the individual answering the IAMA that it is an example of the internet being broken, and I found myself wondering if/hoping that somehow Matt Cutts would have a dream that would allow him to teach the Google bots to crawl a .png file to determine if the content in the graphic was relevant to the term in the links (or hello, at least the freaking title?). I am a co-founder of a company that creates infographics along with written content as part of an overall social media strategy and we spend a great deal of time finding the balance for each client between content that has mass appeal and content that relates to their core customer base/readership. You have to bring in new people somehow, but as many people have learned, irrelevant content doesn't convert, which is why so many people either craft content with no intention of converting and simply say 'social media traffic doesn't convert' or rank sites to sell them to someone who knows how to monetize them down the road (assuming these SEO rankings hold up).
Finally though - if it builds a site's reputation for being a relevant resource for interesting and useful content that does do the job of educating, it is ok if it looks pretty and does it with chart junk no matter how many purists out there say they would rather just pop open the .csv
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#24People will always try to game the system. I think it's merely a matter of elegance on how you do it. Your style will decide whether you will be called a spammer.
For example dropbox.com became a huge success because Drew Houston started serving Digg-"Easter Eggs" inside of dropbox to the Digg crowd that in turn gladly upvoted him. I find his approach very smart (they came out of nowhere) and I think dropbox would have not taken off without it.
It's always the same. When you think it's spam, it's spam. It is like in that youtube video that was passed around some time ago: It's only sexual harassment when you aren't attractive. Otherwise it's charming.
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#25This is an anonymous account for obvious reasons. I also did the same job as the AMA OP, used this linkbaiting technique for over a year.
Posting as I think HN would be interested in the results.
Tens of thousands of optimised backlinks, Quality trusted links from major news publishers (almost all of them), Search traffic up from 30k a month to 200k, 800k to 1mill visitors a month.
The infographics game is almost up for linkbaiting. Most of the people using this technique are now moving on, including myself.
Expect some interesting innovations in this space.
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#26This is an anonymous account for obvious reasons. I also did the same job as the AMA OP, used this linkbaiting technique for over a year. Posting as I think HN would be interested in the results. Tens of thousands of optimised backlinks, Quality trusted links from major news publishers (almost all of them), Search traffic up from 30k a month to 200k, 800k to 1mill visitors a month. The infographics game is almost up…
Expect innovations from Google and other search engines too.
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#27This isn't surprising at all. In fact, I met and worked with someone on an unrelated contract who ran a small shop that did just this. It made me happy I stopped using digg years ago. Digg could have solved a lot of these problems early on by introducing a couple very simple features: first, allow users to block domains, and second, allow users to block users. I can't remember how many times cracked.com or holytaco.c…
Digg's main problem is it left the technology niche and became mainstream. The same thing has happened with lots of forums I used to frequent - for example, one broadened their focus from a highly technical media broadcasting community, to a TV entertainment and gossip portal. The traffic increased dramatically, yet the quality of the posts dropped.
Hacker News will be fine so long as they keep things controlled and avoid the pull of the mainstream.
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this distinguishable from a startup creating OSS, which will cause people to "lie to Google" when citing the OSS, and if so how? (I happen to know two reasons how: they're much, much cheaper to crank out at scale than OSS is, and they're typically backed by an outsourced promotion team. These do not strike me as having ethical significance.) Are we maybe leading with our geek brains here? The geek brain that maybe…
Who creates OSS and uses it to market "scholarships" for online colleges by scrambling Google's notion of what the best site for online colleges is? SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve your OSS's position: just peachy. SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve someone's IRS settlement site: not OK.
I believe patio11 did something similar. Made an A/B testing framework to sell bingo cards. He advises doing this http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/
I think it's a brilliant idea and plan to copy it (y'know sometime...)
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is no different than a startup paying an SEO company. In the end, both places researched and surfaced something that the end user will find interesting. I dont see anything wrong with that. I think it's Google's job to decide what is relevant or not in the search result. Personally for me, I am waiting for the day when Google decides to de-list sites like eHow. PS. sorry mattmiller, I accidently down-arrowed you…
I don't think Google will do that. I think one of two things will happen: -A lot of smaller vertical search sites will pop up. MedicalInfoSearch.com will not show entertainment or economics info, and its ranking will not be based on backlinks from entertainment or economics sites. I think we are seeing the beginnings of this with Blekko. -Or, and I say this at the risk of sounding like one of those social media peopl…
trouble with the social graph is that it's even easier to game. Click "like" to reveal discount code offer...
Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who creates OSS and uses it to market "scholarships" for online colleges by scrambling Google's notion of what the best site for online colleges is? SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve your OSS's position: just peachy. SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve someone's IRS settlement site: not OK.
I believe patio11 did something similar. Made an A/B testing framework to sell bingo cards. He advises doing this http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ I think it's a brilliant idea and plan to copy it (y'know sometime...)
Are you promoting IRS payment sites, structured settlements, mesothelioma suits, online colleges or college loans? No? Then go with my blessing!