This issue has been discussed by SEOmoz in the past, in their Guide to Traffic from Digg comments, however they didn’t cover what I’m about to say.

I’m not a heavy Digg user, but I do follow the news there from time to time, and I’ve noticed a nice tactic used by a user there to get traffic to their blog.

This one works best for PICS that get to the front page of Digg. Many times, the blogs hosting the pics will go down due to heavy traffic, but if you follow the comments, you might see someone posting a link to a mirror of that page, with the pics in question available there.

Here’s how one of those comments looks like:

digg-mirror

You’ll have to click on the image to see some details. First, observe the simple message. Second, observe the number of thumbs up received by the commenter. 102!

If you would go to that page, you would see a simple white page with 2 large ads above the fold, and below them the photo in question. Also, a skyscraper on the right side. The image is surrounded by ads. I’m not linking to that page or showing the details of the user because I don’t want to cause him/her any problems on Digg.

As you can see, a simple message with the original pic reposted somewhere else, got 102 thumbs up and probably quite a few visitors, since the original page was down for a while.

I’m not saying this is cool. They are taking advantage of someone else’s work and they do have the StumbleUpon button on the page so they’re getting both Digg and Stumble traffic at the same time for a pic. I imagine they have quite a bit of traffic from these two sources.

Do keep in mind a few things though. Too many people using this tactic would wear it out fast. If someone already posted a mirror, stay of the topic. If you’re going to use this tactic become a regular of the place. Vote stories, comment for other reasons besides posting mirrors, just be a normal Digg user. A user that has no stories voted and posts only comments with links in them would look a bit suspicious :).

Then again, you never know if this tactic will not bite you on the ass and get your site banned on Digg or your account deleted, so be careful. Once this gets out, diggers will be on the lookout, so you’ll have to decide if its worth the risk.

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