For those who don’t know, you can start a Digg clone in about 30 mins using open source sofware called Pligg. Now I know they are not exact Digg clones, I call them that because there is not a better term for them and it’s the quickest way for people to understand what they are. Signs and signifiers people.
Because it’s so easy to set up they are erupting like boils on a 13 year old teenage sugar fiend. So far I have found 5 Pliggs based on search or SEO.
Only John Battelle’s Pligg seems to be attached to a current community and has sent me quite a bit of traffic, although John Battelle’s Search mob is not strictly seo rather it deals with the whole subject of search. The other four are all great, but the problem is community or lack of.
Reaching a critical mass for these sites is a real issue. I think the one that will race ahead is the one who is able to put together a community and create rabid, fanatical fans. Like Videosift a hard core of submitters and voters needs to be put together.
So how could they do this?
- A cool contest, win an Xbox 360 for the top submitter. Considering the cost of the console you would be buying it cheap.
- Two of them team up and concentrate on one, working alone can be isolating and if you share a vision with another things can really forge ahead, although without proper structure and guidelines call fail and self destruct.
- Get out and about in forums and other Pliggs, get active on Digital Point, Webmaster World, Earners forum etc. Hang out where SEO people hang out.
- Contact and comment on all the SEO blogs.
- Make sure all SEO blogs are listed in the pligg.
- Offer small prizes, say $25 worth each week for the submission of the week and the top voter of the week.
- Thing is, if you are running a Pligg based on the SEO world you probably know a lot of SEO stuff already. So no SEO advice.
- If you have advertising on your site get rid of it, this is a classic mistake most new sites make. People are more likely to link to a site that has no advertising.
- Modify your pligg so it looks different to the rest of them. Introduce cool features.
- Have a blog, you need some way to communicate with your community.
- Check out my interivew with the King of Pliggs Brian Houston who runs Videosift .
Here are a list of the SEO Pliggs I found, if I missed any out please let me know.
I don’t advocate spamming these sites. When you spam a kitten dies. But they are a great place to get a bit of traffic and if one of them becomes a new Digg you have lots of nicely aged links pointing to your site.
So go use them, give them a bit of love and lets see which one survives.
And if you know of any other seo pliggs let me know.